Nintendo has announced Pictonico!, a new mobile game that puts players’ own photos and faces into short minigames and is scheduled to arrive on 28 May 2026. The free-to-start title will let players try a selection of minigames before deciding whether to buy more.
The game is built around personal photos, with players able to use pictures of themselves or friends, and even photograph friends for use inside the game. Nintendo says Pictonico! will include up to 80 challenges, and it is being pitched as a mix of WarioWare and Face Raiders.
Pricing so far is straightforward, if not complete. Volume 1 is listed at 5.99 dollars and Volume 2 at 7.99 dollars, but no separate European prices have been announced yet. That leaves the mobile release with a clear U.S. price plan and one missing piece for players outside that market.
Nintendo’s examples show the game leaning hard into absurdity rather than brand nostalgia. It imagines sport stars on the red carpet, a hungry boss, embarrassing high school memories, old friends while skydiving, a grandfather in a ballerina outfit, and a mother whose nose hair is to be plucked.
The announcement also fits a broader shift in how Nintendo has approached smartphones. After large brand spin-offs such as Mario Kart Tour, the company has been more selective on mobile, and Pictonico! looks less like a franchise extension than an experimental standalone release. That puts it in the same family of odd Nintendo curiosities as Face Raiders on 3DS, only now built around the phone camera and the faces people already carry in their pockets.
What happens next is simple enough: Nintendo has set the date, named the price and laid out the concept. What remains unresolved is whether players will embrace a game that asks them to turn their own photos into the joke.
