Pokemon Go developer Niantic has a new virtual pet game, Peridot

After the success of PokemonGo ,, the developer of mobile augmented reality games, Niantic has created a unique digital pet. On Wednesday, Niantic announced Peridot, a new game coming to mobile devices that focuses less on catching ’em all and more on caring for, raising, and breeding unique digital creatures.

In Peridot, players will raise magical beasts called Peridots “that feel real,” Ziah Fogel, the game’s senior producer, said during a press briefing earlier this week. Each Peridot is “100% unique and 100% yours,” Niantic says, differing in visual appearance, personality, their likes and dislikes, and their abilities. Players will raise Peridots from birth into adulthood, breed them with other Peridots at nests, and create multiple generations of their virtual pets, leading to new discoveries.

As you can see in the teaser trailer, Peridots are available in many shapes, sizes and colors. Their designs will be based on real world archetypes. Niantic claims that they are a mixture of procedural generation and hand-created assets. Some Peridots may have traits inspired by unicorns, peacocks, or rabbits. Other, less literal Peridot archetypes revealed include concepts like glitter, jester, metallic, and kintsugi (the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery). Peridots can breed with other Peridots and create new Peridot breeds using a system that is modeled after real-world DNA.

Image: Niantic

Image: Niantic

Like Pokemon Go, Ingress, Pikmin Bloom, and other Niantic augmented reality games, Peridot will place a strong emphasis on walking around and exploring new places in the real world. Daily care of your Peridot is also crucial to its happiness and survival. Peridots will require daily care from their owners. Peridots will have “desires,” meaning you may have to take them on walks, feed them a certain piece of foraged food, or visit a nearby point of interest to keep them satisfied.

Peridot will be played in camera-based augmented reality, using Niantic’s Lightship technology. That AR tech helps Peridots “recognize different real-world surfaces such as dirt, sand, water, grass, and foliage,” Niantic says, from which your pet can forage different types of food. Of course, snapping cute photos of your pet Peridot is also a major draw of playing in AR. Niantic says that players will be able to easily share their Peridot pics on social media, directly from the game.

Image: Niantic

Image: Niantic

Niantic said it plans to soft-launch Peridot in select markets, on Apple’s App Store for iOS and Google Play for Android, in April.