Recently, Nintendo dropped the Pikmin 4 demo on us and gave us a little taste of what to expect.

And ultimately, yes, it is more of the same Pikmin. You collect cute little plant folk, each with differing abilities and use them in various scenarios in order to progress and find parts for your ship.

But the demo introduces you to a couple of new concepts, some of which are really quite neat. Including a focus on finding hidden, hard to find Pikmin, and riding around on the back of a dog.

These might seem like simple additions, but they actually really freshen the experience and really open it up to some exciting possibilities.

In the opening portion of the demo, I was getting Katamari/Toy Story/Commander vibes as I explored a wide open room where everything is bigger than me and anything could be an obstacle.

This was the perfect sandbox environment to show what Pikmin 4 can do, though, as you try to find little Pikmin hidden under tables, on top of boxes, and even lying in plain sight on the floor but against carpet that sort of camouflages them.

But the other neat addition is your pup can not only whisk around with you on back, but Pikmin can hitch a ride too, clinging onto its sides, clutching fur.

Your pup is also a super reliable ally as they can sniff out scents for important objects and can even be sent out to pull and move items for you. They can also charge into things, pushing them over and opening up unexpected pathways for you. For example, one part of the demo tasks you with knocking down a metal structure obstructing your path.

But the dash can even be used to knock Pikmin down to your level so you can whistle them to your cause.

I had great fun just wandering around the opening area, then diving into the game proper as I tried to find lost crewmates and building a little profile for myself.

Something else that seems immediately apparent with Pikmin 4 is the cinematic quality of cutscenes and the way it tells a story through fun, quirky animations like you’d find in a Pixar movie.

This is definitely a release catered for newer hardware where the recent Pikmin 3 remaster certainly did the job but felt like it was confined a bit by originally being built for and around the Wii U.

It’s a great demo if you’ve never played a Pikmin game before or, indeed, checked them out for a little while. It’s actually incredible to think by the end of the week the Switch will house all mainline titles in the series, save that fun 3DS spinoff.

Pikmin 4 releases exclusively on Nintendo Switch on July 21

The Pikmin 4 Demo is Now Available on the Nintendo eShop