Each week, you’ll be able to sign up to a challenge goal to hit solo or with friends. This week will see the options of 50,000 or 100,000 steps. You’ll be able to start the challenge via a new widget in the app’s home screen, and select in-game friends to join in with you. Progress through the week then updates in real-time, with individual contributions shown in a meter. Completing the weekly challenge will reward you with various nectars, with rarer nectar available from finishing the tougher challenge option. (If you fail, however, you’ll still get something.) In a briefing on the feature attended by Eurogamer today, Niantic said it was considering other challenge types in the future - flowers planted or Pikmin collected - as well as walking. Overall, it’s a neat new feature for the game and one which may encourage play with friends - something that isn’t a big part of the game at the moment. Five months in, Niantic didn’t give out any new stats on the game’s success today. On the one hand, I can still plenty of flower trails around me when I load the game right now. On the other, its sedate pace and mix of step-tracking and mini-blogging has kept it as something I check infrequently compared to Pokémon Go. Now, Bulborb fighting - when?
