Ananta in 2026 | Release Date, Closed Beta, Outfits, PvP, Gacha and More – Everything You NEED To Know

In a gaming landscape packed with gacha-heavy mobile titles and sprawling but often empty open worlds, Ananta (formerly Project Mugen) stands out as NetEase’s ambitious attempt to blend the freedom of GTA, the traversal of Spider-Man, the relationship-building of Persona, and the chaotic urban life of Yakuza, all wrapped in a vibrant anime aesthetic.

At the heart of Ananta is Nova City, a dense urban environment roughly the size of Manhattan. Developers aren’t just focusing on empty scale – they’re taking the time to create something dense and interactive. The city operates on a 24/7 cycle with NPCs following realistic routines. Cause a traffic jam in one district, and it ripples across the map. Start a fight, and bystanders react like real people: fleeing, calling for help, or simply staring.
The philosophy is simple: if you see it, you should be able to interact with it. Open doors, play actual basketball mini-games, watch movies in theaters, snoop through NPCs’ phones, rearrange furniture while people are sitting, or just cause harmless mayhem (this is where we’re REALLY going to have fun.) You can punch or shoot civilians for chaos, but the game stops short of letting you kill them – unfortunately. Traversal makes use of Spider-Man swinging between skyscrapers, grinding rails, and zipping around the city with style. Co-op multiplayer lets friends join the fun seamlessly.
Updates won’t just drop new areas. Instead, the team plans to gradually increase urban density in existing zones – adding more shops, theaters, and activities, so the city feels like it’s genuinely growing and evolving over time.

You play as The Captain, the new leader of the Anti-Chaos Directorate (ACD), Nova City’s peacekeeping force. Both male and female Captain options are available at launch (I confirmed this at Gamescom 2025). Supposedly, dialogue and romance options will differ slightly depending on your choice of protagonist.

The biggest departure from typical free-to-play gacha games is the lack of character gacha. Every crew member joins through story progression or organic open-world encounters. You start solo and naturally recruit a full squad as you play, there are absolutely no banners, no pity pulls, no wallet pressure. Characters have their own lives, jobs, and personalities in the city until events pull them into your crew. Switching between them mid-gameplay is seamless (similar to GTA, with each character doing their own thing in city independently of you,) each bringing unique combat skills, traversal tools, and story perspectives. Ananta also boasts an exceptionally flexible fashion system that perfectly complements the crew-focused gameplay. Every character has access to the exact same pool of outfits – there are no character-exclusive clothes. Once you obtain an outfit (through free or premium cosmetic options), any crew member of the matching gender can wear it.

Most impressively, all clothing dynamically warps and morphs to perfectly fit each individual character’s unique body type, proportions, height, and build. Whether a character is tall and athletic, short and curvy, or anywhere in between, the outfit intelligently adapts so it always looks natural and tailored. This makes every cosmetic far more versatile and valuable, giving players massive creative freedom to style their entire squad exactly how they want. And you bet players will goon to this like none other.

PVP has been confirmed, and it sounds GTA-inspired with open-world flair. The game explicitly supports PVP alongside free building and exploration. Information publicly available online notes the following potential game modes:

Close-combat Battle Royale
Prop Hunt
FPS mode
Extraction Shooter
Escape/co-op modes
Free Battle (Minecraft-style Bed Wars)
Special skills fighting
Tactical Battle Royale
Racing
Sports-type events
Large-scale dungeon scoring
Traditional dungeon modes

This expands Ananta beyond pure story and sandbox exploration, into competitive multiplayer territory.

NetEase plans to keep polishing core gameplay and stockpiling long-term content. According to a mention on their website recently, the full Global release is being targeted for the end of Q3 2026 (July-September). Whether this happens, or is a placeholder date for investors remains to be seen.

An offline/closed technical test already took place in January 2026. Feedback from participants (including some streamers and TapTap users) was overwhelmingly positive. Community consensus points to more public or closed beta tests arriving soon – likely in the coming months – if the release in Q3 is to be believed, to stress-test servers and refine the experience.

Pre-registrations are open now on the official site, with cross-platform play confirmed.