This yr marks 5 years because the final mainline Animal Crossing sport launched. Animal Crossing: New Horizons got here out on the good time and made a fully big splash worldwide. However with its fifth anniversary quick approaching, we’re certain a number of followers are champing on the bit for a brand new sport.
So, in the event you had been shopping the PlayStation Retailer over the weekend and thought you noticed an Animal Crossing gamer, no, your eyes weren’t taking part in methods on you. As our pals over at Good Vibes Gaming have identified, there is a sport that appears an terrible lot like Animal Crossing on there.
Anime Life Sim, which is seemingly launching in February 2026, is not even attempting to cover the similarities it shares with Nintendo’s common life sim sequence. It guarantees to allow you to “Create your good anime life” by constructing “your dream house” befriending animals, and happening adventures. You possibly can go fishing, acquire fossils, catch bugs, plant flowers, and craft gadgets. You possibly can even run your individual store and organise city occasions.
Okay, so there are some variations there — in any case, Animal Crossing did not invent the life sim style. However we’re not speaking about gameplay, for essentially the most half; one look on the screenshots ought to inform you all the things that you must know.
The grass texture and character eye shapes take a heck of plenty of notes from Animal Crossing, as do a few of the animal residents. The wolf, bear, and moose villagers are extremely evocative of their AC equivalents — even when the moose has big antlers. How does it match by the doorways?
However, as GVG highlights, there are different crimson flags in a couple of of the screenshots. Specifically, a few of the photographs and characters seem like they’re AI-generated.
Take the picture on the left, beneath — on the fitting it seems to be like there is a grill or an oven, however there are issues on the “equipment” that completely don’t line up with our concept of an oven. The desk within the background, too, can be fully misshapen, with chairs and wooden that overlap each other.
Then, the picture on the fitting — we don’t know what that’s on the shelf on the fitting, however essentially the most obtrusive factor to note is the character’s eyes. They’re fully completely different shapes.
Writer and developer Maksym Vysochanskyy buying and selling as IndieGames3000 (yep, that is the identify) has a little bit of a popularity for this sort of “asset flipping”. Only a few months in the past, a Monster Hunter clone popped up on the PlayStation retailer. And in the event you seek for them on PS Offers, you will spot different gems like TCG Card Store Supervisor, Anime Women Navy Strike, and Metropolis Bus Driving Simulator.
In truth, we recognised a couple of of the video games within the listing above, and it simply so occurs that a couple of of them are additionally on the Swap eShop, albeit beneath completely different writer names.
Rainbow Ascend: Anime Women Go Up is printed by BurleaGamesStudio. World Struggle II Metropolis Rebirth Tycoon and Cyberpunk Pace Murderer are each out there due to Tashlik. And SimulaMaker has introduced us delights equivalent to Pet Clinic Simulator and the aforementioned Anime Women Navy Strike.
We’re solely scratching the floor right here — Restaurant Tycoon Simulator makes use of completely different thumbnails however the screenshots are an identical between the PSN web page and the eShop one, for instance. The sheer variety of them continues to be stunning to us.
We’re certain Anime Life Sim will not make its projected 2026 launch date — that Monster Hunter clone was pulled from PSN, in any case, and different examples equivalent to that Final of Us copycat and the Unpacking clone have all been taken down. However, as a warning, simply watch out on the market of us.
Thanks once more to Good Vibes Gaming for bringing this to our consideration!
