New Pokémon Snap is a 2021 photography video game developed by Bandai Namco Studios and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for the Nintendo Switch. It is a sequel to HAL Laboratory's 1999 Nintendo 64 game Pokémon Snap. It was announced in June 2020 during a Pokémon Presents livestream and was released on April 30, 2021, during the franchise's 25th anniversary. Players are invited to join Professor Mirror's research team to explore the archipelagic Lental region in an automated hovercraft and photograph Pokémon in order to conduct research about their ecology as well as certain phenomena occurring in the region.
Gameplay in New Pokémon Snap is similar to its Nintendo 64 predecessor; courses consist of on-rails photography sessions where players try to take high-quality photos of Pokémon. As the game progresses, players will unlock new courses to explore as well as items that help with taking better photos. Additionally, courses can be levelled up, allowing different Pokémon and interactions to occur. New Pokémon Snap introduces night-time courses, boss battles and a new photo rating system to indicate how rare a species' behavior is. The professor's lab serves as the game's hub for accessing courses and acts as a space for players to review their research on wild Pokémon and their habitats, manage their photo album, customize their account, and interact with online features.
Discussion of a sequel to Snap occurred over multiple years for different consoles until Bandai Namco Studios were given the opportunity to develop the game due to the development of Pokkén Tournament, which they also worked on. The development team wanted the game to focus on being a world where wild Pokémon live and selected its roster of species based on their natural habitat and characteristics. New Snaps developer Haruki Suzaki said that the game built upon concepts already present in the first game and expanded on them to sell them to a modern audience due to the presences of social media. Development of the game aimed to take full advantage of the Nintendo Switch's capabilities. During and after its release, the game was used in collaboration with companies such as Fujifilm and Seven-Eleven Japan. In August 2021, the game received downloadable content (DLC) in the form of a free content update, adding new Pokémon species and courses to the game.
New Pokémon Snap was well received by critics, who considered it an improvement over the original. Critics positively highlighted the games' graphics, level of detail, photo editor, and relaxing atmosphere. Other critics were more mixed towards the game's gameplay, which many felt was repetitive, while others expressed disappointment regarding the game's photo rating system and a lack of the evolution mechanic present in the original game. It was similarly received well among fans, with the game leading to some Pokémon increasing in popularity within the fandom. Critics have referred to New Pokémon Snap as one of the best games of 2021 and was nominated at The Game Awards 2021 and the 2021 Golden Joystick Awards. As of March 2022, the game has sold over 2.4 million copies.
Gameplay
New Pokémon Snap is a three-dimensional (3D) photography video game with elements of the rail shooter and puzzle genres. The player controls a Pokémon photographer who is tasked by a research team led by Professor Mirror with taking pictures of Pokémon species in their natural habitat in the Lental region for their ecological survey. Additionally, the player is asked to investigate Illumina phenomenon, where Pokémon and plants known as crystablooms exhibit a strange luminescence. The region consists of six main islands that are divided into multiple areas representing biomes such as jungles, deserts, reefs and caves. The player explores these areas through designated courses, with certain courses being visited more than once but at different times of the day, a new feature to this game. These different versions are typically set at night, and can feature species and routes that cannot be seen in the daytime courses. On each expedition, the player rides in a pod-shaped multi-terrain hovering transportation vehicle, known as the NEO-ONE, that automatically follows along a linear pre-set pathway steadily. The NEO-ONE allows the player to take photos of the courses safety and rotate 360 degrees; the D-pad buttons can be used to immediately see behind the player. The player can also unlock a function that allows them to speed up the NEO-ONE on a given course. To control the camera, players can choose to use either the analog stick or gyro controls. In each expedition, the player is limited to 72 photos. Upon finishing the course, the NEO-ONE teleports back to Professor Mirror's lab, which acts as the game's hub. The lab, alongside the Research Camp outside it, also function as one of the game's courses.
The game originally featured 214 Pokémon species, increased to 234 species in the 2.0.0 update, from the first eight generations of the mainline Pokémon series. Taking photographs of each species adds their information to a compendium called a Photodex, where each photo the player takes is graded by Professor Mirror on a scale of one to four stars based on how rare the current activity of the Pokémon is. Photos are also given a score taking into account factors like shot composition, how close the Pokémon is, and whether they are facing the camera or not. Depending on the score, the photo would be awarded a bronze, silver, gold or platinum rating. As the player takes higher-quality photos, they earn Expedition Points that go toward improving the Research Level of each area in the Lental region. Achieving higher research levels will open up more levels to explore in that courses, allowing for new species to appear or for already existing Pokémon to exhibit new behavior. After Professor Mirror grades the player's photographs, players can retouch their photos using the Re-Snap feature. This allows the player to change the photo's parameters like zoom, brightness, and blur, as well as add photographic filters, photo frames, and stickers. These edited photos can be saved to a personal photo album separate from the Photodex. Players can upload their photos online to share with other players using the Nintendo Switch Online service, who in turn can help get their favorite photos be featured in-game by liking them, known as giving Sweet! Medals. Another system, known as the LenTalk, allows the player to take on tasks requested by the research team. By completing various tasks in a given course such as through exploring or by photographing specific actions of a Pokémon, the player can also unlock research titles that can be added to their in-game profile. The tasks also act as hints on how to achieve rarer three- and four-star photos.
To get better pictures, the player can unlock tools throughout the game and are encouraged to use them to coax out rarely-seen Pokémon reactions on camera. To lure out Pokémon or get their attention, players can use an apple-like fruit called a fluffruit. By taking a photo of a crystabloom flower, the player can unlock the Illumina orb item. Throwing an orb at a Pokémon will cause them to exhibit temporary effects of the Illumina phenomena by glowing; the orbs also serve to not only help the player take pictures at night, but also potentially change a Pokémon's behavior. Depending on the Pokémon, the Illumina orb can cause them display different actions such as help waking them sleeping, or even sometimes cheering them up. Activating crystablooms that are nearby Pokémon with the orbs can also have the same effect. Each island has their own orbs. Similar, the player can activate a music box that causes nearby Pokémon to dance. The player's camera can also act as a scanner, whereby they can identify points of interest hidden Pokémon as well as identify objects in the surrounding area. Certain areas of scenery can be scanned in order to unlock an alternate path, causing the NEO-ONE to divert on the new path and follow it to a new area.
At the end of each island, the player is sent on a research expedition to investigate the island's Illumina Spot, which are home to a large vibrantly-glowing Pokémon known as an Illumina Pokémon, which act as the island's guardian. These encounters act as a sort of boss battle, whereby the player needs to use fluffruit and Illumina orbs in-order to be able to get it pose and take hiqher-quality photos of them.
Plot Characters Unlike the first Snap game, the player controls an avatar rather than a named character. At the beginning of the game, players can choose their character's gender as well as hair and skin colors through eight pre-sets. The avatar can not be changed after being created. While never officially named in-game, in English promotional material the male and female avatars are referred to as Jaime and River respectively.
New Pokémon Snaps cutscenes features full voice acting for all of it characters, a first for the Pokémon series, although other scenes limit the it to just short voice lines. Voices between the English and Japanese dubs can be toggled between. The player can deactivate the voice acting in the game's settings.
Professor Mirror, known in Japanese as , is a local Pokémon expert of the Lental region who runs the Laboratory of Ecological and Natural Sciences; he leads a research team on an ecological survey of the region for the first time in 100 years. Mirror has been invested in investigating the region since his childhood and has since devoted his life to studying the Pokémon and phenomena of the Lental region. He acts in a similar role to Professor Oak in the first game; he grades the player's photos, he is an inventor of devices such as the NEO-ONE and acts as a mentor to his young assistants. In Japanese he is voiced by Ryōtarō Okiayu and by Ben Lepley in English.
is the professor's main assistant, she helps guide the player with their work. Her design slightly resembles the Pokémon Goodra. In Japanese she is voiced by Manami Numakura and by Anairis Quiñones in English. Phil, known as in Japanese, acts as the player's rival who competes against you with assisting with Mirror's research; he typically takes his job rather seriously. He is voiced by Makoto Koichi in the Japanese dub and by Erica Mendez in the English dub. Todd Snap, known in Japanese as , was the protagonist from the first game and returns as one of Mirror's assistants who gives the player photography tips. He is now an adult and became a famous photographer due to his photography in the first Snap game, particularly of Mew. Todd Snap also worked with the professor on the creation of the NEO-ONE, even naming the vehicle after the ZERO-ONE (the vehicle used in Pokémon Snap). Kappei Yamaguchi voices him in the Japanese dub and Griffin Burns voices him in the English dub.
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