The game has kept my seven-year-old son and I entertained for the last few weeks, and it's set up to be a sleeper hit for the Nintendo Switch this fall. OK, but there's more to Pikmin 3 than that. Pikmin is, really, Nintendo's post-mankind story of Earth. I like this idea, but it also makes me sad. The developers have left clues to indicate that the world of Pikmin 3 takes place 250 million years in the future. But there are also artifacts everywhere: An old cell phone, for instance. These bubble-spacesuited characters have landed on a mysterious planet populated by weird creatures. It took me until a few weeks ago to realize the last part, but it should have hit me years ago when I played Pikmin 3 for the first time. And it's also about the far future of a post-human Earth, where all our gadgets are reduced to artifacts lying in the weeds.

It's a game about collecting and growing little flower-headed Pikmin, and watching them die.

Pikmin is a weird and fantastic Nintendo franchise: It's a real-time strategy game. It's been seven years since Nintendo made an adorable planet-exploring, critter-plucking space odyssey on the Wii U called Pikmin 3. Pikmin 3 is an exploration of an alien yet familiar world.

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