Thinking About Playing Heartopia? Read This First

If you’re a fan of cozy games, I’m sure you know that XD’s cute little “slow-life sim” Heartopia dropped recently. Like many cozy games, the player’s character gets whisked off to a somewhat magical place where they’ll build a new home and help the more permanent citizens complete tasks. Unlike a lot of cozy games, Heartopia drops players into a small town with eleven other players. Interestingly, those players are random, and as you won’t be in the same instance every time you log in, you won’t have the same neighbors every time.

Honestly, you won’t even have the same plot for your house. One day, I was in plot 4. The next, I logged in to find myself on the other side of the map in plot 10. As players log in and out, you’ll see houses disappear from the map to be replaced with those of whoever logs in next.

That said, you can still make friends with the players on your map, and they’ll continue to exist on your friends list, allowing you to send greetings and mail to them. So they won’t just disappear from your life completely.

Rotating neighbors or not, the game will want you to interact with them. Each day, you’ll receive different assignments from the game – little things necessary to earn rewards and currency – and some of those will be doing things like watering your neighbors’ plants. The game will also encourage you to throw parties and take part in different group activities, like ocean fishing and bubble popping on the beach. You don’t have to do them with other players, but that is sort of the idea.

To make making friends easier, the game includes some of the typical social features, such as a text chat and plenty of emotes. Some of those emotes you’ll receive as part of gameplay, or find out in the world. Others can be bought from Annie’s Friendship Store using currency earned in-game.

Annie is also one of the NPCs that will help you get started in the game, introducing you to other villagers as well as the D.G. Member’s Guild. The guild is more or less your progression in-game. You’ll need to increase the levels in it to unlock new housing items, features, blueprints, and even the ability to pick up new hobbies.

You’ll also be able to expand your property over time. Each player’s property can consist of up to eighteen plots in total, which means once they’re all unlocked, they’ll have plenty of room to expand. And, of course, houses can be multiple stories. Staircases are unlocked via the Guild system as well.

In fact, the building system seems pretty robust. Players start out with a beginning house of their choice, but it won’t be long ‘til the game starts teaching them how to make changes. The houses are built using individual items: wall and floor pieces, windows, doors, and staircases. This can be done freely, or players can use blueprints that will tell them how many items they need and create a room or space that can be placed as a set. As for how big the house can be. Well, I did say that players will eventually own pretty sizeable plots, so the house can be pretty big. That said. Leave some room for a garden.

As for what you’ll mostly be doing in the game… Well… Most folks familiar with cozy games can probably guess. As mentioned earlier, the game features “hobbies” that players can learn from the various NPCs. These consist of Gardening, Fishing, Cooking, Birdwatching, Catching Insects, Cat Caring, and Dog Caring. To learn these, you’ll need to level up with the D.G. Member’s Guild and acquire Hobby Expansion Tickets before visiting the associated “mentor”.

Not surprisingly, Fishing and Gardening are the first hobbies you’ll pick up. I personally opted for cooking as my third, as there is an energy system, and you will have to eat in order to keep being active in the game. (Despite having a bed in the house and the ability to lie down on it, it seems sleep is not a way to regenerate energy.) Note that some hobbies will make you wait to unlock them, such as the pet caring ones.

Once a hobby is acquired, players will need to stay active in it in order to level it up. However, it won’t just increase to the next level once enough XP is earned. Hobby Upgrade Tickets are needed to accomplish that. Like the Expansion Tickets, these can be acquired through the Guild. They can also be obtained as Collection Point Rewards.

Other regular activities in the game include completing daily request quests, which typically consist of acquiring specific items for NPCs, or “gossip” quests, which provide a bit of story content about the town and its goings-on. Beyond that, there are general dailies that players can complete. These are found in the game’s menu system.

It’s also worth noting that general gathering in the game does not require any hobby association. Moreover, some gathering doesn’t require energy use. If you’re just pulling items out of bushes, no energy will be spent. Chopping at trees to get lumber or smacking rocks to collect ore does use energy. So, you won’t be able to get away without having food for long.

You can easily locate and travel to anywhere you need, as the game gives you transportation almost immediately in the form of a scooter. Other vehicle options are available in the shop. There’s also a bus you can take if you don’t want to drive.

Another important thing to keep in mind is that the game is designed with mobile devices in mind, so the menus will reflect that – particularly the art for some of the items, which can be pixelated when looking at the larger versions. I’ve actually seen some speculation that this is an indication the game is using AI art, but it’s also just as likely that the devs only made smaller images and didn’t think about what they’d look like when blown up. But if that kind of thing can put you off a game, you should be aware that it exists.