Pikmin: Antarctic Survival

“Welcome to ze Revolution, mon ami!” This article or section presents information pertaining to Pikmin: Antarctic Survival, a fanon game created by A Friendly Amprat.

This article or section is currently under construction and being worked on by A Friendly Amprat. We hope to have it completed as soon as possible.

Pikmin: Antarctic Survival
Rating	E10+
Genre	Town-building, strategy
Platforms	Tabletop role-playing game
Media	Physical content
Publisher	Pikmin Fanon
Prequel	Pikmin 4 (chronologically) Pikmin Survival Saga
Creator	A Friendly Amprat

Pikmin: Antarctic Survival, often shortened to Antarctic Survival or Pikmin: AS, is a Pikmin spin-off game made by A Friendly Amprat. It is a town-building game that expands on the concept of the Rescue Command Post from Pikmin 4 and the gameplay of the Pikmin Survival Saga from 2015, an unreleased trilogy of games also by A Friendly Amprat. This game is unique as a spinoff for focusing almost exclusively on the diverse wildlife of PNF-404, featuring playable characters that are instances of many of the Pikmin series' past enemies, across all four mainline Pikmin games and Hey! Pikmin. The game also features a very different overall slower-paced gameplay compared to other games in the series, with resource management and building construction making up the majority of the game.

Pikmin: Antarctic Survival currently exists in a physical tabletop role-playing game format, with no plans for a digital release. Because of its nature as a tabletop role-playing game, Pikmin: Antarctic Survival requires a game master to manage the game, keep track of game resources, and allow players to interact with the game world. Besides the game master, Pikmin: Antarctic Survival can be played with any number of regular players, with each creating one or more characters to play as in the game's world.

Awakening

"Awakening" is a core mechanic and story element of Pikmin: Antarctic Survival.

Awakening and Awakened creatures

All of the characters of Pikmin: Antarctic Survival are various wildlife of PNF-404 that have gone through a mysterious chemical process known as “Awakening”. This process is triggered by a strange chemical substance, Awakening Essence, a bubbling cyan liquid that causes permanent physiological and cognitive changes to any creature injected with a sufficient quantity of it. Awakened creatures do not physically look any different than other creatures, but differ greatly in ways that cannot be seen visually. The primary change brought about by the Awakening condition is that a creature's mental faculties are greatly increased, bringing it to a level of intelligence comparable to that of a Hocotatian or other similar highly evolved race. This can be observed by the way that an Awakened creature interacts with its surroundings and with other creatures, able to form communities with other creatures and build structures to habitate in. Awakened creatures also possess the ability to communicate in a sort of “universal language” with any and all other Awakened creatures in their vicinity. Understanding of this language seems to be provided to the creatures immediately upon Awakening, and the creature gains the ability to communicate in this universal language as well, even if it has no clear visible mouth or vocal cords. Though the difference between Awakened and non-Awakened creatures cannot be identified by sight, it is something that native wildlife of PNF-404 are very able to identify by scent. When a creature becomes Awakened, its natural pheromones are radically altered, causing it to appear alien and unnatural to any non-Awakened creatures. Because of this, wild creatures will usually attack Awakened creatures on sight (or... on smell?) in an attempt to eliminate them, even if the two creatures were formerly packmates or had some positive symbiotic relationship. The only known way to stop this violence from happening is to either separate the two creatures or to cause the wild creature to also undergo Awakening. Once a creature has been Awakened, there is no known way to reverse this process. Awakening is known to be spread through exposure to dense quantities of Awakening Essence. The quantity required to cause the transformation is significant enough that it will not happen just from exposure to an Awakened creature. The only known Awakened creature that has the ability to spread this quality to other creatures is a specific Porquillion, which refers to itself in the “universal language” by the name “Tatoursin”. This Porquillion is considered “patient one” of the Awakening outbreak and is the only creature that can actually spread Awakening to other creatures. Specifically, the Porquillion's natural spines are imbued with an intense concentration of Awakening Essence, so any creature that is pierced by the Porquillion's spikes will have the essence enter its cells and/or bloodstream. A creature's natural immune response fights against the effects of Awakening Essence, making it even more difficult for a creature to be fully Awakened. In order for the process to be completed, a certain amount of essence must be injected into the creature. As a general rule, the larger the creature is, the more Awakening Essence is required to be injected. Sheargrubs and other small creatures can be Awakened with minimal Essence, while a larger creature like a Sovereign Bulblax requires several hundred times more Awakening Essence to be injected into its body. As a creature's body is permeated with Awakening Essence, the creature will begin to become dazed and light-headed. Its vision will begin to blur and its body will become shakier. In this state, the creature may fight back less in its dazed status, or may instead fight back more in its desperation caused by the perceived threat to its life. A creature in this state may also attempt to escape from the entity inflicting it with Awakening Essence. If the creature escapes from this encounter before the process is completed, the Awakening Essence in the creature's body will fade, and the creature will return to normal without becoming Awakened. As the Awakening process reaches a point of no return, the afflicted creature will pass out from the condition and fall unconscious. This state of unconsciousness tends to last anywhere from a few minutes to several hours, though what determines the length of the condition is uncertain. Once the creature regains consciousness, it will have become fully Awakened, with all the physiological changes that the condition brings.

Plot

Main article: Pikmin: Antarctic Survival's story

Gameplay

Players control their own player creatures that were created at the beginning of the game, and these creatures are their main means of interacting with the game world. Through these creatures, the players can interact with the various Awakened residents of the Diamond Settlement, and also work with them to fight and pacify hostile wildlife, collect resources and bring them back to the Settlement, and construct new buildings with the resources they've collected.

Settlement development

Main article: Diamond Settlement

Much of the gameplay of Pikmin: Antarctic Survival takes place in the Diamond Settlement, where creatures can wander around, interact with the other residents of the settlement, produce various resources, and engage in other daily actions that contribute to the growth of the settlement, and aid in the construction of buildings to develop the settlement directly.

Creature skills and actions

Most significant activities that the characters of Antarctic Survival can partake in take the form of actions, which are clearly defined ways to engage in the game's gameplay elements. There are a multitude of possible actions in the game, with many of them being able to be done by any creature character, but others being unique to only specific types of creatures.

Most creatures can only take a single action per day, though there are a few ways to allow a creature to take a second action. Each action requires the creature to spend one action point, which is not a statistic connected to the individual creature but rather to the settlement itself. These action points are a numerical representation of the amount of work and productivity that the residents of the Diamond Settlement can engage in each day, which is limited by the amount of food provided in the settlement.

Search missions and exploration

When leaving the Diamond Settlement and exploring any other area, the characters of Antarctic Survival enter a search mission. Search missions make up the majority of the gameplay outside of the hub area. In each of these missions, a number of creatures in a single group travel together to a given area which can be any of the Antarctic's many areas, and they explore that area as a team, looking for resources to collect and creatures to Awaken. This team of traveling creatures is typically called a “search team” or “exploration team”. The search team has a member amount limit based on the current level of the Diamond Settlement, with this creature limit starting at 5 but increasing with each settlement level.

When on a search mission, each member of the search team takes a search action, which increases their experience in their search skill and gives them the opportunity to find one or more resource objects to collect. Resource objects are found scattered throughout the Antarctic's regions, and must be carried all the way back to the Diamond Settlement in order to be collected. These objects have different weights depending on their sizes and values, and can be picked up by one or more members of the search party if they decide that the resources are worth gathering. Most creatures can only carry one object at a time, regardless of weight, but some creatures can carry two or sometimes even more.

Search missions present several dangers and hazards to exploration team members as well. The most common danger is the presence of wild creatures, which are hostile to all Awakened creatures due to the nature of the condition. These creatures will attack search parties if they notice them, which can result in an ambush encounter. Creatures may also fail to notice the search party, which gives the search party the opportunity to engage in the encounter or avoid it as they see fit.

Some areas feature other hazards to traveling search parties besides that of wild creatures. For example, the Snowblown Wastes' snowstorm can cause creatures to become separated from their party and unable to accomplish anything for that mission, and the Frozen Fen's hazardous quicksnow can trap and endanger party members.

The residents of the Diamond Settlement can only embark on a single search mission per day, in which they travel to a single area of the Antarctic and explore it. Any creatures not in the search team cannot explore the Antarctic as an action that day, and must instead stay at home in the Diamond Settlement and take some sort of action there instead.

Creature combat

Unlike the real-time combat of most games in the Pikmin series, Antarctic Survival features a strategic turn-based combat system. Combat typically begins when a search team engages or is ambushed by a wild creature of the Antarctic.

In combat, turn order proceeds from the fastest creature to the slowest, based on the creatures' internal speed statistic. On a creature's turn, the creature takes some sort of action, which is typically for the creature to move around the combat field or use one of its attacks, such as a Red Bulborb's bite, but can also include tactical options, such as an attempt to flee from combat, use a carried item, go on guard against enemy attacks, or simply do nothing. Once all creatures from the fastest to the slowest have taken their turns, the turn order restarts at the fastest creature once again.

Combat typically ends when only creatures of a single side remain standing on the battlefield, either because all other creatures have fled the battle or have been somehow incapacitated.

Player characters can defeat enemy creatures by either reducing their HP to zero through attacking them, or by pacifying them by raising their Awakening level to 100%, causing the enemies to become unconscious. Defeated creatures rendered unconscious by dropping their HP to zero can be pacified through Awakening in the same way as conscious creatures, though the benefit to Awakening creatures without knocking them out first is that these creatures will join the party once Awakened with the same amount of HP as when they were first Awakened, meaning that creatures that are pacified after being defeated will be in bad shape and unable to provide help for some time as they recover from their injuries, even once they wake up.

One factor to note is that in order to Awaken creatures, the players' party in combat must feature at least one creature that has been imbued in the Ruins of Awakening, such as Tatoursin. If a creature like this is not present in the team, there will be no way to Awaken enemy creatures, and the only way to complete the combat encounter is to either defeat the enemies by reducing their HP to zero, or successfully flee from the battle.

Most combat encounters in Antarctic Survival are quite short and do not take very many combat rounds to complete. However, a handful of the creatures native to the Antarctic are considered “bosses”, being much stronger than regular creatures and requiring a stronger group of attacking creatures and more combat rounds to defeat. Each area of the Antarctic also features one especially powerful boss known as a “tyrant”, which are by far the most powerful creatures in the Antarctic and are often best avoided and fled from unless a group is specifically outfitted to take down the tyrant. Battles against tyrants are the most significant combat encounters in the game, and are typically multi-phase encounters that require a significant amount of strategy and power in order to prevail.

Character creation and guidelines

The game begins with all players being prompted by the game master to create their game characters. Player characters can be nearly any creature from across the Pikmin series native to PNF-404 or even an original species of the player's own design provided it fits into the Pikmin world.

There are some restrictions on what kind of creatures the players may play as. Primarily, player characters cannot be beings native to other planets beyond PNF-404, such as Hocotatians, Koppaites, or other such entities that cannot naturally breathe native PNF-404 air. Player creatures should not be too large, with anywhere from the size of a Red Pikmin to a Red Bulborb being good size guidelines.

Player creatures also should not be too powerful, with boss creatures or unusually strong non-boss creatures generally being unsuitable for player characters. Anything stronger than an Orange Bulborb is likely too strong for a player character.

Creature species intelligence and technological development are also something that should be considered for player creatures, especially if a player creature is some original species. Generally, player creature intelligence should fall somewhere in the range of what can be observed in the Pikmin series' traditional creatures. Creature intelligence and development can range from the level of a Bulborb (clever but simple-minded beasts) to the level of a Pikmin (smart and able to use simple tools but not particularly advanced) to perhaps even the level of a Wraith (seemingly intelligent, even supernaturally so, but alien and isolated). While creatures with a higher level of intelligence and social/technological development (comparable to Hocotatians or other sapient/humanoid creatures) might work as playable creatures, the plot of the game does not make as much sense with these types of creatures.

Generally, it is best to stick to creating player characters that are members of existing Pikmin creature families, as these work best overall given the plot and story elements of Pikmin: Antarctic Survival. A few good options for a player character include:

• Red Bulborb
  • One of the most iconic Pikmin creatures, the Red Bulborb is on the larger side but still fits well as a player character creature. Its warm-blooded nature gives it some level of cold resistance, especially if equipped with blankets or clothing items.
• Fiery Dweevil
  • Traditional non-boss Dweevils work very well as player creatures. Hazards often are associated with incredibly useful abilities and skills in Pikmin: Antarctic Survival, so being able to start with access to one of them is very powerful.
  • Starting with access to one or more elements makes for a much easier game experience. Players who want more of a challenge may wish to play as another creature.
• Wollyhop
  • Wollyhops (known in Pikmin: Antarctic Survival by their previous name, “Wollywogs”) are quite powerful physically and highly mobile due to their jumping attacks, but also suffer from a weakness to cold due to their ectothermic nature.
• Breadbug
  • Breadbugs' carrying ability is greater than that of most creatures, which is an excellent quality to have in Pikmin: Antarctic Survival. They can't do much to defend themselves physically, but their thick hide protects them from weaker creature attacks.
• Mamuta
  • Mamutas have the ability to carry two items at once due to their two arms, in a game where most creatures can only carry a single object. Their fur also gives them some protection from the cold, and they can learn to create bricks later in the game.
• Swooping Snitchbug
  • Swooping Snitchbugs are useful for their powerful flying ability and their ability to carry two items at once. However, they are physically weak and can only carry light objects such as berries and raw material. They also don't do as well in the cold, as insectoids.

Effects of the climate

Due to Pikmin: Antarctic Survival taking place in a frigid arctic region, the area can get incredibly cold, especially at night. This leads to highly detrimental effects on the various playable creatures and residents of the Diamond Settlement. Creatures that have prolonged exposure to the cold will take damage, causing their health to drop over time. Furthermore, this damaging effect will inflict the “Frostbitten” status condition on the creatures, which halves their movement speed and carrying strength capacity for as long as the effect lasts.

The dangers of the cold can be avoided in a few major ways. The primary means of being safe from the cold is to take up residence in a housing-type building in the Diamond Settlement. Buildings keep out the chill winds and snow of the Antarctic, providing protection from the cold. Another similar means of cold resistance is through the use of a “Slab of Heating” building, which warms all creatures on it by conducting heat as long as there is a heat source present. Cold can also be resisted through the effects of woven items (either blankets or clothing). Finally, cold can be resisted because of the presence of a fire source. The primary fire sources are fiery-blooded creatures, fire starters and bonfire altars, and lit piles of wood.

Creatures of different types are affected by the cold differently. All creatures can be divided into one of four groups, with each group having its own level of weakness or resistance to cold.

• Cold-blooded creatures
  • Cold-blooded creatures are the most negatively affected by cold, as their inability to produce their own body heat means that they are dependent on their environment and surrounding creatures for their internal and external temperature. This also means that woven items will have a minimal effect on cold-blooded creatures on their own.
  • An example of a cold-blooded creature is the Male Sheargrub.
• Warm-blooded creatures
  • Warm-blooded creatures can produce their own internal body heat. This gives them a bit of cold resistance, but they will quickly become overwhelmed by the cold in a cold region anyway. However, woven clothing items and blankets can trap the heat these creatures produce, helping them to keep warm. Larger warm-blooded creatures tend to produce more heat than smaller ones, which can be helpful to consider for the benefit of other creatures.
  • An example of a warm-blooded creature is the Red Bulborb.
• Icy-blooded creatures
  • Icy-blooded creatures are incredibly frigid creatures that are frosty to the touch. These creatures are not affected by the negative effects of the cold at all, able to withstand the coldest temperatures possible with no harm. However, due to the chill they emanate, they can be dangerous to keep too close to other creatures, especially cold-blooded creatures. They're also greatly harmed by fire and intense heat.
  • An example of an icy-blooded creature is the Arctic Cannon Larva.
• Fiery-blooded creatures
  • Fiery-blooded creatures are the natural opposite of icy-blooded ones, and instead radiate intense heat. This gives them a high resistance to cold and helps very much in warming surrounding creatures. However, fire is very dangerous! While heat is good, too much heat will cause damage to surrounding creatures and can burn certain items such as any woven thread items.
  • An example of a fiery-blooded creature is the Fiery Young Yellow Wollywog.
  • Note that not all fire-element creatures or even creatures with “Fiery” in their names are fiery-blooded. Take, for example, the Fiery Blowhog, which is warm-blooded, and the Fiery Dweevil, which is cold-blooded.

Content

Areas

The world of Pikmin: Antarctic Survival, the Antarctic, can be seen as one massive area, though in-game it is split into nine main sub-regions, making up the game's areas. These areas also have cavern entrances spread throughout them, though these caverns are unrelated to the caves present in many mainline Pikmin games.

The Antarctic

The Antarctic is a massive area in the shape of a rounded rectangle or square, which is divided into nine smaller rectangular regions. Terrain varies across the nine regions but is snowy and wide-open throughout.

• Chilly Valley
• Trampled Tundra
• Ruins of Awakening
• Empire Field
• Snowblown Wastes
• Frozen Fen
• Wintry Warzone
• Otherworldly Woods
• Ancestral Hunting Ground

The Caverns

All regions of the Antarctic contain cavern entrances that lead into underground tunnels that spread below the surface of the area. The contents of these Caverns are unknown, as they are virtually entirely unexplored. The reason for this is due to the extreme danger of the Caverns. The source of this danger is not known either, but creatures that enter the Caverns will often never come back out, and those that do usually end up developing some sort of mysterious sickness and dying shortly after.

Due to the extreme danger of the Caverns, and rumors and superstitions that sprung up as a result of this danger, nothing is known about what these mysterious tunnels hold inside.

The Edges

The Antarctic rests atop a massive snowy plateau surrounded by sheer cliffs on all sides. These sharp edges make exploration of areas outside of the Antarctic nearly impossible, and even flying creatures that can descend that distance have reported that there's nothing down there but barren snow and rocks, eventually falling into a seemingly endless sea.

The events of this game take place entirely atop the Antarctic plateau, as there doesn't seem to be anything to find beyond it, even if you could safely descend its edges.

Creatures

Main article: Pikmin: Antarctic Survival's Piklopedia

Enemies from all four main series Pikmin games, as well as Hey! Pikmin, appear in some form within Pikmin: Antarctic Survival. There are a handful of new creatures that appear as well, though there are not many. Pikmin: Antarctic Survival focuses more on the existing Pikmin creatures, instead of new ones.

Most of the wandering creatures of the game can be Awakened and subsequently unlocked as playable characters and new residents of the Diamond Settlement. The Pikmin present in the game function in the same way, being able to be Awakened, however, they do not even begin to appear until the second chapter of the game.

A complete list of all creatures in Pikmin: Antarctic Survival, potential residents or otherwise, is found in the Piklopedia.

Collectible items

Similar to the mainline Pikmin games, a large portion of gameplay in Pikmin: Antarctic Survival is spent collecting various items. The items typically fall into one of three groups: exploration, resources, and baubles. There are also a few more extra items that don't have a defined category.

Exploration items

Main article: Exploration items

Exploration items are items that are found when exploring the regions of the Antarctic. These items are typically resources or large chunks of resources that must be carried back to the Diamond Settlement to be collected.

Resource items

Main article: Resource items

Resource Items are valuable resources such as raw material, thread, or ultra-spicy berries, which are stored in the Diamond Settlement and used for the construction of buildings and equipment as well as to perform certain tasks.

Baubles

Main article: Baubles

Like most other Pikmin games, this game has collectible treasures, referred to as "baubles" in Pikmin: Antarctic Survival.

The collection method for baubles is similar to how treasures are collected in Hey! Pikmin. Instead of needing to be carried back to the base area, just reaching a bauble is all that is required for its collection. However, the only character who can actually initiate the collection process is Glammet. Other characters can find and transport these objects, but they are unable to extract their Sparklium.

Baubles are also sometimes referred to as “Sparklies” due to their Sparklium content.

Other items

There are a handful of items in Pikmin: Antarctic Survival that don't fit into any of the above main categories. These items are typically very small and light and are assumed to be carried with the active group of creatures wherever they go. In that way, they function similarly to the pack items from Pikmin 4.

• Flint Beetle Tokens

The Settlement

Main article: Diamond Settlement

As Pikmin: Antarctic Survival is a town-building game, the majority of gameplay time will be spent developing the Diamond Settlement, which is the main hub area of the game.

This area starts small and unassuming, with very few resources remaining and no buildings left standing after the sudden attack of a large group of hostile creatures. Throughout the game, more resources are gathered and buildings are constructed in the Diamond Settlement, causing it to develop and grow throughout the game.

Over the course of Pikmin: Antarctic Survival, the Diamond Settlement grows from a small and nearly deserted campsite into a bustling city that is home to hundreds of different Awakened creatures.

Buildings

Main article: Buildings

The Diamond Settlement is constructed of a variety of buildings. These buildings must be constructed from various resources, such as raw material and blankets. They provide various useful services to the creatures of the Settlement, such as protection from the cold and safe storage for items.

DLC expansion content

Main article: DLC

Due to Pikmin: Antarctic Survival's nature as a tabletop role-playing game, it is quite easy to create new packs of content for the game, which can be integrated into the gameplay experience by the game master. These content packs can be created by the game master for their own version of the game, or can be created by others who wish to create and share their own content for the game, and then adopted by Antarctic Survival game masters who like the content and integrated into the game.

Content expansions typically feature new creatures which can be battled and Awakened as new resident characters. However, content expansions can also add other new content, such as new settlement buildings, new baubles, new areas, or even entirely new gameplay mechanics.

Some expansion packs are considered "official" packs, which are packs that have been created or approved by A Friendly Amprat, the creator of Antarctic Survival. A list of official approved content packs for the game can be found here. However, any content expansion pack can be used by a game master running a game of Antarctic Survival, whether the content pack is officially approved by the creator or not. Official content packs typically have a high standard of balance and consistency, while unofficial packs have not been validated by the game's creator and thus may not be well balanced with the content of the unmodified experience, and they may not fit in with the creator's vision of the game and its world. These criteria are ultimately only personal preference, and unofficial packs can be enjoyed by everyone, whether they are considered balanced or not. The only thing that an "official" label really marks is whether the original creator of Antarctic Survival considers the expansion balanced, and thus whether he would use it in his own sessions of Antarctic Survival. Other game masters may have a completely different vision of how they want to run Antarctic Survival, as this is the nature of the "game master" role. Ultimately, whether a pack should be used is up to individual discretion, and a game master is free to rebalance or rework parts of the expanded content if they so choose, just as they would with the core game.

Trivia

• Pikmin: Antarctic Survival is one of the few Pikmin games not to feature any playable species from other planets (such as Hocotatians or Koppaites) at all.
  • Pikmin themselves also don't even make an appearance until the second chapter of the game, though they are mentioned often throughout the first chapter.
• One of the primary motivators for the creation of this game was the developer's disappointment at the lack of a snowy area in Pikmin 4. This is why every area of Pikmin: Antarctic Survival is a different variation on the idea of a “snow/ice stage.”

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