Survival shooter ANOMALITH becomes FuRyu’s strongest Steam launch yet, with concurrent player count already topping past title peaks

FuRyu’s survival horror shooter ANOMALITH has achieved early success on Steam. The game peaked at 746 concurrent players within 24 hours of launch, outperforming the publisher’s other releases. At the time of writing, the game is rated “Mostly Positive” on the platform, with 71% of 76 reviews being positive.

For reference, past FuRyu’s titles like CRYSTAR and Kemono Teatime peaked at 221 and 416 concurrent players, respectively. ANOMALITH apears to be the studio’s most successful Steam release in terms of player turnout.

Initial reactions to ANOMALITH were fairly apprehensive. Not only was it FuRyu’s first foray into the third-person survival shooter genre, but past titles developed by the studio led some fans to become apprehensive about the core gameplay (which usually contrasts with FuRyu’s attention to detail when it comes to world-building, art, and storytelling).

As part of its efforts to break the stigma, FuRyu held pre-release playtest sessions with Japanese gaming outlets to collect feedback related to ANOMALITH’s exploration, combat, customization, and overall feel. The data would be used to improve a June closed demo test on Steam; the feedback from which would feed into July’s free demo. The demo would undergo several patches which added features such as new difficulty modes and mouse support before being made available in October for consoles.

In spite of the initial apprehension, interest in ANOMALITH was high enough that FuRyu started asking overseas fans why so many of them were putting the game on their Steam Wishlist and following its social media accounts. The game topped 120,000 Steam Wishlists just a few days before release.

ANOMALITH is a survival horror shooter set in an alternate version of Japan where the Showa era unfolded differently. You play as Reona Minazuki, a Diver of the government-backed agency known as the “Anomaly Zone Countermeasures Office.” Divers explore Anomaly Zones (naturally emerging hazardous areas) in search of data that might help them understand these calamities. During her first dive, Reona gains strange powers and emerges as the sole survivor of the mission. She must then discover the secrets of her powers and the Anomaly Zones, as well as find her missing friend.

ANOMALITH is available on Windows (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch 2. A free demo is available on all mentioned platforms.

Related: Anomalith writer Romeo Tanaka on why he opted for a cool, “Leon-style” heroine over a scaredy-cat protagonist in the upcoming survival shooter

Liminal space third-person shooter ANOMALITH draws inspiration from Resident Evil and Escape from Tarkov while embracing an anime girl retro Japanese worldview. We talk to the producer