Recent reviews by Waffle

I have probably close to 100 hours on this game since it came out on Janurary 6th on their launcher. Something about this game is just so addictive, there is always something to do. Yes, there is a timegate and you have to wait til the next day for the next set of daily quests to level up, but there are lots of different activities to engage with while you wait. It really scratches the animal crossing itch for me, and being able to run around with my friends and join them easily and freely makes it a lot more enjoyable.

I think there are definitely issues with the game currently; PC controls are kinda ass, you can tell its a direct mobile port. You have to click and drag on the screen to turn the camera, and it feels weirdly clunky and sticky, though turning up the camera sensitivity in the settings helps a little with this.

Building, as fun as it is, is another thing that suffers from clunky and at times frustrating controls. The left side of the screen pans the camera, and the right side tilts and rotates it, so it's really easy to accidentally move or accidentally rotate when you meant to do the other, and it works with both right click and left click. Another thing I complain about is lack of roofing options, as you only get gable roof styles to work with, which is pretty limiting, but I'm sure this will be remedied with time.

The elephant in the room is the gacha. You get blue hearts for free, but these can only be used on certain gachas that cost blue hearts, the fancier gachas (rn its a winter themed one called Polar Hymn) are exclusively real money. They do give out the tickets for it occasionally, we've received 120 (20 pulls) so far for free, but it's by no means f2p when you conside the hard pity is like 300+ pulls. But, the monetisation is purely on cosmetics and isn't necessary to play the game itself. I know it's annoying for completionists to have missing items unless they shell out hundreds of dollars, so if you think you can't live with some missing items from the collection menu, this game probably isn't for you.

Despite these annoying issues, I find myself coming back every day, excited to see what's in my furniture and clothes store, and excited to see new content I unlock from levelling up. I literally replant my wheat when I wake up in the middle of night to go to the bathroom, because I want to level gardening and make money. I may be slightly addicted, but so are all my friends.

For actual information, there are "hobbies" which are like skills in most games: fishing, bug catching, gardening, cooking, dog and cat caring, and birdwatching (my least fav). For these, you get exp every time you do an activity associated with it, catching a bug or fish, feeding your cat, taking a picture of a bird, for example. The gameplay loop is honestly pretty fun, all of these activities use energy, which can be restored by lying in a bed for a few minutes, or by eating food. I've also never had an issue with inventory space, if that's a concern for anyone.

There are also activities separate from these hobbies: painting, music, book writing, and puzzles (at least that I've unlocked so far, there might be more).

Painting is like animal crossing's custom designs, except they don't smooth the lines and it's purely pixel art. You can paint custom dresses, shirts, even shoes, and a bunch more basic clothing options. You are also able to paint custom designs on the basic furniture that's unlocked gradually in the beginning, you're able to paint on the headboard of the bed and the bedsheets for example, so It's not like animal crossing where one pattern can apply to multiple things, you need to manually create a new pattern for each object you want to design. This is also kind of monetised, it costs 80 blue hearts for a custom clothing piece, and 50 for furniture, but they give you 10 of the items to make things for free, and blue hearts are a currency that you can get for free but it's scarce.

Music is really cool, I can't say much on it myself but my friends have been transcribing songs into the corresponding keyboard letters to play them in game on the piano, and it sounds pretty good. You can also record yourself playing a song and publish it for random people in your world to buy, which I thought was a cool touch.

I won't say much on book writing because I just don't want to even bother with it, but the puzzles are where problems arise. The developers seem to have used generative AI for the puzzle images. This is the only place in the game where it's directly obvious that they have done this, and it is BLATANT. It is a very minor aspect of the game that you don't have to really ever interact with though. I'm not defending it, just informing anyone reading that AI was unfortunately used.

If you're someone who loves animal crossing or palia, or gambling, you might really enjoy Heartopia. It's free, so you really don't lose anything from giving it a try. It's a bit of a slow start, but it gets more and more enjoyable as you unlock new features and level up your hobbies. Some people are very passionate about hating on this game, but I strongly recommend just trying it out if you're on the fence about it.

the only visual novel that didnt bore me immediately
i wanna be nicole fr