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How Twined Traversal Works
Twining hands you an Aniimo's body and its movement skills, and most of those skills fire on their own. Here is what climbing, gliding, swimming and burrowing actually do to the way you cross the map.
The short version
- Twining grants the Aniimo's movement style, body, powers and abilities, and every Aniimo has its own official movement or exploration trait.
- Traversal skills trigger automatically. Walk a climbing form into a climbable wall and it starts climbing with no input from you.
- When you climb, fly or swim, the game transforms you into your highest-tier capable Aniimo for that job.
- Gliding starts from a jump off the ground, with your form changing to a gliding creature in mid-air.
- Emberpup has Hustle for rapid movement across the map. Celestis covers Climb and Glide. A hoverboard gives you extra ground speed in open areas.
- Some wild eggs sit in nests you can only reach by twining into a creature whose pathfinding suits the obstacle, and some wild Aniimo only hand out quests if you twine into their species.
Twining is how you get around in Aniimo. When you twine, you take the Aniimo's movement style, body, powers and abilities, which means your route across the map is decided by which creature you are wearing at the time.
Every Aniimo has a distinct official movement or exploration trait while twined. Running, flying, sliding, swimming, burrowing: different creatures give you different methods, and each one makes open world travel more efficient in its own way.
The part that surprises new players is how little you press. Traversal skills are automatic. You do not aim them, you do not hold a button, and in several cases the game swaps your form for you.
The skills fire without you asking
Traversal abilities trigger automatically. If you are twined into an Aniimo that has Climb and you walk at a climbable wall, your character starts climbing. There is no input required and no prompt to confirm.
The game also picks your form for you. When you climb, fly or swim, it transforms you into your highest-tier capable Aniimo for that action. In practice you stop thinking about which creature you are currently wearing and start thinking about the terrain, because the terrain is what selects the form.
Gliding is the one that reads oddly until you have done it. You enter it by jumping from the ground, and you take the shape of a gliding creature in mid-air. So a glide is not something you equip at the edge of a cliff. It is something that happens on the way down.
Aniimo skills worth knowing by name
Emberpup's traversal ability is Hustle, which moves you rapidly across the map. It is the plain ground-speed answer, and it is the one you will lean on for long overland stretches.
Celestis covers the vertical half. It provides traversal skills for climbing and gliding, carrying both Climb and Glide, which is the combination that turns a wall into a launch point.
There is also a traversal tool that is not a creature at all. The hoverboard moves you faster over ground in open areas, so it competes with a running form rather than replacing your climbing or swimming ones.
Emberpup
- Traversal ability is called Hustle.
- Hustle allows rapid movement across the map.
Celestis
- Provides the Climb ability.
- Provides the Glide ability.
- Covers both climbing and gliding traversal.
What your movement choice unlocks
Traversal is not only convenience. Some wild eggs sit in nests that can only be reached by twining with an Aniimo whose pathfinding ability suits the obstacle in the way, whether that is flight, climbing or swimming. The nest is not locked. Your current form simply cannot get there.
Certain wild Aniimo in the open world offer quests that can only be started by twining into an Aniimo of that same species. That makes your roster a key ring as much as a party, and it is worth remembering when you pass a creature you have no matching form for.
While twined you can also attract a small number of wild Aniimo of the same species to follow you, which is the cheapest way to travel with company you did not have to catch first.
Where field abilities come in
Two of these skills do more than move you. Fire-type Aniimo have a field ability that burns obstacles such as wooden barriers and trees and activates fire-based environmental puzzles, and many world puzzles are built around using fire that way. Burrowing forms tunnel underground and let you interact with field objects while you are down there.
That side of the system has its own guide on this site. For traversal purposes, treat fire and burrowing as movement options that happen to open things as well.
Where to start
Keep one fast ground form, one climbing form and one swimming form in reach, and the world mostly sorts itself out. Check anything else you catch for its movement trait, because a nest or a quest you cannot start yet is usually a form problem, not a level one.
Most of this page was re-checked against the released game on 18 September 2026. The rest has not been re-confirmed since release.