Heartopia, the new cosy life sim from XD Games, has officially arrived on mobile, right on schedule. If you’ve been keeping up with Heartopia news, you’re likely already aware that the game has pushed back its Steam release to an indeterminate point in 2026.
Heartopia developer XD Games has delivered the news anyone who tried out the life sim game had been waiting for. The Animal Crossing-like cozy multiplayer game will finally arrive on January 7 across Android, iOS, and PC - with one caveat.
EA has stressed to its community that "the values of The Sims are unchanged" as we head into 2026.
It's been another strange, difficult, and yet somehow also brilliant year for video games in 2025. Triple-A releases have been sparse again, compared to the boom times of old, with a great big GTA 6-shaped hole left in the final few months of the year. And yet once again, every gap left by the established order has been filled twice over with something brilliantly new.
I think as long as you make a new year's update post before the incredibly arbitrary date of January 13th, you're still able to do so without me thinking "come on, it's almost February", which is exactly what EA did with their new years Sims update post. Perhaps reassuringly, after word came last year of EA's concerning acquisition, the post opens by doubling down on what the team has previously said regarding staying committed to their values (those values including inclusivity is welcome though I wish they'd be more explicit about who is being included). But the post also, sort of, goes into what's next for the series.
Saturdays are for putting your hand in a bucket of ice, swallowing a mouthful of honey and lemon, and breathing a sigh of relief. All that practice you put into your welcome handshake and 'Here comes trouble!' paid off. Almost every member of the treehouse has been successfully greeted home.
All bar one. But I'll get him. I'll get him good.
This is proving to be one of the worst weeks of my life, for various reasons (no, not because Jason Schreier is mad at me). In my time of need, I open the magic portal of escapism and find Pathologic 3 looking back at me like a poison toad.
Most anticipated? Oh reader, you gentle, innocent child. Hark at you, ambling in here with supple joints, eyes clear as springwater, and the scent of hope in your hair. I have grown old, dear reader. I no longer feel this emotion called "anticipation", anymore than I remember the taste of strawberries in the Shire. Years of waiting for another Legacy of Kain game have broken my spirit. My heart is a sponge of sorrow. My beard coils round my ankles like a listless cat. All has become grey.
A grim and insanitary management game about absolutely abysmal cars? One for you, Brendy! Oh sod it, he's not here anymore. That's what we get for letting him learn how to drive - and letting him have a cell with a window. I don't know how to drive, and I have played neither Jalopy nor My Summer Car, but I do know how to be a dishonest piece of shit, so I am at least 25% of the way towards writing an informed appraisal of Totally Legit Wheeler Seller.
I was nosing around for a feelgood story to perk you up after this morning's depresso news stew. But then I thought: what have you done for me lately? So instead, we're going to write up the release of Diggergun, a life sim platform game about burrowing for lithium, in which you lose a portion of your take-home pay to costs based on real-world current UK tax, national insurance, debt and household expenses. Glorious! That'll teach you to show up here, expecting some kind of escapism.
