Pictonico! Might Be Nintendo’s Best Take Yet on the WarioWare: Snapped! Idea

Nintendo has quietly announced Pictonico!, a new smartphone game built around one very Nintendo idea: turning your own photos into playable minigames. The official Pictonico site lists the game for Thursday, May 28, 2026, while the current US App Store page shows an expected date of May 30, 2026, so there may be a small storefront timing difference depending on platform or region.

The pitch is simple, but it is a lot weirder than that one-sentence summary makes it sound. Nintendo’s own FAQ describes Pictonico! as a fast-paced action game where you play games created using photos from your smartphone. In practice, that means snapping or loading a photo, watching the app pull people and objects out of it, and then seeing your family, friends, pets, or old embarrassing pictures get fed into fast little challenges. Nintendo says you can try some minigames for free, then buy additional volumes to unlock up to 80 minigames in total.

That free slice is apparently pretty tiny, though. According to Nintendo’s FAQ, the demo access only covers 3 minigames in total, which makes this feel less like a broad free sampler and more like a quick taste before the paid volumes kick in.

Almost like WarioWare: Snapped!, but far more fleshed out

The easiest comparison is not just WarioWare: Snapped!. Based on the released footage, Pictonico! basically plays like a full WarioWare-style minigame set built around your own photos. The pacing, structure, and moment-to-moment gags all look far closer to WarioWare than to some completely different format.

What makes it feel different is not the core gameplay loop so much as the photo gimmick. Instead of Wario and his usual cast, Nintendo and Intelligent Systems are using your camera roll as the toy box, turning friends, pets, and random pictures into the art and setup for those rapid-fire microgame challenges.

Free to start, paid volumes after that

There is a very phone-game structure to this release, but not in the worst way. Nintendo’s official site calls Pictonico! free-to-start, and both the official site and store listings say you can test a demo selection of minigames without paying. If Nintendo’s FAQ wording is accurate, that free access is capped at just 3 minigames. On the US App Store page, the currently listed in-app purchases are Volume 1 for $7.99 and Volume 2 for $5.99.

That sounds a lot more reasonable than trying to sell the whole concept as a blind upfront purchase, especially for something this strange. It gives the game room to hook people with the novelty first, then ask for money once players decide whether turning their friends into minigame punchlines is actually worth it.

There are a couple of practical details worth noting too. Nintendo’s FAQ says an internet connection is required the first time you launch the app, but that you can play offline after that. A connection is still required when changing country or region settings, changing language settings, and purchasing game volumes, and Nintendo says it may also be needed for checking updates, backing up or restoring save data to Google Play Games, completing achievements in Game Center or Google Play Games, and accessing photos stored in iCloud.

The company also specifically states that your photos are not sent to Nintendo, which is exactly the kind of clarification a camera-based app needs to make up front.

The support material also suggests Nintendo has put more thought into this than the reveal trailer alone lets on. The FAQ categories cover first-time-player basics like offline play, supported countries and regions, supported languages, and target age range, while the settings pages mention country or region changes, language options, push notifications, and device-level photo access controls.

On top of that, the photo-specific support sections mention photo-loading settings, a Block Photos feature, options for keeping certain people from appearing in games, and Play History tools for saving or deleting images and videos created inside the app. That does not automatically solve every privacy concern, but it does make Pictonico! sound a bit more considered than a throwaway camera gimmick.

It is also just nice to see Nintendo put out another odd little mobile project again. The company has not completely abandoned phone games, but it has definitely slowed down compared with the first wave of Super Mario Run, Mario Kart Tour, and Fire Emblem Heroes. Pictonico! feels like the kind of smaller, playful experiment that makes a lot more sense on a phone than trying to force a bigger console-style structure onto touch controls.

If the full set of minigames holds up, this could end up being one of Nintendo’s more charming side projects in years. At the very least, it already looks like a much smarter follow-up to the old WarioWare: Snapped! camera gimmick, except this time Nintendo seems to have built an actual game around the idea instead of just a curiosity.