HoYoverse, best known for anime-styled gacha games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, unveiled Nodusfall at Gamescom 2026's Opening Night Live, marking a notable departure from its usual aesthetic and audience. A Polygon journalist who played a hands-on demo argues that while comparisons to Monster Hunter are apt, the widely repeated "Elden Ring meets Monster Hunter" description is misleading, as the FromSoftware influence appears mostly superficial, in the visual style rather than in gameplay mechanics.

Nodusfall is a four-player cooperative action game built around Monster Hunter-style structure: players return to a mountainside tent village to upgrade gear, trade with merchants and pick up hunting quests, then head out on mounts to track giant creatures. Combat blends familiar third-person action mechanics, including basic and special attacks and dodges, with a distinctive charge-and-release "clash" parry system and cooldown-based abilities. In the preview mission, a four-person party fought a 30-foot gryphon called Quongqi across multiple health bars, culminating in a flashy cooperative "joint execution" move, before moving on to an unfinished final boss encounter.