This New Open-World Pokemon Competitor Is Wildly Ambitious

It used to feel like we had Pokemon, and that was it if you liked creature-collection games. Sure, Digimon was around too, but it was nothing like the genre today, where multiple indies inspired by Pokemon have come onto the scene and found big audiences, such as Cassette Beasts, Beastieball, TemTem, and Palworld. Aniimo is arguably the most striking of them all, and not just because of its vibrant, anime-esque art style that magnificently jumps off the screen. I recently played about 30 minutes of the game to grasp what it’s trying to do, because my initial impressions from trailers were that it’s trying to do a heck of a lot. In reality, it’s trying to do much more than I even understood before. What I knew of the game was that it’s an open-world creature collector with flashy art direction and a unique “twine” mechanic where you, as the human protagonist in the story, can merge with your creatures to engage in real-time combat against other creatures. But now I know this gameplay twist is just the beginning. Aniimo will feature 200 creatures (known as Aniimo) at launch, with a full story campaign, player-to-player trading, and a huge map that’s divided into regions, each with its own recommended levels and specific creatures dwelling there. The highest level on the map seems to be 60 (and an apparent player cap of 70, allowing for some helpful overleveling). You bring four creatures into battle with you and can quickly swap them out for others you’ve caught in between battles. Out of combat, they can help you solve puzzles, too. There are even some designated as your swimmers and gliders, for when you trek through water or jump off a cliffside. You'll usually want to twine with your Aniimo in battles, but you can fight alongside them as a human, too. I had expected Aniimo was a purely solo experience, but to my surprise, it also involves multiplayer, with an MMO-like hub space where players will roam around and trade creatures. Though you’ll be instanced into your own story world when you leave that space, you can invite friends to join you on your adventure. Initially, I saw no signs of base-building, but it turns out there’s that, too. At any point, you can travel to your Homeland, another hub space where you can use Animal Crossing-like design tools to plot out your own unique abode and its surrounding area. Unlike in Palworld, where you’re building for defense and offense, Aniimo’s Homeland seems meant to appeal to the home decorators in the game’s community. It’s partitioned from the main open world, but a rep for the game told me some players wind up spending all their time there. I was told that others at public demos similar to Summer Game Fest have sometimes spent their allotted time in the deep character creator, using its face-morphing tools and choosing clothing, hair, and other options. It feels like every angle a game like this could take has been accounted for. I was so dizzied by all Aniimo is doing that I joked to the game’s rep, “If you tell me there’s an extraction mode, I’m going to fall out of my chair.” He gave me a telling look. “Well, it’s not exactly an extraction mode,” he started, adding that Diamond Egg Heist is a mode in which six teams of three have to compete for resources and get out safely. I was genuinely stunned, though thankfully, I didn’t fall to the floor. Aniimo is pulling from so many genres, including--somehow--extraction games. Despite all these layers on top of being a Pokemon-like, Aniimo isn’t launching in early access, somehow. It feels like the type of game that is doing so much that it wouldn’t have it all in there at launch. Instead, Pawprint Studio plans to launch in its 1.0 state with all the aforementioned elements available and to support it beyond the launch period. All of these mechanics and features must come with a price, but in fact, the game is free to play. I asked about Aniimo's microtransactions (MTX), as, other than biting off more than it can chew, the other thing that I could see unraveling this potentially massive game is a bad in-game economy. The team wasn't ready to share the full details just yet, but added that it will be available for players to test for the first time in the upcoming closed beta, and that there won't be any gacha elements for unlocking Aniimo. I think it's safe to assume cosmetic options will be for sale, at the very least, and those have always been fine by me. The type of MTX I'm more worried about is timer shortcuts, like those we see most often in mobile games. I saw some lengthy timers in Aniimo's building space that may have signaled players could pay their way past these artificially restrictive barriers, but I don't know for sure yet. Provided the team can utilize an in-game economy that makes sense for both them and their players, and all of these other ambitious parts come together to form a cohesive, rewarding whole, Aniimo might be the next competitor to go head-to-head with Pokemon. Aniimo is slated for release in Q3 2026, which puts it in an already crowded pre-GTA 6 period, with a closed beta coming soon for PC and mobile.