Heartopia is a free-to-play life sim game made for PC and mobile with gacha mechanics, social features, and a hobby system, and I was super excited for this one after having played the demo, and I even posted on release date immediately after the game went live. However, in my opinion, the demo showcased the best the game had to offer, not gating the hobbies because of limited time, and it didn’t have any of the gacha or monetization elements built into it yet. It’s a free-to-play game so there’s no harm in trying it out for yourself, but here are some of my honest thoughts and things you might want to know.
Mobile phone play seemed prioritized over PC
One of the first things that’s immediately clear is that while the game is available on both PC and Android and iPhone, it feels clearly built with a phone touch screen in mind, if not only touch screen in mind. This means a majority of the controls, tutorials, and on-screen guides will refer to swiping, tapping, and pinching, which don’t correspond directly to mouse controls. The game is simple enough that you can figure out the controls pretty easily, but this becomes very frustrating when trying to do more advanced things like decorating, which I will get to in a bit.
This also comes into play when discussing graphics. Some of the visuals are very crisp and clean, especially if they are very close to the character and camera. The farther out you look, which isn’t too far, the assets become pretty blurry or disappear entirely, popping in and out. Obviously, this helps the graphical strain when playing on a mobile device, but it still happens on desktop even with all settings turned to ultra. I think this can easily be improved by adding additional settings or per-device settings, especially when considering modern computers. And this doesn’t explain some of the textures that, no matter how close you are, some of them look blurry even at close range and some of them are flat pixelated images.
Even some of the time limits for crops kind of remind me of Farmville back in the day (which was another free to play game) and it reminded me of when you plant something and then you wait for a phone notification to go off and tell you your crops are ready so you log back in, something that again, works well for a phone but maybe not as much on PC because it might end up with you just logging off for the day entirely.
Building and customization
I cannot fully explain how frustrating building was for me on PC. Since the mouse controls move both the camera and the reticle at the same time when trying to place and align objects, you have to be extremely precise. If there’s an easier way to do this, please let me know.
I tried advanced build mode and honestly had even more problems. The controls are clearly designed around mobile gestures (zooming and pinching) and I struggled the entire time, it never felt intuitive. And I promise this is not exaggerated, I felt genuinely dumb trying to figure it out, and the tutorial was no help because again, it’s designed for phone.
Also a minor thing that could easily be fixed is that pressing the escape key takes you out of decorating mode entirely instead of backing you out one screen back to all the options you were in. I accidentally exited build mode repeatedly and had to reload back in far too many times. When I finally discovered continuous selection so I didn’t have to paint tiles one by one, it changed the camera controls and started throwing constant errors about not being able to paint repeatedly.
And because I am nothing if not persistent, I tried customizing the exterior. That was a mistake. I attempted to undo some progress, and it told me I couldn’t go back anymore, even though I hadn’t gone back a single step yet. Twenty-five minutes later, I finally settled on something half decent and decided to move on.
There are, of course, positives.
The hobby system is a great concept, character customization in terms of outfits and the amount of objects available is nice, and it’s a cute and colorful game.
Traversing the world is easy and thankfully seamless when going from walking to your bike, which helps because there isn’t a whole lot happening visually between areas. You also get a free motorcycle early on, which makes getting around easier. In terms of the town, there are a lot of fake buildings and the only ones roaming around are the few NPCs who own shops and another player if you are lucky enough to see one. I would love to additional NPCs, not just shop keepers or hobby masters, to make the game feel more alive.
Lack of content?
I played for a few hours directly at launch, and I was kind of surprised at how quickly I ran out of memos, which are Heartopia’s versions of quests. This is something I understand if you’ve been playing for awhile and have everything unlocked but I was kind of disappointed it seemed to gate you so fast, but again I think this is the free to play aspect that wants to encourage you to come back every day and keep playing. Also, there was a section about stories on the map but when you click on it nothing really comes up, so I’m curious if that will be added in the future.
Collecting seems to be the main gameplay driver, but early on there isn’t much variety. For example in the fishing hobby, there are only a few different fish to catch at first and the game kind of punishes you by giving you only around 3 to 5xp for duplicate fish when you need 120 or so just to level up to level 2 and unlock more fish. Then it’s 500xp for the next level after that, leading to the game feeling a bit grindy and repetitive.
Also quick tip with fishing, apparently bait can only be used in certain locations, and if you bait an area that already has a fish, sometimes it won’t spawn a new one, so you just waste it.
Things like crops and fish also have quality ratings with higher starred things selling for more, and things like upgrading your skills and using fertilizer has the chance to help. Tools also have durability, so it’s a good idea to always carry around repair kits because if you are exploring far away let me tell you it’s terrible to not be able to use any of your tools. Or if you see a rare bird but you can’t take a picture of it.
Monetization
In terms of monetization, the gacha mechanics are straightforward, but there are more currencies and systems than I expected. I really wish you could just buy what you wanted instead of having to roll for it, because that feels strange in a game like this where you’re not rolling for characters or weapons.
I don’t want to complain too much about monetization since the game is playable without spending money, but I am concerned that new furniture or even furniture blueprints could be locked behind paywalls.
There are also memberships? Which were confusing. It seems like a daily purchase, but in most gacha games memberships are a one time monthly free and then provide daily rewards? And you can spend real currency on resources that are easily obtainable in-game, which feels a bit unnecessary.
Final thoughts and alternatives
Overall, I actually do think Heartopia is fun, it’s just that I would be more likely to recommend it as a free-to-play phone game. On desktop, I think there are better options available. Games like Palia or even Infinity Nikki, despite its heavy monetization, at least offer a storyline, side quests, and a substantial amount of content.
There’s also Petit Planet coming up, but I can’t comment too much on that yet since I only played the beta, which also didn’t include gacha mechanics yet.
If you’re open to paid games, I personally think Disney Dreamlight Valley and Hello Kitty Island Adventure are stronger, more polished experiences.
Heartopia feels like a game you could put a lot of time into, but right now, especially on PC, it’s not really hitting for me.
If you’ve been playing, especially on desktop, I’d be interested to hear how your experience compares.
