HoYoverse games are certainly not the first that wanted to adapt the anime style. Yet, we can recognize that they are one of the most popular games today. Back in the day, Genshin Impact took too much inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild. However, HoYoverse managed to differentiate itself, making its story and world unique with each new update. With time and despite everything, Genshin Impact laid the foundations for the birth of many more games with worlds and graphics that were so familiar. There are so many titles with a similar style to HoYoverse’s that we could say that there is a genre of video games, the Genshinlike.
Of course, the journey was not easy; one of the first titles of miHoYoYo was FlyMe2theMoon, a Flappy Bird clone with Kiana Kaslana. Then, with Houkai Gakuen (Zombiegal Kawaii) and Houkai Gakuen 2 (Guns Girl Z), the company took its first steps toward one of its deepest games, Honkai Impact 3rd. However, although HI3 stayed on the market longer than the previous titles, it wasn’t until Genshin Impact that HoYoverse achieved its peak of fame and fortune. Obviously, Genshin Impact has significant flaws, plus the anime or gacha installments were already popular, at least in Asia, but it was the first to fully conquer the West.
HoYoverse Started a Trend That Will Not Stop
It’s already common that every time a gacha anime game is about to be released, it is called the “Genshin Killer,” but without HoYoverse, we wouldn’t have seen other gachas full of waifus like Tower of Fantasy. Yet, not many of the ones that came along with The Traveler archived to stay. What is true is that more Genshinlike games took advantage of this time to improve; of course, HoYoverse has been the one who most exploited its own fame. That’s why Honkai Star Rail and Zenless Zone Zero arrived. Other companies have also used it to their advantage, like Kuro Games with Wuthering Waves, which stands out in dynamic combat and darker graphics.
More recently, franchises with longer careers have tried to take the fame of the HoYoverse style for their own stories. One example is Nikki, which started as a mobile game and grew over a decade into a series of four more games. Well, until 2024, when Infold used Genshinlike aspects to merge them into its dress-up gameplay in Infinity Nikki. Something like Azure Lane wants to replicate in its new Azur Promilia, making an open world full of unique characters, mostly of them being waifus. Or like with Dungeon & Fighter, a 2D side-scrolling action game whose company recently announced ARAD, another anime action open world.
It remains to be seen if these titles or other independent anime gachas like Project Mugen or Unending Dawn, which promises to be a Genshin Impact combined with a Soulslike, gain a good fanbase. Or if they fly too close to the sun in a market over-saturated with this genre. The most important thing is that developers know how to use their cards well and not just end up feeling like a copycat.
