Hands-On With Petit Planet: Prepare for Miniature Meltdowns

Alright, buckle up, buttercups, because I, a seasoned professional in the art of gaming “journalism,” am here to bestow upon you my *extremely* valuable opinion on Petit Planet. And let me tell you, as someone who practically *invented* Animal Crossing: New Horizons (you’re welcome, Nintendo 🙄), I was *always* going to be skeptical. I mean, come on, another “cozy” game trying to ride the coattails of MY beloved Animal Crossing? As if! 🙄.

Of course, I’m totally, like, *not* against developers making their own versions of Animal Crossing, but they better bring something AMAZING to the table. Something revolutionary! Something… that doesn’t make me roll my eyes so hard they get stuck. Petit Planet, bless its little heart, tries… but does it succeed? Well… 🤔

I’ve seen some *very* questionable sources describe Petit Planet as “HoYoverse’s Animal Crossing.” As if slapping a big company name onto something automatically makes it good 🙄. I tried to go into this with an open mind, free from any sort of comparisons but uhm… no 🥰.

LOL! The game starts just like Animal Crossing: New Horizons! You create a character, and they make you think you can choose where you live, a brief video about how great life is. It even has you gathering fruits and miscellaneous items in order to craft a small celebratory dinner for your first night on the planet. How original 🤡.

But don’t worry guys, because once you get past the similarities, the game does try to do it’s own thing and incorporate RPG elements. OMG watering planets? I’m SOLD! With every drop of water you make your planet bigger and better than all your friends 🤩. Petit Planet also adopts Animal Crossing’s real-time clock mechanic so kiss your sleep goodbye.

The game is like, super focused on the live-service. It’s kind of like they want to become an MMO 🤓. What does this mean? I have no idea! But, you better get ready to learn everyone’s favorite villager with their totally unique talents. If you get them to level 10 you get free stuff.

Unlike Animal Crossing’s Villager types (i.e Jock, Lazy, Big Sister, etc.), characters in Petit Planet feel a lot more genuine and learning about who they are becomes part of the impetus to befriend them. So the characters are like, totally unique, unlike those basic villagers from Animal Crossing. 🙄

And Petit Planet does have some interesting ideas that serve to separate it from its inspiration. I like how using tools requires energy that can be replenished by cooking and eating food—providing a different kind of incentive towards the farming and crafting elements than Animal Crossing’s breakable tools. If your character gets tired, just feed them some food and they are good to go. I like the game’s Starsea Voyages, which function like visiting Nook Miles islands, but with much more hands-on gameplay of actually exploring a cosmic ocean in your Space Car. And this time, instead of using a plane to go on a journey you can use your space car to fly through space.

And because it is an always-online game, Petit Planet makes interacting with other players a lot more seamless and easy. If players take their Space Car to the Galactic Bazaar, they can interact with each other, chat at dedicated social areas, or add each other as friends and visit each other’s planets. So basically, you can flex your amazing planet that you built and make your friends jealous because they don’t have as much cool stuff as you 😎.

Despite how obviously it can wear its inspiration on its sleeve, there’s a lot to like about Petit Planet—even in this fairly early stage. All Petit Planet would need is to make the jump from PC to consoles, and it could be the next BIG cozy game.

If you want to try Petit Planet for yourselves, then go to the official Petit Planet website.