“Pokémon and gachapon” is a combo that belongs on a shelf next to the other great pairs of our world like salt & vinegar or Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. It’s an obvious winner. Or it should be, which is what creature-collecting gacha game Aniimo is betting on.
Someone is probably going to nail the freemium critter game combo soon, but after playing in its current closed beta test I just don’t think Aniimo is the one. It’s rolled a real winning pair of words, but hasn’t found enough originality to win me over in the overstuffed gacha game field of 2026.
Gacha catch ’em all
In Aniimo you’re the Pathfinder, a fresh-faced recruit headed down to the continent Idyll to collect aniimos for reasons that I forgot even as they were being explained to me in a cutscene. Are any of us internalizing the story in gacha games anymore? Dramatic motivation aside, you’ve got to explore Idyll, catch the aniimos you find wandering its biomes, “twine” to transform into them and use their skills to solve small open world puzzles, and occasionally battle it out with high level world boss aniimos in real-time combat.
The first aniimos I find are all pretty expected for a creature catcher: a big fluffy sheep, fire puppy, fire pup’s mom, butterfly, tiny bird, and a blue water dragon thing that is not a Lapras. I catch them by throwing aniipods. I record them in my aniilog. I level them up from Lumin Stage to Gamma stage. I take advantage of an elemental types chart of strengths and weaknesses to battle wild aniimos with fireballs and water jets. It’s Pokémon, y’all. Pokémon plus gacha, lest we forget.
(Image credit: Pawprint Studio)
Like a cartoon character who’s stuffed all their toys in a single closet, opening that door (the menu) releases the avalanche of stock standard gacha game systems spilling out onto your floor. There’s the requisite handful of currencies (fame, glimmers, experience gems), a menu full of too many different limited time quest events, upgrade menus, and endless rewards to click click click away at. As it goes with gacha games, the web of interconnected busywork becomes familiar once you figure out the in-universe words this one’s using for dungeons, pulls, daily quests, and so on. It’s a gacha game, y’all.
Aniimo’s obvious flaws are cosmetic. It’s harshly lit. The audio quality of its few voice lines is poor. Animations like strafing while holding an aniiball are awkward. These are the kinds of things most likely to get brushed up between this closed beta test and its eventual launch date sometime this year so I’m trying not to hold those against it.
Its biggest sin is just being a bit uninspired. I could have written “Pokémon gacha” and maybe just stopped there. You’ve pictured it. Yes, exactly that. It is no more than, and maybe slightly less than, what I expected. Everything I do in Aniimo feels like it’s long been done better elsewhere.
We have Breath of the Genshin-mon at home
Since Genshin Impact popularized cross-platform gacha games for English-speaking audiences I have explored many gently rolling green landscapes with a party of elemental heroes. I have done little physics puzzles inspired by Breath of the Wild. I did the 3D live action creature catching in Palworld. Heck, I wandered into Aniimo’s second town Bloomville and immediately thought of how Infinity Nikki did the village of lavender fields better. It’s not one of the best games like Pokémon or one of the best gacha games either.
What I do find to be a draw is Aniimo’s multiplayer, already up and running in its closed beta with the ability to explore and battle wild aniimos together. That’s in contrast to the extremely limited co-op activities in so many other gacha games. It has hub areas where players congregate, chat channels that are immediately accessible, and an easy system for partying and inviting strangers to come help you out with an alpha aniimo fight.
(Image credit: Pawprint Studio)
I am also interested in the interactions between aniimo in the open world and how the aniilog entry for each creature encourages you to seek them out, like transforming into a Flameruff to attract a pack of little Emberpups or join in with a singing group of Chirpis. I hope those tasks get more complex, with neat systematic interactions between wild aniimos, as I reach higher levels.
Those few things I can find to praise just don’t feel like enough to recommend Aniimo while we’re already swimming in a sea of new gacha games. One of PC Gamer’s foremost gacha-pilled gamers Mollie Taylor declared herself all gacha’d out just last month, while another of our anime-collecting colleagues Tyler Colp tried Arknights: Endfield and felt the factory building would have been fun on its own without all the gacha trappings.
Aniimo’s biggest saving grace may be that gacha game overlord Hoyoverse is working on its own creature collecting game Honkai: Nexus Anima, whetting the appetite of its audience who may be let down by the autochess battle system and looking for something like Aniimo instead. If you are a creature-collecting freak who is not all gacha’d out, perhaps this is the one.
Aniimo is currently in the middle of a closed beta test. It plans to launch sometime in 2026 but has not yet announced a date.
