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Ever since its reveal, Ananta – formerly Project Mugen – and its vision of a massive open world filled with enemies to fight, cars to drive, and cafes to visit with allies have been on players' minds due to its large scope. It's a new free-to-play open-world action-RPG in the vein of Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves. Still, it's also a life-sim-style game that puts a keen focus on allowing players to live out a fantasy life with its cast of energetic and cool characters who fight crime and take in the sights of the city.
During the Tokyo Game Show 2025, I had the opportunity to play an early demo of Ananta, exploring the open world and completing various side missions with the playable characters. It's a surprisingly dense game that feels like the real deal, with its ambitious plans for an open-world action-RPG life sim that bears a strong resemblance to anime-GTA. However, it also leans into the character's individual stories and the slice-of-life moments they'll be able to get caught up in. The game is doing a lot, but I also found it to be quite endearing, and it was also pretty fun to play.
At TGS, I gained insight from producer Ash Qi of developer Naked Rain, who explained that, in addition to getting players into the open world, Ananta is all about letting players take on the different personas of each character.
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.
When Project Mugen was first revealed, it captured the attention of many players with its impressive scale and depth of activity within the open world. Since the initial reveal, has the game's vision been updated to fit the new title and current scope?
Ever since we began development, our vision has remained the same, regardless of the name change from Project Mugen to Ananta. We've set out to create a game that surpasses players' imaginations by offering an open-world experience where they can live out a virtual, fantasy life within our game. It is all about being able to inhabit the lives of these characters and take on challenges.
We are trying to create different personas, not just simple characters to play as. When you switch out to another character, you will see how their lives are progressing so far, and then you can pick things up from there. We are trying to achieve a design that feels unique compared to other RPGs, and to capture some of the imagination from our childhood, with cities being vast spaces where different people and professions coexist. That's why we picked the urban setting – as opposed to the familiar fantasy setting – because a city as a setting is so relatable [to players].
Playing the game at TGS, I really got a sense of the variety of activities in the game. You can go to cafes, go to the gym, and even play sports on the side. Additionally, you have the main story missions with Chenxiu, and I also completed a delivery mission with Taffy, which was a very comedic activity that I found endearing. What can you say about the level of variety within the game at this time? How do you plan to keep things interesting for players?
The most important thing for us was the variety of activities in Ananta, which was the most vital part of our game development. Our target was to create a distinct character with their own storylines, life, and potential changes that could be introduced in the future – but it was also important to make each character feel special and have their place in the world. I believe we are the only developer currently creating this much variety of content on this scale of the game we have now. What we're trying to do is offer many surprises for players that exceed their expectations, whether it's characters having their own lives or how you can engage with the environment through the characters.
The cast of characters is an interesting bunch, and I liked that each character felt distinctly different from the others in terms of playstyle, personality, and the type of activities they engage in. What was your approach for building out the roster?
Many of the characters in the game could be protagonists in their own game, and we're trying to create a large-scale storyline that will evolve, giving the characters focus, which will introduce new characters and cities to explore. Take Marvel as an example; there are many different heroes and champions in The Avengers. However, characters like Captain America and Spider-Man have their own storylines, separate from the larger plot, and they are the protagonists of their own stories, each with their unique missions. That's how we see our approach to keeping these characters in focus. We're also developing a feature that allows multiple characters to team up and fight other antagonists.
We consider the world of Ananta to be like a stage, and every character will be on stage for their story, which will reveal their personality and the kind of adventures they will have. For Ananta, we were greatly inspired by anime and movies, and what we really want to create is an interactive anime for players, which has been very important to us.
Ever since its reveal, Ananta – formerly Project Mugen – and its vision of a massive open world filled with enemies to fight, cars to drive, and cafes to visit with allies have been on players' minds due to its large scope. It's a new free-to-play open-world action-RPG in the vein of Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves. Still, it's also a life-sim-style game that puts a keen focus on allowing players to live out a fantasy life with its cast of energetic and cool characters who fight crime and take in the sights of the city.
During the Tokyo Game Show 2025, I had the opportunity to play an early demo of Ananta, exploring the open world and completing various side missions with the playable characters. It's a surprisingly dense game that feels like the real deal, with its ambitious plans for an open-world action-RPG life sim that bears a strong resemblance to anime-GTA. However, it also leans into the character's individual stories and the slice-of-life moments they'll be able to get caught up in. The game is doing a lot, but I also found it to be quite endearing, and it was also pretty fun to play.
At TGS, I gained insight from producer Ash Qi of developer Naked Rain, who explained that, in addition to getting players into the open world, Ananta is all about letting players take on the different personas of each character.
Editor's Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.
When Project Mugen was first revealed, it captured the attention of many players with its impressive scale and depth of activity within the open world. Since the initial reveal, has the game's vision been updated to fit the new title and current scope?
Ever since we began development, our vision has remained the same, regardless of the name change from Project Mugen to Ananta. We've set out to create a game that surpasses players' imaginations by offering an open-world experience where they can live out a virtual, fantasy life within our game. It is all about being able to inhabit the lives of these characters and take on challenges.
We are trying to create different personas, not just simple characters to play as. When you switch out to another character, you will see how their lives are progressing so far, and then you can pick things up from there. We are trying to achieve a design that feels unique compared to other RPGs, and to capture some of the imagination from our childhood, with cities being vast spaces where different people and professions coexist. That's why we picked the urban setting – as opposed to the familiar fantasy setting – because a city as a setting is so relatable [to players].
Playing the game at TGS, I really got a sense of the variety of activities in the game. You can go to cafes, go to the gym, and even play sports on the side. Additionally, you have the main story missions with Chenxiu, and I also completed a delivery mission with Taffy, which was a very comedic activity that I found endearing. What can you say about the level of variety within the game at this time? How do you plan to keep things interesting for players?
The most important thing for us was the variety of activities in Ananta, which was the most vital part of our game development. Our target was to create a distinct character with their own storylines, life, and potential changes that could be introduced in the future – but it was also important to make each character feel special and have their place in the world. I believe we are the only developer currently creating this much variety of content on this scale of the game we have now. What we're trying to do is offer many surprises for players that exceed their expectations, whether it's characters having their own lives or how you can engage with the environment through the characters.
The cast of characters is an interesting bunch, and I liked that each character felt distinctly different from the others in terms of playstyle, personality, and the type of activities they engage in. What was your approach for building out the roster?
Many of the characters in the game could be protagonists in their own game, and we're trying to create a large-scale storyline that will evolve, giving the characters focus, which will introduce new characters and cities to explore. Take Marvel as an example; there are many different heroes and champions in The Avengers. However, characters like Captain America and Spider-Man have their own storylines, separate from the larger plot, and they are the protagonists of their own stories, each with their unique missions. That's how we see our approach to keeping these characters in focus. We're also developing a feature that allows multiple characters to team up and fight other antagonists.
We consider the world of Ananta to be like a stage, and every character will be on stage for their story, which will reveal their personality and the kind of adventures they will have. For Ananta, we were greatly inspired by anime and movies, and what we really want to create is an interactive anime for players, which has been very important to us.
