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.

A former veteran Bethesda developer has cast doubt on the possibility of a Morrowind remaster in the same vein as the recently released Oblivion remaster, saying going back to play The Elder Scrolls 3 now, over 20 years after it came out, would make fans “cringe.”

Bethesda is heavily rumored to be preparing Fallout remasters, with Fallout 3 and New Vegas suggested as in the works. But Morrowind — considered by many to be the greatest The Elder Scrolls game ever released — does not seem to be part of the remaster conversation.

Why? In an interview with Press Box PR, Bruce Nesmith, who left Bethesda in 2021 midway through the development of Starfield having worked at the company for over 17 years, highlighted a number of reasons why Morrowind probably won’t be top of Todd Howard’s remaster list.

“The problem with doing Morrowind is that I bet they don’t have the original code,” Nesmith said. “The game is so old. I don’t know if the original source code exists anymore. If it does, can you even compile it? When you’re looking at Oblivion, they still had the code. They could still compile it. Putting the code into the new version of the engine was a possibility.

“The other thing I would say is go back and play Morrowind and tell me that’s the game you want to play again. We all have these fond memories of things that were pivotal moments in our gaming fantasy histories that we absolutely move but you go back and play a 20 year old game and you will cringe.

“People even had cringe moments with the Oblivion remake but they forgave it because they’re reliving something, they’re enjoying the nostalgia. I worked on Oblivion. I’m even responsible for some of those cringe moments! The further back you go, the more that’s going to be an issue. The reality of playing Morrowind would not stand the test of time, in my opinion.

“Now if you were to completely remake Morrowind with the Skyrim engine, to try and rebuild it from the ground up, that’s a whole other story, but that’s an entire project. That’s a whole four-year development cycle. Why not go and make something new?

“Let’s revisit the lands of Morrowind and do a new story. You can include the giant crab palace and all of that stuff but make it new and avoid all the things that would not have survived the test of time.”

On that point, Nesmith suggested Morrowind could be an area Bethesda returns to in another game, perhaps The Elder Scrolls 6, alongside Hammerfell, High Rock, and Summerset Isle.

“If anything, there’s places that would be too interesting,” Nesmith suggested. “I think Elsweyr would be a challenge with its cat people who change the nature of their catness as they mature. That one might be a little challenging to do. But I think pretty much anywhere you go, there’s lots of cool, interesting stuff you could do.”

Earlier this month, Bethesda’s former Elder Scrolls loremaster revealed his idea for The Elder Scrolls 6 story, and how it would have set up The Elder Scrolls 7. In January last year, The Elder Scrolls 6 announcement became as old as predecessor Skyrim was when The Elder Scrolls 6 was announced. Skyrim was released on November 11, 2011, and The Elder Scrolls 6 was revealed on June 10, 2018 — 2,403 days afterwards. It is now seven-and-a-half years since the announcement, and we’re no closer, it seems, to the release of the game.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Woot (an Amazon-owned retailer) has refreshed its ‘Video Game Mega Sale!’, and there are some real gems included in it right now. Among the variety of gaming deals is Silent Hill f for PS5, which is marked down to $44.99 on the sale page. However, Woot’s offering the chance to save even more on this game right now by using the code ‘GAMER’ at checkout. This knocks that price down even lower to $35.99 (not including tax).

This saves you an extra 20% on top of the discount that’s already there. Considering it’s usually priced at $69.99, you’re saving 49% overall with this deal, which is an excellent offer to jump on. The sale page states that this bonus 20% off deal only runs through Sunday, February 1, though, so time is ticking to take advantage of it.

Save on Silent Hill f for PS5 at Woot

I confess that I had never heard of 2020’s pixelated arcade shooter Huntdown, but after playing (and replaying) through the demo for its upcoming prequel, Huntdown: Overtime, I immediately went back and did so. That’s because I was so completely hooked by the hour or so of roguelike action that I was fiending for more. Playing the original was also a lot of fun, but this followup seeks to improve in just about every way, making it a bit hard to go back. The cheeky retro ‘80’s tone appeals to my thirst for nonsense, the run-and-gun sidescrolling action channels the likes of Contra or Metal Slug, and the roguelike system of upgrades and repeated failure against daunting odds made it extremely hard to put down. I went from this not being on my radar at all, to eagerly anticipating when it comes to Steam Early Access later this year, making this an early contender for my most anticipated indie game of 2026.

You can infer almost everything you need to know about Huntdown: Overtime’s absurd 80s pulp action vibe by its title alone. Taking place in the dystopian, crime-ridden city of Detroit in 2084, you play a cybernetic rogue robocop who battles against flamboyant street gangs like something out of every VHS action movie you’ve ever seen. You’ll go toe-to-toe against the likes of a shirtless bouncer who pummels you with his fists and climbs around on the ceiling like a monkey, to a six-fingered rockstar called Sammy Sixfingers who tries to kill you with an electric guitar while performing a guitar solo in front of a live audience. The whole thing is just incredibly over the top in the right kind of way, making it very easy to replay each section as you try and fail to get through levels in typical roguelike fashion.

It certainly helps that even when you’re replaying through the same series of levels, things are always a little different. For one, the bosses and levels you end up with on each run have a bit of randomness to them in terms of which you’ll get and in what order, which is aided by the fact that you’re given two routes to choose from if you’d like to avoid one you’ve seen more of than you’d like. The levels themselves seem to be procedurally generated as well, and kept me on my toes with slightly different layouts and enemies never appearing in the same order. This procedural component isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, and the level layouts and enemies you’ll find are similar enough playthrough-to-playthrough that you’ll figure out the patterns pretty quick and run out of things to be surprised by (at least in the short section I played).

Combat is also not anything new, modeled after the likes of Contra or Mega Man, where you’re running and jumping through 2D levels blasting everytc hing in sight as you avoid incoming bullets and environmental hazards. That said, though it doesn’t have many new tricks, the formula it apes is extremely polished here, even in this pre-release state. While initially I was dying a lot and felt destined to be outmaneuvered by the numerous gangsters coming after me, it took less than an hour before I was sliding around, flying through the air, and shooting my way through entire sections without taking a single hit. That’s the kind of rewarding mastery I look for in games like this. It actually sort of reminded me of Hotline Miami, reimagined from a sidescrolling perspective, because although you can take more than one hit, there’s something very pleasantly familiar about the crisp gunplay and melee combat, especially when you hit someone with a baseball bat and see their pink, pixelated giblets go soaring across the screen.

The highlight of each run is when you come into contact with the larger-than-life bosses that can be found in each level. Some of these appear in regular sidescrolling levels, whe re maybe someone named Frankie Starsimmon Sr. will attack you with a big ol’ shotgun and leave you with the option to damage her before taking her alive, or just killing her for a lesser bounty. The ability to take bounties alive for an added bonus to your reward is a particularly nice touch that I’m glad to see they added after the original. But things get especially crazy during the boss fights where you go up against someone with a dedicated boss health bar. The main fight in the demo was against a rockstar who used his stage’s pyrotechnics to try and burn you alive, and always had his stagehand nearby to hand him a new electric guitar after he lost the last one trying to hurl it through the back of your head. These fights can be really challenging, as roguelikes are wont to do, and nine times out of ten when I failed a run it was the fault of one of these deadly weirdos. But they were also some of my favorite moments, and made gearing up for the next big fight that much more exciting.

The retreaded ground you’ll encounter as part of the roguelike formula feels especially easy to get through because of the steady stream of unlockables, upgrades, and buildcrafting options that come with each new playthrough. In one playthrough, for example, you might decide to forgo guns for a pure melee weapon build, grabbing perks and upgrades that enhance your close-range combat skills, while in another you might get your hands on a new plasma rifle you just unlocked and blast your way through rows of thugs with ease. Like many of its genre peers, the joy is in having a build come together perfectly so you can bring it to bear against the string of challenging bosses that have been sending you back to the beginning again and again.

The impressive thing about Huntdown: Overtime is that, at least in the full region I played during the demo, I never started a new run without a ton of new stuff to level up and try out. Sometimes that meant I’d unlock a new weapon that could then be found and powered up during runs, while other times it meant buying a certain permanent upgrade that made my healing items more potent, made me move faster, or some other useful boon to give me an edge on my next run. The pace of unlocks and progression felt perfectly balanced so I never felt like I’d hit a wall or had nothing interesting and new to bring into battle next time. It was so easy to immediately go from one run to the next, that even though I originally sat down for a 20-minute session, I ended up playing until I beat every boss in the demo in a single sitting, completely unable to tear myself away when I was sure the next playthrough would bring me victory. And even after I had my first successful run, I then was returned to base to find even more stuff had unlocked that I just had to try, and found myself immediately going straight into my next run just to try out some new stuff. I can’t remember the last time I found myself so instantly hooked!

One thing that piqued my interest after I went back to play the original Huntdown is the fact that this prequel only has one playable character versus the numerous agents you could take on the role of in the first game. While it feels weird to go backwards with the number of playable characters, Overtime’s demo was so polished and finely tuned that I honestly didn’t feel like I was missing much. It seems to be their focusing in on one specific playstyle and trying to make that work extremely well vs. the buffet-style protagonists, each with their own bag of tricks, that was in the first Huntdown.

I wasn’t expecting to end up so completely won over by such a short glimpse into Huntdown: Overtime, especially after seeing its dorky story and retro art style, but you can count me among the believers. For any roguelike fans out there, this is absolutely one to watch.