Petit Planet is something a little bit different for HoYoverse. From their mainstay gacha RPGs of Honkai, Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero, Petit Planet brings the pace right back down, looking to lean instead on all the cosy periodic gaming of Animal Crossing, Stardew and others.
With a name that evokes the classic children’s book Le Petit Prince, it makes sense that this would be a game to give you a small planetoid to nurture and look after. It’s a fairly tenuous connection outside of the name, to be sure, with a fully fledged life sim to sink into here, and HoYoverse having sprinkled it with their particular off-kilter style. Each player has their own planet within the Starsea, but they’re all managed, registered and linked by Loomix Co, and getting from one world to another location has you hopping into a minivan and driving through space to get there.
As the game begins, you’re accompanied to a little planet by a trio of Loomi Co characters, who form a little core to your community, much like Isabelle and Tom Nook do for Animal Crossing. Mobai is a large long-haired dog and the main Loomix Co rep, but he’s a much warmer, more fatherly figure than Tom Nook, though – he even calls out the concept of mortgages at one point… before then saying that house upgrades will still cost you.
Setting down on the planet, you’re fairly quickly brought through the string of basic tutorials, to gather fruit from trees, get in a bit of fishing and bug catching, and to store them in an Ecotank – later you can build an Ecohouse to be your wildlife museum. Each one is a quick and basic gathering task, and that’s also true as potential neighbours appear on your island, getting a little backstory,
Each step along the way is tied to the growth of a glowing blue Luca Tree, planted at the centre of the main plaza. Complete tasks and Mobai will hand you a filled up jar of Luca to pour onto the tree and help it grow another stage, in turn feeding its mystical energy into broadening what the planet offers. The beach area opens up, you learn a bit about farming, you gain Luca Fruits to add a bit of pizazz to your island’s look, like having starburst patterns in the grass.
Just as new areas open up, so too does the arrival of new characters and potential neighbours. They’re all humanoid versions of animals, turning up like the extremely shy plant-loving Yunguo, or the tumbleweed-chasing Msalfa, and they feel to have a bit more depth to them than Animal Crossing villagers. Certainly, there’s several paragraphs of back story for each, hidden traits that you’ll have to discover to reveal their likes and dislikes, and that will give you hints for how to help decorate their homes.
What’s nice is that, while there are certain time-based blockers to your progression – things like houses and the museum only being built by the following day – there’s a good amount that you can do and abilities and tools to earn right from the off. Sure, Mobai does quite heavily suggest that you should probably call it quits and wait for some construction to finish, but then I saw a cutscene of someone crashed on the beach, and was off on another little jaunt to meet someone, find out their deal and see if they want to move to my planet.
What’s not really revealed itself to me just yet is how convoluted the monetisation and presumed gacha aspects will be within Petit Planet. The main currency is Dough, and you can earn this from selling fish, fruit and foods, completing mini food delivery quests, and more, but there’s also Loomi for a Loomix Co vending machine, which is earned from the Footprints Journal, tracking your every day activity and rewarding you for it. Even your neighbours have this kind of tracked progression, with your ‘Journey’ checking off milestones through a little star map, and gifting fluffy little Archiboos creating closer bonds.
But maybe you want bonds with other people? That’s where the Grand Bazaar comes in, a hub space with things like a theatre pit, pop band guitars and drums, a coffee shop, and some social minigames like word chains. This is a 2020s take on social spaces as opposed to early 2000s, so public chat is inherently quite clamped down to specific spaces here, but that doesn’t feel to be the worst decision for the game.
The real multiplayer will be journeying to other player planets and seeing what they’ve done with their islands, but you do have another use for your space-faring car, which is to pop across on a Starsea Voyage, driving over the star-filled hills of the galactic plane to visit smaller islets and grab some resources not found on your island. This requires a Lumia Battery to power the trip, and limits you to only a couple islets per battery, but you can find things like quartz, other plants, fruits and even other people who could move to your planet if you befriend them. A nice feature here is being able to cram a few of your other neighbours into the car with you, and they’ll chip in with chopping trees and smashing rocks to gather resources for you, depending on what they’re good at.
Petit Planet is quite obviously singing from Animal Crossing’s hymn sheet, but there’s some HoYoverse flourishes to the game’s style, deeper character stories, and a real feeling that this can grow into something special.
