It will happen. Probably in a year. Maybe two. And when it does, expect a Cambrian explosion of user-generated caves, challenge runs, and meme levels. Expect “Pikmin 2 but it’s a battle royale.” Expect “Pikmin 2 but you control the enemies.” Pikmin 2 mods are not for everyone. The base game is already a tense, beautiful thing—a meditation on capitalism and ecology wrapped in a cartoon. But for those who have salvaged every treasure, grown 1,000 Pikmin, and still feel the itch, the modding scene offers something rare: a second life.

There’s a full conversion mod called Louie’s Kitchen Nightmares , where every treasure is replaced with a different gourmet ingredient. The goal? Collect 200 unique food items to pay off Hocotate Freight’s debt to a Yakuza-like restaurant guild. It’s absurd, beautifully textured, and features custom music that sounds like a lounge lizard covering the original soundtrack.

This led to Pikmin 2: Reloaded , a mod that does what Nintendo never would: it fixes the game’s infamous crushing glitch (where Pikmin could be pancaked by geometry), adds a proper in-game timer for speedrunners, and re-enables the cut “Pikmin extinction” cutscenes. Reloaded has become the standard base for nearly every other mod, a testament to open-source collaboration. The holy grail, as of late 2024, is a full Pikmin 2 Maker —a user-friendly level editor akin to Super Mario Maker . Early prototypes exist. You can already design custom caves, place enemy spawners, and set treasure weights. But the AI pathfinding for Pikmin across custom terrain remains a nightmare. Pikmin get stuck on a single raised flower petal. Bridges fail to connect. A modder named “YellowYoshi” recently posted a 50-page document on “Pikmin Node Graph Theory,” attempting to solve the problem.

The garden has grown wild. And for the first time in 20 years, it’s full of new terrors, new treasures, and new reasons to come back.