Petit Planet Hands-On Preview – Cozy Life on a Distant Planet
In case you missed the news, HoYoverse, the publisher and studio behind the massive free-to-play titles Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero, has a new game on the horizon. Well, they actually have a few new titles in the works, but for today, we’re going to focus on perhaps their biggest genre departure: Petit Planet.
HoYoverse is famous for its fast-paced, adrenaline-pumping action experiences, but this time around, they’re swapping the swords and guns for a much cozier pace of life. It’s time to step away from the chaos to focus on the simple joys of building and discovery.
Building in a Sea of Stars
I was pretty cautious at first when I got to play Petit Planet this past week. For a studio that drew me in with their more action-oriented titles, I had huge doubts that I was even going to enjoy this game. But seeing what HoYoverse has pumped over the last few years, and the tremendous support they have on the content side of things, I decided, what the heck, why not give this a go?
Well, I’m glad I did, because what HoYoverse has done with Petit Planet so far is already showing to be a very promising life sim game.
From the get-go, you can probably tell Petit Planet is drawing heavy inspiration from Nintendo’s own life sim franchise, Animal Crossing. The twist here is that it’s set entirely in space, with you picking a planet to name yourself and build upon. The game’s introduction gave me a bit of a Super Mario Galaxy vibe, as your character was flown through space, seeing all kinds of planets with unique features and such.
You’ll eventually settle for a planet to make your home, where, like many other life sim games, you’ll be tasked with growing crops, farming for materials, and then growing and expanding out as you progress further through the story. The story is pretty simple, like most life sims, where you take on the role of a Planet Tender (someone who tends to a planet in space, obviously). In the center of it all is the Luca Tree, which grows as you complete main story quests and add new neighbors to your planet.
It’s a simple premise with HoYoverse magic sprinkled throughout. Meaning you can expect plenty of backstories to help build upon the game’s lore, along with numerous cute characters that all have unique personalities and fun backstories, along with a relationship system for every NPC.
But this being a game set in space, you’d expect there to be more than just your planet, and there is. As you progress, you’ll eventually get access to a car that can fly in space to take on Starsea Expedition. You can take a neighbor with you on these expeditions, and they essentially serve as a way to visit other planets for unique materials and even meet other new neighbors. The car runs off what are called Lumia Batteries, and this seems to be where the daily free-to-play caps come in, as you are restricted to a daily amount that you can obtain.
Being free-to-play is expected, though HoYoverse tends to be pretty fair with it, based on my past experience with games. That, of course, does mean this will have several monetization options, though I wasn’t paying too much attention to it during my hands-on.
There is a pretty big online presence where you can visit other players’ planets to check them out, become friends, and such. Looking up to the sky and seeing other planets, and even other players passing by, is perhaps one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a life sim game. It really adds a “living world” element to the game, even if most of the work you’re doing is going to be on your own planet.
In terms of activities, besides the ones I mentioned above, HoYoverse has the full works here with farming, fishing, building, decorating (please up the limit), bug catching, terrain terraforming, and, well, pretty much the big ones that most life sims have. This being a big live-service, you can expect plenty more activities and such to be added over time, so if there is something missing, there’s a good chance it’ll arrive later.
Still, questions that remain, a big one around the gacha mechanics. Where Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero all feature big gacha mechanics revolving around characters and weapons, where, in a game where there’s no combat, and you have a self-created character, will that all come in for Petit Planet? Perhaps it’ll be strictly for cosmetics, but it’ll still be interesting to see nonetheless.
Overall, I really dug what Petit Planet had to offer. Given that it’s still in development, there’s plenty for HoYoverse to add, fix, and adjust, but based on this early playtest, I do feel it’s in a very promising position. HoYoverse already makes impressive combat-heavy titles, so it’s interesting to see their take on a completely different genre that doesn’t even have combat, and I will say, I think they might have knocked it out so far.
Petit Planet currently has no release date and is slated for PC and mobile devices.
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