Heartopia

Cell phone slop.

AI gacha cashgrab with boring, repetitive grind. I mean, it's not "grindy" to drive around looking for a single special tree to whack for rare mats, but IT IS repetitive and boring af. I regret every cent I spent on this game. It was fun in the beginning because I played it with my friends, but the amount of money you need to spend to get decor sets is insane. Yes, F2P games need a way to make money, but they don't need to be so pricey, ESPECIALLY since you cut corners with generative AI. Disgusting.

designed for mobile UI, AI slop

Just great controls (sarcasm) and the rain rains thru your house (until eventually fixing itself anyway), ruining immersion. Everyone minds their own business, no chat in the beginning (when going thru tutorial stuff) to ask questions to other players about stuff you get stuck on like not being able to water plants inside of your house (i wanted to plant them outside like a normal person but the game said no). I'm going back to WURM online or GW2. Do not play this game.

This is the better Palia. Let me go over the points, as someone who played both games intensely: 1) Skills: Unlocked using hobby tickets, every skill is free and you can unlock all in 3-4 days. There's cooking, farming, fishing, bug-catching, bird-watching, cat and dog-caring, ocean cleanup, and a couple more. NONE of it can be accelerated using money. There is a bit of a luck system involved (star-quality of items) but even the "rare" items can be aquired in an hour or so. Unlike Palia, you won't have to fish for 12 hours to catch a rare fish and give it away for 2 bait as quest reward. Everything can be displayed regardless of quality and anything you see can be caught (no "hard" fish that your rod cant handle, if its unlocked you will get it.) 2) Open-World: The plots are part of the world, meaning you can see people's houses just while exploring or going to the town and vice-versa. You can leave food out, water their plants, or just look at their gardens! There's wildlife you can feed (capybaras, pandas, ferrets, otters, etc) and bond, where they will leave you gifts & visit your home! Players and NPCs can start hobby events or concerts, which leads to fun social activites. I'm a really big fan of the way they did this! 3) Free-to-play experience: This is amazing. I expected a Palia experience where you get 1-2 pieces of clothing by faking a couple emails for the invite rewards but Heartopia has SO MANY "free" (gold, the main currency obtained by selling items) clothes! Hair, glasses, shirts, pants.. this includes EVERYTHING! The shop changes daily so you have plenty of choices! Vehicles are very easily obtained; whether you want to be on a bike, car or motorcycle, you can unlock them freely! 4) Events: They are very nice. From collabs to seasonal events, they add items, clothes and furniture that are fully obtainable for free and a cheap (4.99 ish) event pass that yields some premium rewards of the same kind but also includes premium currency and gambling tokens. Even as a F2P player, you'll be busy without feeling "left out". Money doesn't progress you. Theres also "weather events", like rain, rainbow, heat and meteor shower. Each yields different effects on the world and animal mood/spawns. 5) Pets & Houses: Plot spaces are unlocked with Developer Guild Level, which is basically the main leveling system, which increases by doing a certain amount of daily tasks (so again, not progressable with payment) and then you pay gold to use them, where they stay forever. Furniture is given away plenty, you can freely set walls and wallpapers/flooring has a huge base variety with more given out regulary. You have full freedom in building. Pets stay at your house and can be fed/petted/trained. The pet you get can be chosen from the petstore, where new ones come every day, provided you unlocked the hobby. There's no "premium pet breeds", the only paid thing are pet cosmetics from the gacha, but you can also get pet-clothing through the store freely. The amount of pets you can keep is decided by your hobby level. 6) Gacha: I know a lot of paying players say the gacha price racks up quickly but as a F2P player, I can't say anything about that. Legendary items have odds vaarying from 5-10%, including a pity-system, which I don't find THAT bad. But I've always been of the opinion that people who dislike or/and are vulnerable to gacha need to stay away from gacha games. It IS an addiciton but someone who's trying to quit smoking wouldn't demand gas stations & supermarkets to stop displaying cigarettes at the counter. I have nothing against the Gacha itself. I like it. The tokens are given out surprisingly often for free -- I got 120 (20 gambles) for simply installing the game, then the Oceanwave Event yields like 20-30 (3-5) more for the base tier Star-Quality items, the collab event gives ~40 (~6) for opening freely obtainable gacha machines on the plots of other players & getting all Nightlights (which you are guaranteed to get because the game will give you Choose Your Own boxes). Thats around 30 free gambling attempts. After 15x, you get 30 tokens for free in the main gacha, which is another 5x. I managed to almost finish 1 collab gacha with it and get like 10 unique items from the wedding themed gacha. Of course you wont earn enough in a couple weeks to unlock everything for free because they need an income. But you'll definitely have the ability to participate in each and save up. I'm sitting on 60 tokens even AFTER the mentioned gacha attempts and with the upcoming Dave the Diver collab, there's likely more tokens for me to freely hoard. THEN there's also "seasonal gacha", poor man's gacha. They cost Blue Hearts, which is currency aquired for free, I usually sit on around 3-700 of them. No duplicates but increasing price per attempt, even f2p players can finish them if they save for it and if not, they still get items for free. So while the gacha is their income (because thee memberships are useless), they give plenty of opportunities for f2p players to participate in a meaningful way to get those rewards. The bottom line is that, unlike Palia, the hobbies are a lot of fun and WAY less time consuming. Progress is quicker and yields good rewards. Clothes, furniture and pets are free, with some paid if part of a collab/gacha but never fully leaving out the full f2p players. It's social but not forced, the community is very nice.

Horrid Gacha chances, no pity system for the furniture cause you can get dupes. insane. Good collabs but at what cost? for every event to be over 100$-$200?

really really cute game with a lot of potential, but the entire community has been ignored for months and months when it comes to their insane gacha system. and to nitpick, i'm not a fan of a social game where u need to buy or craft an in game item to even socialize.