A cozy crafting game about animals?? Who has ever heard of such a thing? Everyone has, but Animalkind, which has recently entered Early Access, has a few differences. The biggest one is that you have a mech, but it’s very much a typical genre entry outside of that. The game is set to stay in Early Access until 2027, where it will receive new regions, characters, quests, and more things to collect and craft. There are already multiple regions in the game with their own content, but the question stands: is Animalkind worth it in Early Access?
At the start of the game, you’re free to choose between one of three character types: a cat, a dog, or a raccoon. I immediately chose the raccoon for reasons that should be obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a raccoon. You can select from several colour palettes for them, but then you’re off to the races. The initial region is quite small, but it wastes no time in throwing you into things. Your main quest giver is a talking portal that walks you through the basics. At first, your little animal can only run around on foot, but after bringing the portal a couple of components, it’ll put your mech together for you.
Now, the mech was the main reason I was so interested in this game. The appeal of playing as a raccoon in a mech is obvious, but the mech here doesn’t really behave any differently than player characters in similar games. You can craft certain items with just the mech, but you’ll need to place a workbench to craft most other things. These require you to pick up typical resources (wood, stone, fibre, etc) to create the objects. You then go into your inventory and place them. In my time with the game, I saw nothing that really made good use of the fact that you’re piloting a mech, which is unfortunate.
The portal’s series of quests isn’t long at all, and you’ll have to take on quests from the starting region’s two inhabitants. I’m not certain if Animalkind handles these the same way Animal Crossing does by randomising characters, but I’m assuming them to be static. Regardless, my opening region had two characters in the form of an owl and a squirrel. The squirrel runs a shop and will buy almost anything you’ve got on you. You can increase your friendship with both by completing their quests and giving them gifts. The owl taught me how to cook, while the squirrel teaches you how to grow crops. Everything is plenty intuitive for the most part.
The game is mostly cute enough, but it just didn’t make much of an impression on me. It doesn’t really do anything unique, even though some of the portal’s dialogue, along with the player’s dialogue options, are actually pretty funny. One aspect that is worth noting is that the game is weirdly slow. By default, you walk at an incredibly slow pace even when in the mech. You can thankfully make it so that your character always runs, but the default movement speed is so slow that I can’t imagine why it’s even in the game. There are also times when you have to get out of your mech in order to make it into smaller openings, which often means you’ll need to slowly drag an object out of it so that you can collect it with the mech.
I’m not convinced that Animalkind is worth it in Early Access. It’s cute enough and mostly does what you’d expect, but there’s just nothing to really separate it from other similar games other, than surface level details. If you’re in the market for a new cozy game and want to build things for your animal pals, you could probably do worse, but there’s not really much of note to sink your teeth into with this one, at least not yet. Still, playing as a raccoon in a mech is pretty cute, which I’ll certainly not deny.
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