I had a lot of one-hour appointments at Gamescom, but none of them had time escaping from me quite like my 60 minutes with Petit Planet. It’s Hoyoverse’s attempt to tap into the Animal Crossing demographic, and by that I mean the developer has essentially taken Nintendo’s cosy life sim and shot it up into space.
I was honestly flabbergasted at how brazen the whole thing was. From the text boxes, to the character animations, to the little audio jingles that accompany them—near enough everything (bar its cosmic setting) screams Animal Crossing. But you know what? I kinda loved it.
Like I mentioned, Petit Planet transports the cosy vibes traditionally reserved for land and sea and instead puts them in galactic pastures. That doesn’t mean I’m locked out of biomes found on terra firma, though. After making my human character and being greeted by a delightfully pink bunny, I’m given two planets to pick from—one that’s more your traditional forest-y vibes, and one that’s significantly more desert-like.
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I picked the former, of course—though it looks like you might have even more starter options in the future—and set to work on building up a little planet of my own. I got to do all the traditional social sim stuff: catch fish and bugs, shake trees to dislodge their fruit (plums, in my case), and make friends with the furry cast who launched themselves onto the planet alongside me.
As I progress more tasks, Petit Planet’s landscape unfurls before me. I don’t arrive with a beach to fish at, but I get one shortly after catching enough bugs to pop into a little magical eco-tank. I suppose it serves a similar purpose to the museum, in that you can drop all your first-time catches in there, though there aren’t big shiny exhibits to walk around.
Doing all of this fills a jar that I can use to water a tree and progress my planet further to get new areas like the beach, or get the capacity to invite new neighbours. My time with the demo saw farmer fox Yunguo take an interest in my new galactic home, where we planted crops together before being given the ability to pop her house right next to my own.
Unfortunately I didn’t get to play around too much with decorating in Petit Planet, but unlike Animal Crossing I have full 360 degrees of reign over where I can place and rotate my own house and the houses of my space villagers. There’ll undoubtedly be tons of cute decor pieces I can smatter across my planet, too, which I’m incredibly excited about.
The one thing I didn’t manage to get a feel for is just how gacha’d out the wazoo Petit Planet is going to be. The game’s pre-registration gifts at least signal some kind of currency palooza, and I assume it’ll go down some sort of character banner route for potential villager candidates.
I know it’s Hoyoverse’s bread and butter, but I do hope the gacha side of things doesn’t encroach on the relaxing life sim part too much. The two things feel like oil and water, you know?
I am willing to play a lot more of Petit Planet to find out, which shows just how badly the game got its hooks in me in such a short amount of time. It’s potentially the closest thing we’ll ever get to Animal Crossing on PC, after all—and that status alone makes it worth my time. And probably my money.
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