Project Mugen Is Ananta: The Full History From the 2023 Reveal to the 15 January 2027 Release

Project Mugen is Ananta: NetEase revealed the game as Project Mugen at Gamescom 2023, renamed it Ananta on 29 November 2024, and it launches worldwide on 15 January 2027 on PC, PS5, iOS and Android. It was never cancelled. The working title went; the city, the Captain and the free-to-play model stayed.

This page dates every step from the first trailer to launch day, with a source for each, then sets out what the game has become, through the breakdown Stix published on 30 September 2026 after playing it at Tokyo Game Show 2025 and Gamescom 2026. What NetEase confirmed, what the press or the community reported, and what Stix reads into it are kept apart. Every screenshot is pre-release footage from his video, with its timestamp.

What happened to Project Mugen?

It got a real name. Project Mugen was the working title NetEase Games and the developer Naked Rain, a studio under Thunder Fire, used from the August 2023 reveal until 29 November 2024, when a teaser announced the final one. In Japan the game is sold as 無限大 ANANTA, which keeps the old word for infinity inside the new title, as Dengeki Online reported on the day.

If you pre-registered for Project Mugen in 2023, it is the same game. You still play the Captain of the ACD, the Anti-Chaos Directorate in Stix’s words at 1:29, the setting is still Nova City, and there is still no character gacha.

When was Project Mugen announced? The timeline, 2023 to 2027

Project Mugen was announced on 23 August 2023, during Gamescom, with a debut trailer and pre-registration opening the same day. Stix also places the reveal at Gamescom 2023 (0:52). Every dated step since:

Date	What happened	Status
23 August 2023	Revealed as Project Mugen at Gamescom 2023, listed for PS5, PS4, PC, iOS, Android and cloud	Confirmed (Gematsu)
October 2023	Lead producer Ash Qi: multiplayer components, “a strong focus on solo play”, not an MMORPG	Confirmed (interview)
29 November 2024	Teaser renames the game Ananta, 無限大 ANANTA in Japan	Confirmed (Dengeki Online)
5 December 2024	First full trailer under the new name; tests announced for 2025	Confirmed (TheSixthAxis)
3 and 4 January 2025	Offline technical test in Hangzhou, on PC, for selected players	Confirmed
September 2025	Tokyo Game Show demo; producer Ash confirms a female Captain for launch to Famitsu	Confirmed
16 to 20 January 2026	Closed beta in China on PC	Reported by the community only
25 August 2026	Release date and a second city, Lingyun City in Chongxiao, shown at Gamescom Opening Night Live	Confirmed
15 January 2027	Worldwide launch on PC, PS5, iOS and Android, free-to-play	Confirmed

Two things changed besides the name. PlayStation 4 was on the 2023 list and still on the platforms Dengeki gave at the rename, and it is not among the launch platforms announced in August 2026. And one city became two. The rest of the 2023 pitch survived.

Why was Project Mugen renamed Ananta? The old name explained

Ananta’s previous name was Project Mugen, and the two mean nearly the same thing. Mugen is Japanese for infinite, and Ananta, a Sanskrit word, means endless, as Stix notes at 1:25. The Japanese title, 無限大, is the everyday Japanese word for infinity.

NetEase has never given a longer reason. We found no official statement tying the rename to trademarks, regions or a change of direction, so articles that offer one are guessing. What the record shows: a new Japanese X account, @Ananta_JP, opened with the teaser on 29 November 2024, and the first trailer as Ananta followed on 5 December.

Project Mugen release date: 15 January 2027

Project Mugen, now Ananta, comes out on 15 January 2027 worldwide. NetEase gave the date at Gamescom Opening Night Live on 25 August 2026, Stix recalls at 1:00, for PC, PlayStation 5, iOS and Android. No Xbox or Switch version is announced. Our release date page keeps the platform details, and our Gamescom gameplay previews cover the show.

So is Project Mugen cancelled? No. Pre-registration is open on every storefront (platforms and rewards), and Stix says at 1:20 that more than 20 million players have signed up. The site’s last checked figure, at the Gamescom announcement, was 17 million, so his is newer and unverified. He also gives Chinese, English and Japanese as launch languages and says the game runs on Unity; neither is on the official site yet.

Was there a Project Mugen beta? Confirmed and reported tests

One test is confirmed: an offline technical test in Hangzhou, the studio’s home city, on 3 and 4 January 2025, on PC, for invited players. A closed beta in China from 16 to 20 January 2026, with the Captain, Taffy, Richie and Seymour reported as playable, appears only on fan sites. NetEase never announced it, so we list it as reported.

No global beta is announced before launch; the gameplay previews article has the director’s reasons. That leaves the press demos as the main hands-on source. Stix played the Tokyo Game Show 2025 build and the Gamescom 2026 one, and the rest of this page follows his twelve-chapter breakdown of what the game now is.

Two cities at launch: Nova City and Chongxiao

Ananta launches with two cities, not one. Stix, at 1:41, describes Nova City as the neon coastal hub, “Tokyo Manhattan coded”, with beaches, amusement parks and a vertical skyline. Until Gamescom 2026 it was the only city anyone expected, because it was the only one Project Mugen ever showed.

The second is the Captain’s hometown. Stix calls it Chongxiao and describes temples, tea fields, old streets and a long list of minigames (1:57); it was the focus of the Gamescom demo he played. The official naming differs slightly: Chongxiao is the region and Lingyun City the city in it, drawing on Shanghai, Hangzhou and Tokyo according to NetEase. Stix says Hangzhou and Shanghai. The footage supports both.

Can you play a female Captain in Ananta?

Yes. You choose the Captain’s gender and name at the start, Stix says at 1:34, which matches what producer Ash told Famitsu in September 2025 and restated at Gamescom 2026. The Captain’s page has what is official about the role. The other leads on the official site are Taffy, Richie, Seymour, Shi Ye and Yinglong.

Traversal and vehicles: what Stix saw in the demos

Movement is what Project Mugen led with in 2023, and Stix says it holds up. The Captain swings freely, wall-runs and wall-climbs, “much like Spider-Man or Venom or even Prototype” (2:28). Two of his details matter more than the comparison: there is no stamina limit on basic traversal, so you can climb anything, and no traversal mechanic is locked behind a paid character (2:36).

The vehicle list is long. For Nova City Stix names cars, motorcycles, helicopters, yachts and speedboats, plus swimming, subways, taxis, buses, and Taffy’s mallet that turns into a bike (2:51). Gamescom added Chongxiao’s set: a flying car in the Opening Night Live trailer, hang gliders, wingsuits, hover bikes, bicycles, electric scooters, skateboards and more boats (3:07). He sees the flying cars and gliders opening a vertical layer the 2023 game did not have.

How does combat work in Ananta?

It is a real-time brawler, precise rather than flashy in Stix’s words (3:29): attack, block, counter, vault, parry. Enemies have a health bar and a stamina bar, and breaking the stamina bar opens an environmental finisher. “The city itself is effectively a weapon,” he says at 3:46, listing trash cans, golf clubs, rackets, guitars, dumpsters and cars.

His comparisons are Sleeping Dogs for the street fighting and the Arkham games for the counters, with a GTA-style weapon wheel of pistols, rifles, launchers, flamethrowers and grenades on top (3:56). You can disarm enemies and use their weapons, and collapse platforms. Chongxiao adds a named Eastern martial art he likens to Shaolin kung fu, plus blades and stealth (4:10). Each agent has a kit: the Captain slams and pulls with tendrils, Taffy fights with her mallet bike, and Stix has seen paint-gun, yo-yo and drone users (4:33). Nobody outside the studio has numbers for those kits, which is why our tier list ranks no one yet.

How does character swapping work?

Like GTA V, not like Genshin Impact or Wuthering Waves. You do not drop another body into the same spot, Stix explains at 4:50. You open the in-game phone, pick an agent, and the camera flies across the city to wherever they already are, driving, taking selfies, on a yacht or in a police car. He saw no loading screen in the trailers or in either demo he played (5:02).

Minigames and character jobs: the “Yakuza half”

Stix calls the side content the game’s “Yakuza half” (5:18), and his list is the longest in the video: mahjong, arcades, carnival games, basketball, golf, slap battles, a working gym, nightclubs, dancing, theatres, shopping, cat cafés, maid cafés, hot springs, a dating system, house decorating, street racing, tea making and board games in Chongxiao, carrying chunky cats, selfies with civilians, TV and an in-world social feed.

Characters also have roles you can live out: police officer, hacker, delivery driver, content creator (5:57). The police role fits Richie, whose official profile makes her a cop on the ACD task force.

Is Ananta a gacha game? Stix reads the Steam page

There is no character gacha. Every playable agent unlocks through story, quests and exploration, with no banners, no pull currency and no pity, Stix says at 7:00, and weapons and skills are earned by playing. NetEase has said the same since the Project Mugen days; our no-gacha explainer traces it.

The paid layer is cosmetics: outfits and vehicle cosmetics. Stix’s favourite detail is that outfits fit every character, tall or short, thin or broad, because the clothes reshape to each body (7:18). Furniture splits in his account: some for in-game currency, rare pieces for money (8:03). Then the caveat. The Steam page declares in-game purchases including random items, and on that basis Stix expects some cosmetic gacha (8:11). That is his reading, not a NetEase statement, and it concerns skins, not characters.

Does Ananta have multiplayer?

Some form of it, size unknown. The Steam page Stix shows at 8:25 lists Single-player, MMO, Online Co-op, Cross-Platform Multiplayer and Family Sharing, and he points out that it is the first public storefront to carry all of these together.

The history matters. In October 2023, as Project Mugen, lead producer Ash Qi said there would be multiplayer components with a strong solo focus and no MMORPG, as Gamepressure reported. Stix adds three later reports (8:48 to 9:44): four-player co-op for missions or dungeons was being researched at Tokyo Game Show 2025; MMORPG.com was told of a story campaign per character and a sandbox that plays like GTA Online; and the PlayStation Store listed 24 online players after Gamescom, then one player within a day. None of these is a confirmed design. His conclusion is ours: multiplayer exists, and nobody has put a number on it.

Stix’s inspirations and verdict

At 6:37 Stix lists what people compare Ananta to: GTA, Spider-Man, Prototype, the Arkham series, Sleeping Dogs, Watch Dogs, Yakuza, Uncharted and Jackie Chan films. All fair, he says, and the game is an homage to them. That is a different pitch from 2023, when Project Mugen sold a city you could swing through with a cast of agents. The brawling, the minigames and the second city came later.

He has played it twice and is sold: he plans to stream it daily from launch, and repeats the developers’ promise of at least 100 hours of content on day one (10:19). Our read is narrower. Three years after the reveal, the confirmed parts are the date, the platforms, two cities and no character gacha. The rest, from the size of multiplayer to the depth of each kit, is demo evidence until 15 January 2027. For PC players, the requirements page has the specs, and the trailers page collects the videos from the 2023 reveal on.