Three months after launching on Android and iOS, Digimon UP has quietly become the most active branch of the Digimon video-game line. The free-to-play idle RPG, announced during Digimon Con 2026 in March and released worldwide on July 15, keeps pulling in new content — so if you gave it a try at launch and moved on, or haven't touched it yet, here's what the game actually is and where it stands now.
The pitch is simple: pick one partner and raise it like a virtual pet. When you start, you build your own Tamer, then choose a single Digi-Egg from a grid of 15. That partner — Agumon, Gabumon, Veemon, Guilmon, Terriermon and their cohorts from Adventure, Adventure 02 and Tamers — grows with you all the way from egg to Mega, and it's never in the gacha. Raising is the point. You grow Digi-Meat on a personal farm, feed it to earn randomized buff skills and permanent "Eat Level" milestones, run it through training stations that each build a different stat, and crack open a hexagon skill board as you go.
Combat keeps the card-game flavor. Your partner fronts a squad backed by up to five supporter Digimon pulled from the gacha, and your loadout runs on equippable Skill Cards lifted from the Digimon Card Game's art style. Fights are largely automatic, with an auto-battle toggle and stages you clear for resources; a Battle Terminal arena handles versus play. In total the roster runs to nearly 300 Digimon, all redrawn as chunky, animated pixel sprites that reviewers keep praising for their Nintendo-DS-era charm.
It hit the ground with a crowd. Pre-registration crossed a million before launch, and those sign-ups were rewarded at release with Tai Yagami & Agumon, Gekomon and Numemon, plus gacha tickets and 3,000 of the in-game currency, Digi-Emerald.
Since then, the updates have kept coming. On September 11 a Digimon BEATBREAK collaboration arrived as a companion summon; late September added Ken Ichijoji & Wormmon and the Machinedramon SP supporter; and on October 7 the game introduced the "Dark Field" content area and a new growth mechanic called the Super Possession Bonus. It's the schedule of a title Bandai clearly intends to keep feeding.
But not everyone is cheering. The critical reception has been blunt: both Game8 and Pocket Gamer gave the game downbeat reviews, calling it an idle RPG first and a Digimon game second. Because every partner follows one fixed evolution line and Support Digimon can't digivolve or grow, long-time fans miss the branching freedom that made Digimon feel like their own. The auto-battling, timer-driven loop has also drawn the "watch an ad" complaints that are standard for the genre.
So Digimon UP is, depending on your taste, either a low-effort daily companion or a letdown of the franchise's core promise. On the one thing reviewers across the board agree, it's honest: as far as "a journey that moves with your life" goes, this is exactly that — a game you check in on rather than settle into. If that's what you want on your phone between updates, it's free to find out.