Upcoming anime survival horror shooter ANOMALITH is seeing unprecedented popularity outside of Japan, and developer FuRyu wants to know why

Last week, Japanese publisher FuRyu released a limited-time Steam demo for its upcoming tile ANOMALITH, scheduled to be available until August 7. A couple days into the demo period, and the developers have noticed that the game is seeing significant traction outside of Japan, both in terms of Steam Wishlists and social media following. Given this unexpected popularity, the developers are interested in finding out what has attracted English-speaking players to ANOMALITH.

First announced in May this year, ANOMALITH is a liminal space survival TPS that blends Showa-era nostalgia and The Backrooms-style horror. Anomaly Zones, a kind of natural calamity, suddenly start occurring sporadically across Japan. After her friend goes missing in an Anomaly Zone, the heroine Reona Minazuki, becomes a “Diver” for a government-backed agency known as the Anomaly Zone Countermeasures Office. Gameplay revolves around exploration and third-person gun action as Reona ventures into Anomaly Zones in search of her friend and awakens to strange abilities.

As FuRyu revealed on X, “almost all” recent followers of its bilingual ANOMALITH account have been from outside of Japan, with over 26% of its audience now being from the US. Additionally, as the developers tell us, the game’s Wishlist ratio on Steam has changed dramatically following the demo’s launch. During the period between its initial announcement on May 21 up to the start of the demo period on July 31, the majority of ANOMALITH’s Wishlists came from Japan. However, during the demo period, the highest number of Wishlists came from the US.

It’s clear that something about ANOMALITH has led to greater overseas traction that FuRyu is used to seeing with its games. Hoping to find out what that “something” is, FuRyu is asking players to tell them about where they discovered the game and what drew them to it.

The ANOMALITH demo will be available until August 7 on Steam. If you’re playing the demo and would like to report an issue to the developers, you can do so via this form.