Aniimo Preview: This Pokémon Competitor Has One Really Big Thing Going for It

A wild Pokémon competitor has appeared – again – but perhaps this one can survive where others have failed. Aniimo is the latest in a very long line of video games that have tried to capture what made Pokémon special 30 years ago. Many have tried, many have failed. Some games, however, have come close to being as big over the years, namely Digimon and, more recently, Palworld. Aniimo is more like the latter. The question is, does it have what it takes?

Aniimo is an upcoming open-world RPG from developer and publisher Pawprint Studio that follows much of the same formula as its creature-catcher counterparts; you catch, train, battle, and evolve your creatures in a sprawling world, but there’s a key difference here. Rather than being, say, a Pokémon trainer, as the Pathfinder in Aniimo, you can quite literally possess and become your creatures/Aniimo. You fight as them, though of course there’s still a command mode that allows you to have standard, indirect control of your Aniimo.

But the possession is a concept called twine (or twining). And it’s not only within battles; if you have a flying Aniimo selected as part of your group (you can select up to 4 at once), for instance, you can fly around the world – or, more specifically, glide. You also need to use your Aniimo to solve puzzles. Moreover, like in similar games, some Aniimo are stronger against certain opponents depending on their type (water vs fire, for example). To make things easier, you can swap your Aniimo at any given time, including in battles. All of this fundamentally changes the gameplay and makes it a unique experience among other creature catchers.

Beyond the gameplay, the world itself is quite different. Given Pokémon continues to suffer from constraining budgets that make its open worlds look like something built from MS Paint in the 1990s, and Palworld has always been a rather blatant ripoff of Pokémon, Aniimo stands out by having a detailed, beautiful environment. I spent a few minutes just traversing the landscape, and I enjoyed it. It felt novel with a game like this, something many fans of the genre will undoubtedly appreciate.

While I didn’t have much time to check out everything in the hands-on demo I played at Summer Game Fest this year – I only had 30 minutes and I was thrown into the game without any context whatsoever, which is often the case with conventions and expos like SGF – I saw enough to pique my interest. Still, given how much is in Aniimo, from the Aniimo themselves, to the quests, bases, and general exploration, not to mention the very busy menu, everyone will need to complete a tutorial lest they get lost and lose their very first fight.