Ananta estimated release date and gameplay; All you need to know and more

• Ananta is the upcoming open-world RPG that's taking gaming by storm
• But what is there, besides the hype, to know about this upcoming NetEase-backed project?
• We dig into the background, gameplay and more, and try to nail down a release date

Ever since Genshin Impact first blew the mobile open-world RPG genre wide open, the old wisdom that you couldn’t put anything “big” on mobile has been pretty conclusively discarded. Now, even MiHoYo themselves are racing to release newer, bigger and flashier releases. But there’s a new kid on the block that may push the genre to a new epoch.

Yes, today we’re talking about Ananta, the vast open-world RPG and its cityscape-swinging, highway rubber-burning, shoot ‘em up, beat ‘em up and zap ‘em up gameplay. Coming to us from NetEase and Naked Rain, Ananta looks like their latest attempt to take the gaming world by storm.

Ananta has already made headlines with snapshots of its gameplay and ambitious scale. So, I’ve decided to dig through what we have available and sift the hype from the fact; alongside some additional clues about upcoming release dates and other info. So, read on and find out more about what Ananta is all about.

City Living

Originally known as Project Mugen - no, not the fighting game emulator - The basic gist of Ananta is that you’ll play a member of the A.C.D. (Anti-Chaos Directorate), a paramilitary organisation devoted to combatting all sorts of bizarre phenomena caused by capital-C Chaos. As you explore Nova City, you’ll come across all kinds of weird and dangerous happenings ranging from bloodthirsty cars to packs of sentient toilets. It shouldn’t surprise you that Ananta is taking just a slightly irreverent tone.

As with many others in the open-world RPG genre, there are plenty of side activities packed into Ananta that we’ve seen in the announcement trailer and teased on their social media. Be that basketball, clubbing, and darts, among others.

Combat-wise there’s seemingly a focus on real-time battles and plenty of mechanics cribbed from other games. Be that high-speed gunplay on the highway, using weird and varied abilities to take out enemies or a few sneaky stealth parkour sequences where the environment is used against opponents.

Parkour!

Perhaps the most interesting feature that Ananta promises is its massive open world. Now, as I wrote before, Genshin Impact does take the cake currently when it comes to exploring massive open spaces. However, many of these are instanced and there’s plenty of empty space between points of interest to help smooth the technical limitations.

In contrast, Ananta’s announcement trailer and gameplay snippets all showcase a continuous open world akin to something such as Grand Theft Auto or Just Cause. Add onto that the obviously Spider-Man-inspired movement, driving and more, and there’s good reason this has captured the attention of fans. Developer Naked Rain has explained how they coined the 3C system to allow for swinging between buildings, driving and parkour navigation across vast urban environments, even with swimming!

All of this is, of course, contingent on this all being a continuous open world to explore with minimal if any loading.

Now, initially, I intended to do a bit of hype-sifting and mention that this may not necessarily live up to expectations. However, as it turns out the developers have anticipated the challenges this ambitious project poses, and one of if not the biggest innovations showcased in the behind-the-scenes interviews below is that Nova City will benefit from procedural generation to smooth the technical demands of a massive urban cityscape on mobile.

Procedural generation is as old as time immemorial when it comes to gaming, and it’s also been used to allow for massive open environments with minimal loading time. Not only that but this also helps with integrating a number of indoor environments in-game which we can see in the trailer.

Two-fisted action

Furthering my comparisons to other releases, it seems as if there’s more than a shade of Sega’s Yakuza games to Ananta’s combat. Destructive fixtures and fittings, as well as a variety of randomly strewn objects, can either be destroyed or turned on your enemies.

Similar to this, the brawling up-close action of Ananta’s combat looks to be all about the beat-’em-up action. Although in other clips we do see that aforementioned shooting out of a car, and given that it wouldn’t be a stretch to see some gunplay further down the line.

In terms of actually fighting we know that our primary player character will be the aforementioned agent, but we also get the chance to see plenty of other characters we’ll encounter. And it seems similar to Genshin Impact that we’ll be able to switch between these characters to use their own distinctive abilities in battle.

Estimated release date for Ananta

Now, the more important info such as when exactly we can expect Ananta to release and on what platform. Well, you’ll be glad to know pre-registration is open right now on the official website, although that doesn’t say much about when we can actually expect it, which is something developer Naked Rain has seemingly been a bit cagey about. Although given the massive success of Marvel Rivals, another major NetEase release that’s garnered huge attention, I’m not surprised they’re waiting for that hype storm to die down a bit first.

But, further to the Genshin Impact comparisons earlier, I think we can hazard a guess as to a potential release window. Genshin Impact was first announced way back in June 2019 at E3 (and hoo boy, doesn’t that date it?) and released the following year in September; so with that in mind and considering that Project Mugen itself was revealed back in 2023 with its first teaser trailer then a 2025 release date is certainly looking increasingly likely. Of course, since the game didn't have a beta test, we are estimating that the official release date for Ananta will be at the end of 2025.

Meanwhile, while official sources are a bit cagey about it, it appears that virtually every outlet is in agreement that Ananta will hit both consoles, PC and both iOS and Android. So no matter what you play on you’ll still have an option to dive in.