Animalkind is a town-building game where, instead of playing an all-seeing god in the sky, you’re a cute four-legged animal piloting a mech. Yes — a mech. We checked out the demo to get a sniff of this cosy village builder. While it definitely piqued my curiosity, I’m keeping my paws on the brakes until the full launch.
As your chosen animal (I went with a Corgi, obviously), you have to rebuild an ancient mech under the guidance of a mysterious Portal plonked on the island. The Portal instructs you to reconstruct the FLOOF Codex, a knowledge bank of sorts that contains its understanding of the world. Pieces of the Codex are scattered across the island, and it’s up to you to track them down and return them. In exchange, you earn Bits, used to unlock recipes and items to help sustain island life. Very fetch.
The demo island introduces three residents who immediately rope you into lending a paw. We have Barney the owl, Rosie the seagull, and Sam the squirrel. Sam also moonlights as a shopkeeper, letting you buy and sell items. The residents also dish out quests and you can gradually build relationships with them. It’s all very neighbourly — no claws out here.
READ MORE: Video games your boss doesn’t want you to know about
Movement is split between controlling your animal and hopping into the mech. On foot, you’ve got a handy boost button that gives you the zoomies, making it easier to scoot around the island. The mech handles most of the heavy lifting including crafting, fishing, and foraging for materials. Activities like sniffing and digging are strictly paws-on affairs, as is chatting to residents. A standout quality-of-life feature is the ability to summon your mech to your side when needed. A small touch, but one that shows some smart, pragmatic thinking from the devs.
The demo is long enough to give a solid taste of what Animalkind is going for, though it ends a little abruptly — I assume I’d wrapped everything up, but there was no clear “demo complete” moment. Overall, it’s pretty rough around the edges, though not to the point of being unplayable. I ran into a few bugs: clunky mech movement across certain terrain, quests that didn’t always register as completed, and one instance where I had to reboot the game entirely after losing the ability to interact with anything. Thankfully, a quick restart sorted things out, but it’s definitely still in its puppy phase.
Steam may bill Animalkind as a town-builder, but in practice it plays far closer to Animal Crossing than Civilization. Coming off a serious Two Point Museum: Zooseum addiction, this felt like a gentler, less demanding sim — but also, crucially, less moreish. Whether that’s a blessing or a bit of a cat-astrophe will depend on what you’re after.
Animalkind’s demo is available now on PC via Steam. Early access is planned for Autumn 2026, with console details still to be unleashed.
