During the 2025 Tokyo Game Show, HoYoVerse officially announced Petit Planet, its life sim game designed to offer an Animal Crossing style experience. At the time, only initial teasers and the promise of a November 2025 Coziness Test closed beta appeared. Now that’s upon us and, as expected, this does feel inspired by Nintendo’s title. However, after spending some time testing an in-progress build out, I feel like it is a little more task-focused than something like Animal Crossing: New Horizons. 

Petit Planet begins with Loomi Corp giving our avatars a chance to develop their own uninhabited planet, with the help of employees Mobai, Glenn, and Esassani. Mobai is something of the Tom Nook mentor here, though he jokes that initial residence comes without any kind of loan or financial commitment. Glenn handles the shop on our fledgeling planet. Esassani acts as our chauffeur to take us through the Starsea in our car. After picking our planet type, of which there were a Golden Prairie with a hot and dry Taffeh one and Verdant Plains warm and humid one in the Hexia galaxy during the beta, we head off. Upon landing, we get to set up a home and plant a Lucaseed that will grow into a tree that influences this world. As we go through different campaign tasks, we eventually get a special kind of Luca liquid that allows it to grow and unlock new elements like kinds of life, cosmetic changes, and features like the ability to dig up stuff or engage in more farming. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HyMwlxRcCg

From there, the gameplay flow HoYoVerse created in Petit Planet does feel a lot like life sims such as Animal Crossing and Hello Kitty: Island Adventure. It follows a real-world clock after you get past a certain point of the tutorial. So some quests, once completed, won’t completely go through and show the results until the next day. For example, Glenn’s shop will open the next day after you get the materials for it, and as will Mors’ ecological habitat for insects, fish, and shore-dwelling creatures you collect with tongs. The in-progress build in the test made a cooking station with pot available for recipes right away, with a crafting table and kiosk for purchases like larger houses, Starsea car-travel related items, and cosmetics.

Two types of currency are present in-game during this test. Dough is earned via things like quests or selling items you collect or craft. This can be spent at Glenn's store for items like furniture, seeds, and clothing. We collect stars earned via collecting Footsteps milestones for performing actions like hitting trees or rocks with your Mattock, crafting, collecting wildlife, and similar sorts of activities. This can be spent at the Loomi Co kiosk, specifically on new hairstyles, clothing, accessories, and furniture in this closed beta. Stamina is another element we need to manage, but it’s easily refilled by eating a quick prepared meal made from wildlife, fruit, and vegetables found on the island or a snack like a Mango.

But as I mentioned at the outset, one of my strongest impressions in Petit Planet so far is that it feels like HoYoVerse prioritized completing quests more in this game than than Nintendo did in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, even though so much of it does feel like that title. I’d almost say it’s more like Hello Kitty: Island Adventure in terms of constantly available main and side missions. These can be found on the main and neighbor tabs in the menu, with the ability to track all of them. (Tracking can get extremely detailed, which I appreciate, since it can even be tied to specific materials needed for certain assignments.) After you get past a certain point in the tutorial, each day begins with a dispatch Tala’s Miracle Parade: Shortwave News Buzz, and then you move on to daily tasks. From there, you can go about collecting daily resources like wood and sap from trees, crops from farming plots, ore from regenerated rocks, and regrown flowers and grasses. 

While there are those tasks constantly lining up, Petit Planet does feel a little more relaxed when it comes to maintaining relationships with the anthropomorphic animal neighbors who come to our island. There is a friendship system in place, with their page in our indexes showing their name, birthday, planet, bond level, gifts they love, like, and dislike, some initial about tidbits, a log of actions, and a Journey section that lets us put earned Archiboos from daily actions toward improving our relationships. There’s no threat of them moving away in this closed beta, and the nature of it makes me suspect that won’t be present in the full game. The two initial ones I encountered in this trial are Yunguo, a red panda, and Msafiri, who appears to be a snow leopard. The initial introductory neighbor-specific questlines for them involved helping them with initial tasks, asking them to move, placing their homes, getting and crafting them each three pieces of furniture for their new homes, getting their larger residences from the Loomi kiosk, and collecting the building materials for those. Talking to them casually could result in getting a free material. Checking in might result in a quick quest. But initially, it seems HoYoVerse designed them to offer Hello Kitty: Island Adventure style bonding quests and relationship tiers along with Animal Crossing companionship in Petit Planet.

When I first saw Petit Planet, I absolutely saw how HoYoVerse used Animal Crossing as an inspiration for their own life sim, but after early hours with the in-progress game via the beta, it also feels more task-focused like Hello Kitty: Island Adventure too. It seems like there will be a lot of relaxing, low-pressure activities. However, it does seem very quest-focused, with mainline campaign and neighbor assignments to keep us busy each day. Of course, during my play sessions I was determined to do as much as possible as quickly as possible. Which would mean seeing a lot of constant mission notifications and assignments in my queue. But even so, my initial Petit Planet impressions is that this HoYoVerse approach to Animal Crossing will involve a lot more Hello Kitty: Island Adventure style assignments. 

Petit Planet is in development for PCs and mobile devices, and the closed Coziness Test beta is live now.

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