Aniimo's art style and tamer-monster Twining may help it stand out in the creature collector genre, if monetization doesn't get in the way

When it comes to games that revolve around creature capturing, it’s hard to escape the long, looming shadow of Pokémon. All the more so with other creature games running into controversy, as legal action involving Palworld rages on in the background, while Pickmon gets accused of ripping off fan-made designs. It’s in this dicey context that we have Aniimo, an upcoming open-world, creature-capturing RPG developed by Pawprint Studio. 

Obviously, the Copperajah in the room is: Do the creature designs feel unique? Or do they look like cheap knockoffs? So much of the discourse surrounding other monster-taming is their creatures looking too, well, overfamiliar. And while the PAX East demo didn't show off too many of the creatures — called, well, aniimo — of the ones I saw, they all looked pretty distinct from any particular Pokémon.

In fact, the aniimo I saw all looked pretty good, all things considered! The creatures I encountered felt fully realized, they’re usually pretty cute, and it sounds like the game aims to have a lot of them. So, while that should be taken with a grain of salt, you can bear in mind that at least as far as the demo and other promotional materials are concerned, none of these designs make me point at the screen and say, “That’s just legally distinct Pikachu!”

As far as the demo goes, it started with a character creator. I’ve seen worse, but there’s a lot of obvious room for improvement here. In particular, there’s a severe lack of variety when it comes to the hairstyles and body diversity, and you’re never going to escape a heavily airbrushed look that’s seemingly present throughout the whole game. The rest of the PAX demo gave me a good sampling of what to expect in the full game: capturing creatures, “twining” with them, and exploration.

Starting with capture, it’s mostly about sneaking up on the creatures, weakening them if necessary, and then getting them at just the right moment. I’m trying to avoid comparing this game too much to Pokémon (sorry), but if you’ve played either of the Legends games (Arceus and/or Z-A), being an action game, Aniimo is somewhat close to that. The demo being set in an earlier part of the game, the captures I performed all felt pretty easygoing and simple, but I’m hoping & assuming that the later you get into the game, the more challenging and involved they’ll become.

Twining, meanwhile, is fusing with an aniimo, which gives you a completely new way to do combat. That is to say: rather than commanding your aniimo what to do, you’re simply doing it yourself. Admittedly, from what I experienced in the demo, this part of the gameplay felt fairly limited and like it could use some more oomph, as well as more variety in available attacks. Still, it’s difficult to get a feel, in a demo, how this component might feel in the context of a complete game. The limited nature of this component could be the case in the demo-slash-tutorial instance of twining.

So for now, I’ll say that this feels like something that has a lot of potential, and if they can knock this out of the park, they might have something really special on their hands. If done right, this could be The Thing that sets Aniimo apart from other monster-raising titles, thus helping it to break away from conversations along the lines of, “Is this off-brand Pokémon Legends?”

Exploration, also, seems to be something that this game intends to emphasize. And rightfully so — if the full game has graphics and environments as colorful and luscious as the demo, then we could be in for a real treat. While it wasn’t a part of the demo, I was also shown some later game footage of what’s described as RVs at a campsite, where you can both customize your own RV, and meet up with friends in theirs, adding yet another potentially cool aspect to this game. 

While there are definitely some areas that feel like they need some big improvements, the PAX demo was promising. Animo will be free-to-play, so while we can only speculate, at least some manner of gacha elements seems imminent. Hopefully, these won’t be too intrusive on what otherwise could be a solid foundation. In the meantime, while there’s not a confirmed release window for Aniimo, there have been two closed betas thus far, and the game looks and feels far along. So, I expect we probably won’t be waiting too long for this one. 

Aniimo is currently scheduled to release on Steam, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.