When you say the words “creature collector,” you already have my attention. I’ve been both curious and wary in equal measures since Aniimo was first announced. I’m far from the only person hungering for a worthy competitor in the creature-collection, monster-taming space, and I’ve dabbled in quite a few. Aniimo looks particularly vibrant, vast, and cutesy to boot. It’s the addition of gacha elements that has had me a little on the fence. If you’ve ever sunk hours into a gacha, you understand the trepidation. Will this be the sort of gacha experience that has me gleefully forking over my credit card info, or resenting every microtransaction?
After about four hours with Aniimo, I’d say I’m still cautiously optimistic. It has all the ingredients of my favorite games: open-world exploration set in a fantastical alien world, lots of critters to collect, challenges to complete, and… farming? Okay, there might be a few too many ingredients added to this pot, but I’m willing to let Aniimo cook.
Big Butts, Tiny Waist
We leap straight into creating our Aniimo character. I can easily sink hours into a good character creator, so I was pumped to give Aniimo’s a try. From the get-go, the character creator feels super in-depth. I was given six default presets for both a “male” and “female” avatar (not great for all my non-binary pals). You can combine up to three different face presets to get something a little different, or you could just dive head first into the face customization options.
Aniimo’s character creation allows you to adjust the position, prominence, and size of pretty much every facial feature, from your nasal wings to your eyelids. However, it didn’t take me long before I noticed one glaring oversight: skin tone. After searching for a bit, I finally found the options for skin tone buried under all the other menus for “makeup”. Don’t let the three default options take you aback – like it did me – Aniimo won a bunch of points in my book by including a color wheel for unlimited skin tone options.
However, the character customization lost me again in two areas: one, hair options are extremely limited. I can only assume – based on the “fashion” vouchers I saw redeemable later on in my playthrough – that you unlock more hairstyles through in-game currency or progression. Having appearance and cosmetics locked behind gacha mechanics might be expected. The fact that there is only one natural curly hair option – if you can even call it that – available from the start, however, is frankly disheartening.
And second, I was similarly disappointed in the body customization. While I had so much control over fine-tuning the shape of my face, the sliders for body proportions were lacking to say the least. I never expect much in terms of body diversity when it comes to this genre of game, but having to choose between being eerily thin or skinny with a nice butt and boobs was disconcerting.
Which Aniimo Are You?
With character customization out of the way, I got my first look at my in-game self – and the adorable Aniimo! – in a cutscene reminiscent of a Twitch “IRL” livestream. The livestream overlay, complete with “real-time” chat bubbles from fictional viewers, threw me off a little bit, but luckily, we didn’t linger in the social media influencer realm for long. I found myself in the alien world of “Idyll”, an aptly named “idyllic” planet teeming with lush greenery and charming wildlife with unique powers, called Aniimo.
Our first Aniimo crosses our path – an adorable little fire-type Emberpup – smoothly introducing catch mechanics I’m already plenty familiar with. With an Emberpup at my side, my friend Nico laid down the basics of commanding Aniimo to use their abilities to remove obstacles or solve puzzles in the world. After catching a few more Aniimo and commanding my new pals to charge into deadly combat, the story began in earnest.
BINI, our little robo companion, is abruptly hijacked by a mysterious glowing D20 die, which pulls me and Nico into some sort of pocket dimension. In these strange ruins, I encountered murals on the wall depicting Aniimo I’ve yet to encounter. Each mural poses a cryptic question, ala a Buzzfeed personality quiz. The reason for this soul-searching became clear once I reached the glowing mural at the end of the path. The depictions of a yellow lion and blue fox in this mural materialized into two tiny Aniimo who can… talk? I was recommended to choose between Helion or Lunara, based on how I answered the murals’ questions earlier.
I really liked being offered a “sorting quiz” to guide me towards which “starter” Aniimo I should choose. After all, the “starter” you choose clearly says so much about you. Only having two options to choose from was a little unsatisfying, though it appears to tie into some sort of “sun and moon” mythology which could be central to Aniimo’s story. I went for Helion, personally, not only because he was recommended, but because of his sassy little personality. With Helion by my side, I was thrown into combat with my first big foe: a giant armored dragon Aniimo.
The combat was fun enough for my tastes, if a little button-mashy. I can imagine that timing your dodges and managing your cooldowns might take some deeper consideration as you progress. What really impressed me was the Twining mechanic. Yup, in Aniimo, you actually get to be the creatures. Playing as Helion – rather than just sitting back as a trainer – made for some engaging, brawly combat.
Getting Schooled
Just as quickly as I was transformed into Helion and defeated the dragon-type Aniimo, I was thrust into a whole new region. I found myself transported to the Polaris Institute, a futuristic academy devoted to studying Aniimo, located on my home planet of Astra. At this stage of the tutorial, things became a little bogged down in dialogue and instructional demos. To continue my adventure, I needed to become an official student at the Polaris Institute, instead of just a particularly precocious livestreamer, or whatever I was doing before.
To qualify to be a student, I was strong-armed into a combat simulation, which broke down the bare bones of accumulating “EP” and how to choose Aniimo that are elemental counters. Next up, I received my first free outfit – a school uniform – and sat through a quick Character menu breakdown. When I was finally teleported back down to Idyll with this hot anime guy and his hot wolf Aniimo – don’t judge me, you know that’s exactly what they were going for here – I hunkered down for another round of tutorials. After using the Report Terminal and building my Aniimo loadout, I finally had my first taste of exploration.
The Creatures
This is where I could start to see myself becoming hooked on Aniimo. There’s something so intrinsically appealing about running around a beautiful countryside and stopping to look at every shiny thing on the ground. There are fast travel spots to discover, new areas of the map to unveil, treasure chests to find, and most importantly, Aniimo to catch!
It quickly became clear that catching Aniimo has a bigger role to play than simply filling out your Aniilog or battling other Aniimo. Depending on their elemental type or other abilities, I relied on my Aniimo to help me solve environmental puzzles, like excavating buried treasure chests or floating on geysers of air. Getting to transform or “twine” with my Aniimo had me squealing with joy. Who doesn’t want to be a tiny little rock crab, walking through a field of flowers?
I quickly discovered how foundational the first Aniimo I caught were, as I swam across streams as Skippy, burned thorny obstacles with Emberpup, or glided around as Celestis. This gave me plenty of motivation to constantly be swapping around my “team” of Aniimo for a reason other than battle prowess. As I discovered later, even keeping starter evolutions – or “Lumin” stage – Aniimo is integral to completing some of the challenges and puzzles scattered around Idyll.
I spent a lot of time wandering around the map, catching new Aniimo, and collecting Lumin Amber to upgrade the Branch, a giant dandelion which improves the capture chance in that region, and completing miscellaneous milestone tasks, called “Elite Training”. These tasks felt a bit like chores: open “x” amount of chests, hatch “y” eggs, and so on, but completing them did fast track my level quickly while giving me a solid understanding of the core mechanics of Aniimo.
All of the Aniimo I caught while exploring were super cute, if a little… bland. I love some whimsy in my creature-collectors, a healthy mixture of adorable critters with some cursed-looking monstrosities. What’s neat about Aniimo, however, is that there seems to be a bunch of variations in each type. Most Aniimo have branching options for their second or final “stage” of evolution, and on top of the rare “Prismana” Aniimo which can be caught, I found a few fun “alternative” versions with different appearances based around the region I found them in.
#VanLife Influencer Era
A few hours into my playtime with Aniimo, I stumbled upon another of its key features: the RV. After discovering this NPC in the middle of a field, I abruptly found myself the proud owner of my own interdimensional RV. After a quick customization, I was prompted to teleport to the nearest “RV Park”. This vibrant campsite seems to be some sort of meeting place where you can get together with other Aniimo players and show off your own little outdoor deck.
As an aside, it wasn’t until I found the RV Park that I discovered that while – no, you cannot pet your Aniimo (boo) – you can pick up the Aniimo. Huh. That revelation made, I stepped through the interdimensional door in the back of my new RV and entered the “Homeland Space.” I assumed that this would be some sort of home-building mechanic, perhaps allowing me to decorate my own little space or interact with my Aniimo. Instead, I found myself on a small patch of barren farmland.
The Homeland tutorial had me clearing up the farm’s clutter and sowing my first seeds. Once grown, I was able to harvest my crops to sell. As reward, I received “Home Coins,” a currency I can only assume is unique to the Homeland section of Aniimo. With only this brief experience to go off of, I’m guessing that the Homeland farming is meant to be a sort of supplemental gameplay element which will let me idly generate currency every day. In exchange for my Home Coins, it appears that I can trade for other important in-game items, such as Eggs, or purchase “RV Welcome Packages”, which I’m hoping offer plenty of RV furniture and customization.
Honestly, the RV and Homeland feel a little discordant with the rest of my Aniimo experience. I love a good farming sim, but I cannot see myself motivated to spend time planting and selling crops every day if my only reward is just a slow grind to purchasing rare materials. Completing order requests just for extra Home Coins and coupons for RV furniture feels like it would quickly become a slog.
That said, I was pleasantly surprised during my time playing Aniimo. This is exactly the type of game I can see myself sinking hours into exploration and creature-collecting. The Aniimo were super adorable, and getting to play as the creatures you’re collecting is novel enough in itself to keep me interested. In some other areas, including the main story, Aniimo does feel admittedly empty or bland. I don’t imagine I’ll be filling out my entire Aniilog or progressing far enough to reach late-game mechanics. I’m still hyped to download Aniimo on my PC – maybe even on my mobile or Xbox Series X|S – when it releases, so I can run around as a little Nimbi once again.
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