Aniimo just launched as a free-to-play creature-catching open-world RPG, and it’s already pulling in a huge crowd, with around 90,000 people playing at the same time on release day. We took it for a spin on Steam Deck to see how it runs and what settings get you the smoothest experience.
Getting Aniimo running on Steam Deck
Aniimo doesn’t run cleanly out of the box on Deck. To get it working, we had to force a compatibility tool rather than use whatever runs by default, going with Proton 10. It’s also worth noting the game starts up with keyboard and mouse controls active instead of gamepad support, so you’ll want to head into the settings and switch that over to your controller before you start playing.
Best settings and performance
For the best experience on Steam Deck, we’d recommend dropping pretty much everything to Low. Even at the lowest settings, Aniimo still struggles to consistently hold 30 FPS, so there isn’t much headroom to spare. FSR is available and worth turning on, and it helps get things closer to 35-40 FPS at times, which is a decent result for a game this demanding on Deck hardware.
Aniimo also offers a choice between a Quality mode and a Performance mode. We went with Performance mode, and even with everything scaled back, the game still holds up reasonably well visually for a low-settings handheld experience.
Frame generation for smoother gameplay
To push things closer to 60 FPS, we used a third-party frame generation tool on top of Aniimo’s native settings. It’s our recommended way to play if you want to get above that 30 FPS ceiling, and the latency hit is minimal, with barely any noticeable ghosting during fast movement or battles. Aniimo also supports adaptive frame generation, which can push things even higher when paired with the same frame gen setup, giving you another option if you want to chase a smoother frame rate.
First impressions
Beyond performance, Aniimo has a lot going on. There’s a real sense of a world to explore, the story hooks you in early, and the gameplay loop of catching, Twining with, and battling creatures is genuinely catchy. It’s easy to see comparisons to Palworld and Pokémon here, and if you’re a fan of either, this is very much worth checking out. Given how many people jumped in on day one, it’s clear we’re not the only ones who think so.
We’re planning to keep playing and see how Aniimo develops from here, but for a free launch on Steam Deck, it’s already a solid one to add to your library.
