Aniimo: catching the creatures is not the point, becoming one of them is

The creature-collecting genre is having its most turbulent decade, and every newcomer has to answer the same question: what do you do that Pokémon does not.

Aniimo has a one-word answer, and it is a good one: Twine.

Becoming your creature

You catch Aniimo with Aniipods, setting traps and timing your throw. Nothing new so far, and the catching is effective.

What changes is what you do afterwards. You can Twine with any creature in your collection, and literally become that creature.

The consequence changes the nature of the open world. A cliff is no longer an obstacle if you own something that glides. A lake becomes a route if you have something that dives. A wall of earth yields if you can burrow.

In other words, your collection is your keyring. It is not only a battle team, it is a catalogue of traversal abilities, and it gives catching a motivation the genre often neglects.

The studio also stresses that creatures appear according to environment, weather, phenomena and time of day. Most can evolve.

The rest of the proposition

There is a lot, and that is both a quality and a risk.

An open world with a sky-floating metropolis, competitions, and other players called Pathfinders.

An Egg Heist mode, three-player PvEvP where you search and fight in real time across the Lost Isles. It is the most interesting idea on the competitive side, because it mixes searching and fighting instead of separating them.

And a personal RV, parked in the open world, which you bring back to your Homeland to plant crops, build decorations and arrange your space with your creatures. That is the cozy half of the contract, and it is clearly there to hold people between catching sessions.

All of it with crossplay between PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox, and a mobile version announced for next week.

The point to face squarely

The game is free, with in-app purchases.

That is the variable that will decide everything, and it is unverifiable on launch day. A free collection game can be generous or a disguised patience machine, and the difference only shows after twenty hours or so.

What we know: monetisation is announced around cosmetics and a season pass. That is the least aggressive model available in this genre, and it is reassuring on paper.

What we do not know yet: capture rates for rare creatures, progression speed without paying, and whether a complete collection stays reachable for somebody playing two hours a week. Those are exactly the places where this type of game tips over.

There are no reviews as I write, which is normal, the game has only just opened.

What I think for now

The Twine idea is genuinely good, and structural enough to justify trying it. It solves the genre's classic problem, where captured creatures end up at the bottom of a box: here every beast is a traversal ability you might want tomorrow.

The world looks good, the proposition is complete, and the entry price is nothing.

My reservation belongs entirely to the economy, and I would advise the same caution as with any free service: play it, enjoy it, and spend nothing until you have seen what hour thirty looks like.

What did you Twine with for your first cliff? We compare tricks on the InsertCoins Discord.