For me, one of the best surprises at today’s Xbox showcase was the game Vivarium, a new slice-of-life game that looks like a gorgeous early ’90s anime.
This is so dang cute! From what I can piece together here, this is a game about a world condensed inside an abandoned terrarium, and in that world lives a child named Jenny in a rural town filled with nature. Jenny does a lot of exploring in and around the town, and finds a tree sprout that she’s hoping will grow quickly. There are adorable anthropomorphic animal townspeople, seemingly some sort of farming and crafting system, and also maybe some sort of mystery to solve?
But what I love about it is the style: it really does look like an anime, not just in the animation style but also in the way it’s presented, with dialogue displayed as if it’s subtitles and very little in the way of UI to be seen in the trailer. beyond a clock in the top-right that’s giving Animal Crossing. It’s hard to tell here, but it even seems like there’s a lot of attention paid to the way little animated snippets appear in between gameplay that make it look like you’re watching a slice-of-life anime about a kid on summer vacation.
We’ve got some time to wait before we can really sink into Vivarium, as it’s not coming until 2027. It’ll be on Xbox and PC when it does.