Picture: Maksym Vysochanskyy buying and selling as IndieGames3000This 12 months marks 5 years because the final mainline Animal Crossing recreation launched. Animal Crossing: New Horizons got here out on the good time and made a fully enormous splash worldwide. However with its fifth anniversary quick approaching, we’re positive numerous followers are champing on the bit for a brand new recreation.
So, in case you have been searching 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 mates over at Good Vibes Gaming have identified, there is a recreation that appears an terrible lot like Animal Crossing on there.
Anime Life Sim, which is seemingly launching in February 2026, is not even making an attempt to cover the similarities it shares with Nintendo’s standard life sim collection. It guarantees to allow you to “Create your good anime life” by constructing “your dream house” befriending animals, and happening adventures. You’ll be able to go fishing, accumulate fossils, catch bugs, plant flowers, and craft gadgets. You’ll be able to even run your personal store and organise city occasions.
Okay, so there are some variations there — in spite of everything, 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 the whole lot it’s essential know.
Pictures: Maksym Vysochanskyy buying and selling as IndieGames3000
The grass texture and character eye shapes take a heck of quite a lot of notes from Animal Crossing, as do among the animal residents. The wolf, bear, and moose villagers are extremely evocative of their AC equivalents — even when the moose has enormous antlers. How does it match by the doorways?
However, as GVG highlights, there are different pink flags in a number of of the screenshots. Particularly, among the photos and characters appear to be 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 do not know what that’s on the shelf on the fitting, however essentially the most obvious factor to note is the character’s eyes. They’re fully totally different shapes.
Pictures: Maksym Vysochanskyy buying and selling as IndieGames3000
Writer and developer Maksym Vysochanskyy buying and selling as IndieGames3000 (yep, that is the identify) has a little bit of a status for this sort of “asset flipping”. Just some months in the past, a Monster Hunter clone popped up on the PlayStation retailer. And in case you seek for them on PS Offers, you will spot different gems like TCG Card Store Supervisor, Anime Women Army Strike, and Metropolis Bus Driving Simulator.
In reality, we recognised a number of of the video games within the listing above, and it simply so occurs that a number of of them are additionally on the Change eShop, albeit beneath totally different writer names.
Rainbow Ascend: Anime Women Go Up is printed by BurleaGamesStudio. World Warfare II Metropolis Rebirth Tycoon and Cyberpunk Velocity Murderer are each accessible because of Tashlik. And SimulaMaker has introduced us delights corresponding to Pet Clinic Simulator and the aforementioned Anime Women Army Strike.
We’re solely scratching the floor right here — Restaurant Tycoon Simulator makes use of totally different thumbnails however the screenshots are similar between the PSN web page and the eShop one, for instance. The sheer variety of them continues to be stunning to us.
We’re positive Anime Life Sim will not make its projected 2026 launch date — that Monster Hunter clone was pulled from PSN, in spite of everything, and different examples corresponding 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.
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Thanks once more to Good Vibes Gaming for bringing this to our consideration!
[source store.playstation.com, via youtu.be]
Alana has been with Nintendo Life since 2022, and whereas RPGs are her old flame, Nintendo is an in depth second. She enjoys nothing greater than overthinking battle methods, characters, and tales. She additionally needs she was a Sega air pirate.
