Here's how Pikmin 4's time rewind feature works
You'll grow to love it.
Pikmin 4's time rewind feature is a big addition to the series, though I admit being apprehensive at first around how it might be deployed. After a week with the game - and you can read some of my early thoughts here - I've come to use it sparingly, but appreciate its existence.
As its name suggests, the feature allows you to skip backwards and undo any sudden calamity. Though in doing so, my initial fear was it risked devaluing the Pikmin series' usual high stakes.
After all, the frequent likelihood of imminent Pikmin death - their agonising squeals, the sad sight of their soul floating slowly upwards - acts to ensure you approach each situation with care.
Since Pikmin 2, the series has never really placed you in a position where you could have too few Pikmin to realistically progress. Instead, it's just been about whether you could live with yourself for being clumsy, and causing a mass Pikmin die-off.
Pikmin 4's time rewind feature takes a fair middle-ground, where you are able to skip back to certain time points, though also with a few caveats.
Say you've just approached a large enemy and had trouble defeating it first time around - you've lost 20 Pikmin to an attack you never saw coming! Head to the game's options menu, and select Rewind Time.
From here, Pikmin 4 gives you a set of saved states to select and roll back to, the most recent being two minutes ago. Others options tend to offer you alternative save states from around the five or eight minute marks hence. Finally, there's an option to rewind all the way back to the beginning of a day (if you're in the overworld) or the beginning of a level (if you're in a cave).
With each of these save states, you're given a clear indicator of how many Pikmin you have alive in your squad, as well as the number who have died each day. You can also easily see what treasures and resources you have thus far collected.
Rewinding time means you'll need to recollect any treasures you acquired in the time lost, of course, so then it becomes a matter of whether you consider replaying five or eight or however many minutes just to get back the Pikmin that died in the interim.
It's a flexible enough system, but one that dissuades you from using it all of the time. I've rewound time to a save state two minutes before and messed things up again, only to find that I can't restart that save point a second time. Instead, I've found that I can only go back to an even earlier one which tasks me with yet more treasure hunting and exploration to redo.
Ultimately, I've found myself deciding only to rewind time when I lose a cluster of Pikmin - I have long since given up trying to play Pikmin 4 with no Pikmin deaths on my record. That said, I appreciate the fact this feature exists for when I do something truly stupid, or feel I've just been unlucky. (Pro tip: don't stand right next to a bottomless drop when an enemy can knock all your Pikmin off.)
Pikmin 4 launches on 21st July, though you can now download the game's quite generous opening demo - definitely give it a go if you've got your Switch handy. Complete it and you'll unlock an Oachi rider costume for mobile app Pikmin Bloom.