This is my must-buy Nintendo Switch game for Black Friday 2024

If there’s one Switch game I can’t recommend enough, it’s Pikmin 4. The series expertly walks the tightrope between being a cute, whimsical adventure and a strategy game that needs serious planning to complete, exciting casual Switch players looking to hang out with some oddball little plant friends while keeping the attention of serious speedrunners and strategists. Whether you’re seriously invested in saving the lives of the crashed spacecraft crew (more on that later) or you want to see how many little colorful buddies you can pluck out of the ground, Pikmin 4 is quite an adventure and one of the best games on Switch.

If you’re new to the Pikmin series, Pikmin 4 is an excellent place to start. It preserves the charm of its predecessors while refining the occasionally tricky control scheme and adjusting the story to be more accessible for newcomers. First-party title sales in the Nintendo Switch ecosystem are fairly rare — it’s not uncommon for them to remain at launch-day prices for years — so the Black Friday discount for this title is a blessing. You can  (a whopping 50% discount).

In Pikmin 4, the storyline mirrors the core premise of previous games: you guide a crew of stranded astronauts who crash-land on a mysterious planet and rely on the help of native Pikmin — adorable plant-like creatures —to repair their ship and find a way home.

The gameplay emphasizes a concept called “Dandori,” which translates to the art of strategic organization and efficient execution. This approach encourages players to manage the chaos of commanding a small army of sprouts on a dangerous alien world. While this idea has been a key element of the series, it’s the first time the term “Dandori” has been explicitly introduced.

Gaming editor Giovanni Colantonio, who reviewed the game in July 2023, wrote that it might be “the best life coach I’ve ever had.”

“The adventure grabs various ideas from the series’ past and puts them all in order, like someone shuffling a handful of loose-leaf papers into one neat stack,” he wrote in a four-star review. “At its heart, this is the same series I’ve enjoyed for two decades, but I feel like I’m seeing it in a whole new light thanks to a thorough reorganization. I don’t know that I can name any other game that made me excited to do my household chores every time I powered it down.”

For me, Pikmin 4 was one of those games I simply couldn’t put down. Each in-game day seamlessly flowed into the next, with unfinished tasks, nearly solved puzzles, or unexplored corners of a region constantly pulling me back in. There wasn’t a single dull moment throughout my entire playthrough. I also had an absolute blast watching my wife work through her own playthrough alongside mine. Normally, watching someone play a game you’ve just finished might feel repetitive, but seeing her approach the same puzzles and challenges in her own unique way was fascinating.

The Nintendo Switch is home to plenty of fantastic titles, but Pikmin 4 is one of my all-time favorites.