This year marks five years since the last mainline Animal Crossing game launched. Animal Crossing: New Horizons came out at the perfect time and made an absolutely huge splash worldwide. But with its fifth anniversary fast approaching, we’re sure lots of fans are champing at the bit for a new game.
So, if you were browsing the PlayStation Store over the weekend and thought you spotted an Animal Crossing gamer, no, your eyes weren’t playing tricks on you. As our friends over at Good Vibes Gaming have pointed out, there’s a game that looks an awful lot like Animal Crossing on there.
Anime Life Sim, which is apparently launching in February 2026, isn’t even trying to hide the similarities it shares with Nintendo’s popular life sim series. It promises to let you “Create your perfect anime life” by building “your dream home” befriending animals, and going on adventures. You can go fishing, collect fossils, catch bugs, plant flowers, and craft items. You can even run your own shop and organise town events.
Okay, so there are some differences there — after all, Animal Crossing didn’t invent the life sim genre. But we’re not talking about gameplay, for the most part; one glance at the screenshots should tell you everything you need to know.
The grass texture and character eye shapes take a heck of a lot of notes from Animal Crossing, as do some of the animal residents. The wolf, bear, and moose villagers are incredibly evocative of their AC equivalents — even if the moose has huge antlers. How does it fit through the doors?
But, as GVG highlights, there are other red flags in a few of the screenshots. Namely, some of the images and characters look like they’re AI-generated.
Take the image on the left, below — on the right it looks like there’s a grill or an oven, but there are things on the “appliance” that absolutely do not line up with our idea of an oven. The table in the background, too, is also completely misshapen, with chairs and wood that overlap one another.
Then, the image on the right — we have no idea what that is on the shelf on the right, but the most glaring thing to notice is the character’s eyes. They’re completely different shapes.
Publisher and developer Maksym Vysochanskyy trading as IndieGames3000 (yep, that’s the name) has a bit of a reputation for this kind of “asset flipping”. Just a few months ago, a Monster Hunter clone popped up on the PlayStation store. And if you search for them on PS Deals, you’ll spot other gems like TCG Card Shop Manager, Anime Girls Military Strike, and City Bus Driving Simulator.
In fact, we recognised a few of the games in the list above, and it just so happens that a few of them are also on the Switch eShop, albeit under different publisher names.
Rainbow Ascend: Anime Girls Go Up is published by BurleaGamesStudio. World War II City Rebirth Tycoon and Cyberpunk Speed Assassin are both available thanks to Tashlik. And SimulaMaker has brought us delights such as Pet Clinic Simulator and the aforementioned Anime Girls Military Strike.
We’re only scratching the surface here — Restaurant Tycoon Simulator uses different thumbnails but the screenshots are identical between the PSN page and the eShop one, for example. The sheer number of them is still surprising to us.
We’re sure Anime Life Sim won’t make its projected 2026 release date — that Monster Hunter clone was pulled from PSN, after all, and other examples such as that Last of Us copycat and the Unpacking clone have all been taken down. But, as a warning, just be careful out there folks.
Thank you again to Good Vibes Gaming for bringing this to our attention!
