Anarcute

You control a group of rioting animals who need to take control of the city. They automatically pick up objects that you can throw. Small objects are launched with RT, whereas larger (usually exploding) objects are thrown with LT.

Tapping A does basic damage to enemies which is fine for dispatching weaker enemies. Stronger enemies need to be weakened, stunned or wait for a gap in their attacks, otherwise you risk losing many animals.

If you pick up weapons, you can fire them by pressing and holding A, aiming then letting go of the button. The main guns are a laser weapon that fires in an arc, and a machine gun that fires a few rounds.
The game tells you that it works best with a controller so I didn’t try keyboard and mouse.

You can increase your crowd size by finding animals guarded by enemies, locked in cages, or strapped to the sides of buildings. As your crowd increases, you get access to more abilities. So you get a stunning stomp move, double dash, then massive crowds can destroy buildings. Conversely, losing animals removes these abilities. This means it can be impossible if you lose a lot of animals due to losing the abilities and melee strength.

You also unlock new animal types but this is just a visual variance and you can customise which animals are available.

Most levels give you the objective of taking a few guarded regions. Some parts of the city may be locked until you take some prerequisite regions. The levels generally take around 10 minutes to complete. You are given a grade based on time and how many animals you had remaining. There are few different spins on the levels; one level sees you controlling 1 animal and have to stealthily take down enemies, and another sees you escorting a bomb.

As you progress through the game, more enemy types are introduced and it gets rather tough when you encounter many types at once. So you may be dodging snipers, lasers, charging enemies etc and will find it hard to find gaps where you can attack. It’s especially tricky when there’s landmines.

There’s a few boss fights that are challenging. The final boss seemed unfair with the way it can often take out 15 animals at once, and you may be dodging moving obstacles and enemies when it happens. It took me many attempts to beat him, but there seemed to be a weird bug where it restarted the level rather than giving me the completion screen.

The music and art style is cute and colourful like Katamari Damacy, whereas the gameplay of controlling a crowd takes some inspiration from Pikmin. I did want to avoid the Pikmin comparisons because the core mechanic is different, but the death sound sounds very Pikmin-like, so they must have taken some inspiration.

I found it was one of those games where I would only play in short spurts so I would complete a couple of levels in each session. It takes around 6 hours to complete the game, and there’s scope for replaying levels to beat your scores, or unlocking all the animals. It’s a good game but a few levels can be frustrating due to the difficulty.