Mechs are cool. Cute little fluffy animals are also cool. So what happens when you take your favorite four-legged friends, give them their own mechs, and task them with building tiny little animal societies where they can thrive and be the best of friends? According to the math, you get something really cool, which is precisely how I’d describe Animalkind.
In Animalkind, you play as a dog, cat, or raccoon, with more playable fluffy races sure to come in future updates, and you are tasked by a sentient, AI-controlled portal with recovering the lost fragments of the FLOOF codex, which is an electronic bible filled with vital information. Since opposable thumbs are vital for this operation, you’re provided with your own mech, one that seemingly operates in the same way as those animal speech buttons you find in YouTube videos. And, since the mech has a battery life and you need somewhere to sleep when it is charging, you’re also given the tools to build your own camps, and eventually towns, where you and the other animals you meet during your journey can come together and live.
In the sphere of crafting games, Animalkind very clearly falls under the umbrella of Animal Crossing-like mechanics. Resource gathering is simple and uncomplicated, and so-called survival mechanics are absent in favor of a more relaxed building and crafting system, which is balanced by your mech’s energy bar that limits how much you can do in one day, since you cannot chop down trees or mine rocks without it.
The presence of your mech plays a very interesting role in Animalkind, because while you need it to do complex gathering tasks, you’re actually encouraged not to stay in it all the time. As a four-legged mammal outside of your mech, you move much faster, partially thanks to a “zoomies”-style mechanic that allows you to take off at rapid speeds across the land. You can still gather some materials this way, but the much slower mech is needed to carry heavy objects and can be summoned to your location at any time. This creates a sort of mixed playstyle where you jump in and out of the mech as you see fit, rather than simply sticking to the machine for the entire game.
Gathering the missing codex entries plays a big part in the progression of the game, with recipes and new locations being locked behind a progress bar that only increases as you discover and deliver fragments to the portal. When you are not engaging in this exploration mechanic, you can go for a more social, reward-style progression system, where your relationship with other animals met throughout the game is increased by doing quests for them or giving them gifts. Again, this is very similar to the mechanics of Animal Crossing or similar titles and should be familiar to fans of cozy crafting games.
While the maps are large and filling the codex or completing quests for all of your animal friends is certainly time-consuming, in the current state of the game, I found a lot of these tasks to be rather monotonous. I personally found my attention span for the game dropping after short bursts of playtime, with prolonged sessions being especially hard to engage with.
The tutorial itself ended up taking me much longer than it should have, due in no small part to the game’s poor tooltips. If you, at any point, find yourself skipping dialogue, hoping the quest tooltip will provide all the information you need to do something, you will likely find yourself stuck, as these tooltips do not actually explain how to accomplish the requested task. This is not a massive problem, but several small, confusing moments here and there could have been avoided with just a little more information in the pop-ups for quests and new mechanics.
I was especially confused when I realized that sleep as a mechanic was different from using the emote to sleep, and I ended up softlocked for a while when I built a bed just outside of my tent instead of within it, which did not allow me to actually use it to end a day and left me stuck with my dead mech.
The game has very wide, open maps, which are fun to explore but can quickly feel a little hollow as you realize there is not a whole lot going on in them. With Animalkind being an Early Access game, this is one of those early-in-development quirks you can expect, but it is worth noting that this area of the game could especially use a bit of polish. Running around looking for codex fragments is only so entertaining, and there needs to be more to do besides the repetitive tasks given by your fellow animals to make the game more interesting in the long run.
Despite these criticisms, Animalkind is a promising title, one that just needs a little more time to cook, and that is something we should expect for an Early Access game. As it stands, the game is clearly trying to sell you on its cute premise and relaxing gameplay loop, and it certainly delivers on both of those. If you want to check out the game and do not feel like waiting for the 1.0 release, or simply want to support the developers, there are definitely far less enjoyable Early Access games out there for you to buy.
Pros:
- A charming premise that mixes cute animals with casual crafting gameplay
- A relaxing crafting and social questing loop that is easy to get into
- Systems that feel familiar in a good way for fans of Animal Crossing
Cons:
- Tasks can become repetitive and lose their appeal over longer play sessions
- Large maps can feel empty and lacking meaningful activity
- Poor tooltips can lead to confusion or getting stuck early
- Some very light bugs here and there
TryHardGuides was provided a Steam code for this PC Early Access Review of Animalkind. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page!
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