Anarcute

Genre: Action

Players: 1

.

Review:

Anarcute, released in 2016 on PC and Xbox One and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019, is a game I would probably describe as an Action game with game mechanics that are vaguely similar to the Pikmin franchise. However, where Pikmin has players gathering together adorable little creatures to fight enemies and perform various tasks, Anarcute has you gathering adorable little anthropomorphic animal people to join your riot and take down an oppressive police state dictatorship.

It’s an eclectic blend of cute and intense, as you storm against and overpower police (leaving behind a few bodies of rioters who didn’t survive the encounter), hurl objects you’ve scrounged up, and even topple buildings as you work to take down The Man, all while your participants are cute little animal people with big eyes. Strange as it all is, it works.

This is in part due to the presentation, which uses fairly simple 3D visuals that have a somewhat cartoony style, with squashed-looking characters that make even the oppressive authorities look a bit silly. This is all backed by a surprisingly catchy pop-esque soundtrack, with tunes like the Main Theme, Tokyo Theme, Action Theme, and Reykjavik Theme.

The gameplay in Anarcute is stage-based, and has players aiming to capture flags by taking out the police surrounding them. This is done by gathering up sleeping citizens into your mob, moving them over debris to have them arm themselves with it, and then either melee attack or toss said debris at enemies. The bigger your mob size, the more they’re capable of doing, with larger mobs able to perform a stomp move to stun enemies or even topple over buildings onto those enemies. And in between stages you can spend coins earned in missions to upgrade your mob’s abilities.

I think the gameplay here is clever, and throws interesting new situations at players on a regular basis, including new types of enemies and obstacles. And there’s a lot of joy to be found in this game’s generally destructive gameplay. However, I do have a few issues with it as well.

First, as with most games where you manage a large number of units (at least outside of the Real-Time Strategy genre), doing so can be a bit messy and hard to control at times. It also doesn’t help that it’s hard to control your mob’s aim when throwing objects, and the camera isn’t very good either, refusing to let you see too far ahead of you.

Beyond issues with what this game does, there’s a bit of disappointment at what it doesn’t let you do. Unlike the Pikmin games, you don’t keep your mob from one level to the next, and you won’t be setting them to multitask different jobs – they’ll be surrounding your character for the duration of the level, and then you’ll have to gather them all up again in the next level.

While the gameplay in Anarcute is limited, and there are a few control issues, what’s here is still some great visceral fun as you tear apart cities more and more as your mob size grows. And while it’s not an especially long game (taking an estimated 6-7 hours), it’s enjoyable for that duration, and the relatively low $15 price tag makes that length seem more than adequate for what you’re paying. Overall, if a game about gathering together a riotous mob of cute animals to fight against an evil dictatorship sounds like fun to you, I think you’ll be quite satisfied with Anarcute.

tl;dr – Anarcute is an Action game where players gather together a riotous mob of cute anthropomorphic animals to take down an oppressive dictatorship. There are a few control issues, and this game isn’t quite as ambitious as it feels like it could be, but overall this is a fun destructive time well worth playing.

Grade: B

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}