Systems
ANANTA Mini-Games and City Life
Between incidents, ANANTA expects you to live in the city. Ring toss, tea roasting, street chess, a film set, a cat cafe: the quiet half of the game is not filler, it is how Chongxiao earns its identity. It is not a dating simulator, despite what the coverage says.
| Confirmed mini-games | Ring toss, balloon shooting, jianzi, tea roasting, tea picking, film-set martial arts, street chess, massage, livestreaming, market shopping |
|---|---|
| Where they appear | Chongxiao's village market, lake district, and street stalls |
| DualSense use | Adaptive trigger resistance for ring toss; gyroscope for tea roasting |
| Social activities | Cafes, galleries, nightclub and livehouse, festivals, cat cafe |
| Relationship system | Bonding scenes, not a romance simulator |
| Rewards | Undisclosed |
| Photo mode | Unconfirmed |
What is confirmed
Testers at Cologne played or watched a wide spread of activities: ring toss, balloon shooting, jianzi, tea roasting and tea picking, acting in a martial-arts film scene, street chess, massage, livestreaming, and market shopping. These are not menu abstractions; they are short playable interactions placed in the world.
The list shows where the budget went. Chongxiao is not a second combat map; it is a place with a street culture, and the mini-games prove it. Nova City has its own leisure layer, but the demo's most memorable activities were all in the older city.
Where they live
Most of what testers saw sits in Longqi Village and the surrounding Chongxiao streets: market stalls, tea houses, a film set, roadside game booths. The village has ordinary street life around them too: vendors, three-wheeled carts, and residents who react when a fight breaks out nearby.
The production team describes the intent as a living place, not a themed set. Whether that becomes a full NPC schedule system is unknown, but the demo showed NPCs with their own positions and small reactions, more than static scenery.
An exploration session in the Chongxiao outskirts added interactive props around those stalls: a Daoist statue you can approach, a three-wheeled cart you can drive, ring-toss and shooting booths, a lottery stand, a stone mortar for pounding rice cakes, and delivery robots crossing the alleys. Most have no score screen. They are world interactions, not mini-games, and that is what makes the village read as inhabited rather than staged.
The controller is part of the activity
On PS5, the DualSense does more here than in combat. Ring toss uses adaptive trigger resistance to simulate the throw, and tea roasting uses the gyroscope. The producer has also said the game will support PS5 Pro, which is a hardware statement, not a content one.
On PC, DualSense support is confirmed over USB. Whether the adaptive trigger and gyro features carry across is unstated, so do not buy a controller for these mini-games on the strength of a demo report.
Longqi Village is the point
Chongxiao's design is built on the idea that a place is defined by its routines, not its landmarks. Testers repeatedly noted modern details mixed into the old streets: rooftop solar panels, solar water heaters, shared power banks, red three-wheeled carts. The village is meant to feel contemporary, not preserved.
For exploration, that points to a different collectible logic from Nova City. Instead of hunting glowing markers on rooftops, you may need to know which street is active at which hour. No official time-of-day system has been announced, so treat that as a design direction, not a confirmed mechanic.
Bonding scenes are not a dating sim
Official material confirms date-style scripted scenes, cafes and galleries, a nightclub and livehouse, festivals, and a cat cafe. Community coverage often turns this into a romance system. The more accurate description is a bonding or affinity layer: the Captain takes part in personal scenes with characters, and those scenes build a relationship without a confirmed romance loop.
Four things remain unpublished: whether affinity grants any combat or traversal benefit, which characters are eligible, whether the scenes branch or converge, and whether a romance ending exists. Named characters with personal arcs include Taffy, Bansy, Mechanika Meg, Lykaia, and Seymour, but that lists who has story hooks, not who is romanceable.
The unknowns worth marking
No photo mode is confirmed. A single low-quality article mentions one, and a driver-level screenshot shortcut is not a game feature. Assume you can capture screenshots and nothing more until the release build shows otherwise.
Mini-game rewards are also unpublished. They may grant currency, items, or nothing beyond the activity. A guide that lists exact payouts is guessing.
Unconfirmed
Mini-game rewards, photo mode, the depth of the bonding system, NPC schedules, and whether any of these activities feed fame or identity progress. The activities themselves are confirmed from the demo.
The short version
ANANTA wants you to spend time in its streets, and Chongxiao is where that pays off. Play the stalls, roast the tea, and ignore anyone selling you a romance route before the game has shipped.