Aniimo launches as a free-to-play creature catcher
Pawprint Studio’s open-world creature-collecting RPG Aniimo is live on PC and console, peaking at more than 127,000 concurrent players on its first day.
Aniimo, the free-to-play creature-collecting adventure from Pawprint Studio, is now live on PC and console. Servers opened at 02:00 UTC on 16 September 2026, with players in the Americas able to get in from the evening of 15 September.
The game sets players loose on the continent of Idyll as Pathfinders, catching and “Twining” with Aniimo to borrow their abilities, before travelling onwards to a sky-floating metropolis for competitions against other players.
A strong first day on Steam
Aniimo’s Steam news feed reports a launch-day peak of 127,457 concurrent players on 16 September 2026, and the studio has warned newcomers to expect login queues and slower loading while the servers settle. Progress and saved data carry over between platforms within the same server, although PC, console and mobile players sit on separate servers.
Mobile follows on 23 September
In an open letter to players, the development team confirmed the worldwide launch on PC, console and Xbox cloud gaming, with the mobile version arriving a week later on 23 September. Rewards from earlier tests are being handed out through an in-game redemption page, and test data itself does not carry over to the live game.
Our opinion
Aniimo arrives carrying the weight of every creature-collector comparison, and its answer is scale and spectacle: an open world, a sky city and a promise that you can become the creature rather than just command it. The 127,000-strong launch crowd suggests the appetite is real, but the genre’s history is littered with attractive first weeks that curdle once the servers calm down. What matters now is whether Idyll has enough to do once the launch queues clear and the novelty of the first Prismana wears off.