ANOMALITH Beginner’s Guide: Difficulty, Weapons and First Steps

ANOMALITH is a single-player action RPG built around a dive-and-extract loop: you send 17-year-old Reona Minazuki into an Anomaly Zone, fight the creatures the game calls Anomalies, choose what to carry out and extract before your ammunition runs dry. It launched on October 28, 2026 on PC, PlayStation and Switch 2. Furyu’s November 6 patch says the game still is not at the stability level the developer wants, so pick an easier difficulty, treat ammunition as your clock and read what changed before your first dive.

• One player, no co-op. Steam lists ANOMALITH as single-player, so there is no online multiplayer, no cross-play and no cross-save between platforms.
• $49.99 to start. The Standard Edition is $49.99 on Steam, PlayStation and Switch 2. The Digital Deluxe Edition is $69.99 on PlayStation and Switch 2.
• Difficulty is adjustable. Steam lists adjustable difficulty among the game’s features, and Furyu added a Survival difficulty in its September 28 demo update.
• Steam Deck: Playable. Valve’s compatibility report marks it Playable, with one warning: the interface text is not legible at default settings.
• The launch build was patched on November 6. That update fixed bugs that could block progress, added an Unequip button and rebalanced three enemies.

What is ANOMALITH?

The story on the official site is short and strange. Japan is in the year 20██, and Anomaly Zones appear without warning. An Anomaly Zone is one of those impossible spaces, and a Dive is a single trip into one. When 17-year-old Reona Minazuki and her best friend Arisa Kato are caught in one while visiting a mall, the two are separated. Reona escapes, joins the government-backed Anomaly Zone Countermeasures Office as a Diver and goes back in to find her friend.

The cast is small and specific: Yuiga Koda is the Operator who supports Reona from the sidelines, Kyoka Sudo founded the Office, Imari Fushimi researches the objects the Zones produce and May Hibiya guards them. The store page credits the scenario to Romeo Tanaka, character design to MON and the music to Yuka Kitamura. It is a shooter wrapped around a story about a person walking into somewhere terrible on purpose. Our ANOMALITH release-time page has the launch moment, and the game page collects everything we have run.

How does a run work?

The official system summary on the Steam page is three words: Dive, Retrieve, Return. Inside a Zone you have no choice but to fight Anomalies, and the page is blunt about the two things that decide a run. Manage your ammunition. Carefully select what you retrieve as you make your way to extraction.

That is the whole loop in one sentence, and it changes how you read every room. The release calendar has every other launch around it if you are planning a backlog. Anomalies drop materials, materials become Anomalous Objects, and those objects are what you use to develop and upgrade weapons and gear. The page also says that selecting the right weapon for the situation is key to survival, so a full loadout is not automatically a better one. You can change Reona’s outfit without touching her stats, which makes the cosmetics safe to ignore.

Combat is not only shooting. The page describes Anomalization Skills as offensive and defensive tools you use to control the flow of a fight, and Furyu’s patch notes name one of them: Decoy, a defensive skill that could become unusable under certain conditions until the November 6 build fixed it.

Which difficulty should you pick?

Start below the setting you would normally choose, because the fights are about managing resources, not out-gunning a boss. Steam lists adjustable difficulty among ANOMALITH’s features, and Furyu’s September 28 demo update added a Survival difficulty, so the game has more than one setting on the menu. The store page does not publish the full list of difficulty names, so the in-game menu is the place to see them.

If you have never played a shooter with an extraction rhythm, the easier settings are how you learn that ammunition is the real timer. Run dry in a Zone and the run is over, no matter how well the fight is going.

What did the November 6 patch change?

Furyu’s own update, titled “Apology for Game Issues Update Details and Next Steps”, is the most useful thing a new player can read, because the developer says plainly that the launch build had problems. The notes list new features, a long set of bug fixes and a small balance pass:

• New features: an Unequip button for gun attachments and Artifacts in the Customization menu, plus Artifact information on the Sell and Storage screens and on the vending-machine conversion menu.
• Important fixes: loading during map transitions and retries, a drone that could fail to appear after a retry, a bug that could stop progress during item transfers through the Portal, the Decoy skill becoming unusable, and a mouse cursor that stayed offset on some monitors. Furyu lists them one by one, such as the Portal transfer bug that could stop your progress.
• Balance adjustments: Cyclops, Hanging Head and Igarami were all rebalanced.

The update also says the team “has not yet reached a level of stability that allows everyone to enjoy the game with confidence”. That is Furyu talking about its own game, and it is the reason to read the patch notes before you buy, not after you lose a run to a Portal bug.

Is your PC ready for it?

The Steam store page lists these requirements, and they are modest for a 40 GB install:

Is ANOMALITH on Steam Deck?

Valve’s compatibility report rates ANOMALITH Playable on Steam Deck. The same report notes that the interface text is not legible at default settings, while the default controller configuration, the on-device glyphs and the default performance check all pass, and the SteamOS startup test passes.

That text warning is the one to plan around. ANOMALITH lists adjustable text size, camera comfort, color alternatives, custom volume controls and subtitle options on Steam, so you have room to make the interface readable before you start pulling triggers.

Does ANOMALITH have co-op or cross-play?

No, on every count, and Steam’s feature list is the proof: single-player, Steam Achievements, full controller support, Steam Cloud and adjustable difficulty, with no multiplayer tags. There is no online mode to bridge, so there is no cross-play, and no cross-save either. Steam Cloud syncs a save between PCs on the same account, which is a convenience, not a progression system.

Is ANOMALITH on PlayStation Plus?

Not on PlayStation Plus. Sony’s own listing shows the Standard Edition at $49.99, the Digital Deluxe Edition at $69.99 and a free demo, with no subscription tier attached to either edition. If you want to play it on PS5, you buy it.

Which edition should you buy?

Most players should buy the Standard Edition at $49.99. The Digital Deluxe is $69.99 and its extras are mostly for people who like the game’s art and sound, or who want the three extra weapons in the first week.

On PC, Steam does not list a Digital Deluxe package for ANOMALITH. It sells the game at $49.99 and the pieces on their own: the Digital Art Book for $8.99, the Digital Select Mini-Soundtrack for $6.99 and the Anomaly Zone Countermeasures Office Set for $10.99. Buy the parts and you pay $26.97 for those three items, which is $6.97 more than the $20 that the console Digital Deluxe adds on top of the base game.

One deadline to know about. The Steam page lists the early-purchase bonus as the Lost Property Control Organization collaboration side mission, a costume set, the probe skin T-6407J and a Development Materials set, with an availability period of October 29, 2026 to November 11, 2026 (JST), and adds that those bonuses may become available separately at a later date. Furyu’s launch-sale announcement also set a 10% Steam discount through November 11, and Steam’s page now lists the full $49.99, so check the live price before you buy. Our full editions breakdown has the details side by side.

Your first session, step by step

1. Pick a difficulty below your usual one. Adjustable difficulty and a Survival mode are both confirmed by Furyu, and the resource loop punishes greed more than it punishes hesitation.
2. Read the November 6 patch notes first. They list the bugs that could block your progress and the three enemies that were rebalanced under you.
3. Decide what a “full” run means before you enter. The official system text tells you to select carefully what you retrieve, so bring a plan and stick to it.
4. Use the defensive skills. Decoy is named in the patch notes, and the system page calls for offensive and defensive Anomalization Skills used together to control a fight.
5. Bank the upgrades. Anomalous Objects are what develop and upgrade weapons and gears, so collecting them is the progression loop, not a side errand.
6. Check the accessibility options before the first Zone. Adjustable text size, camera comfort, color alternatives, custom volume controls and subtitle options are all listed on Steam.

Furyu’s public patch notes since the demo tell a clearer story than the marketing did, and our demo story tracks what the game looked like before launch. The August 4 and September 28 demo builds spent their time on input and comfort, adding mouse support, key rebinding, healing-item shortcuts and the Survival difficulty. The November 6 launch build spent itself on stability instead, with loading fixes, the Portal transfer bug that could stop progress, and a defensive skill that could break. Three enemies were rebalanced in the same update. That is what a launch build still being tuned looks like from the inside. So the practical version of this guide is short. ANOMALITH has plenty of content and a small install, but buying it today means buying a game its own developer says has not reached the stability it wants. Reading Furyu’s patch notes before each session is the closest thing to a strategy guide the developer has published.

Correction (November 11, 2026): We originally said the separate Steam extras came to $25.98; they add up to $26.97.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report