Heartopia kicked off 2026 with an anticipated global launch. Being one of the many cosy cravers, I was super excited about a free new slow-life simulator where I had total freedom over my self-expression and plot. Some may say cosy games are getting lazy, but I love formulas like this and joined the hundreds of thousands of players who commemorated the launch on January 7th.
I even wrote articles about the game and created several YouTube videos on events and guides. All of this to say, I truly enjoyed the game in its elementary phase and sank hours of my life into building, levelling, and connecting.
Key word, enjoyed…
All good things must come to an end. But was Heartopia ever good to begin with? I’ve decided to deep dive into my own experiences and express my evergrowing distate.
So, get a warm drink and a snack and settle in for this indirect review on why this cosy game connoisseur is quitting Heartopia.
I’m Quitting Heartopia.
If you’re here from the title, I assume you’re interested in gossip, or maybe you want to know if your reasons to depart from Heartopia align with mine. After all, I’m certainly not the first person to throw in the towel after only three months of play.
Very short-lived, especially for an open-world gacha.
The Hobbies Are Flat
During my three months, I had some small but negligible issues, which I put down to preference. One of which included hobbies feeling flat, which I expressed in my very unserious Tier List.
I was kinder about it then, but let’s be real, they’re so boring.
During parts of the video, I expressed how lame a lot of the hobbies felt. They were either a little too slow and idle or completely insufferable if you’ve unlocked the pets. Take Cooking, for example, it had huge importance during the Frostwave event, and yet all it requires is standing still for 15+ seconds and pressing a spatula occasionally.
Not very motivational or rewarding gameplay for a limited-time event, if you ask me.
I ranked it decent at the time, only because of the food’s monetary value, and I stand by that. That said, is that really the most engaging mechanic they could come up with? I could honestly critique every hobby, but I need to move on for your sake and mine.
The Cast, Or Lack Thereof
I think the NPCs have nice enough designs, but that hardly elevates them. It’s not that fun to engage or talk with characters for quests or events, so I ended up always skipping dialogue. The world doesn’t feel alive despite the residents, and, sadly, so much potential has been lost to the rough translations and unpolished personalities.
This one may be a small critique in the grand scheme of things, but I don’t see how a game that rewards you for helping locals has uninspiring folks that I don’t care about giving a hand to.
Bleeding off from this point, the daily quests are equally as mundane. They’re quick enough, which is the goal, but theres only so many times I can bear giving Andrew 30 Stones and having him repeat the same spiel about how cool he is to me.
Silence, uncool man.
Infuriating Building
I grit my teeth.
The camera movement, the clipping, and the annoying player in the way. Oh my god, all of it is so annoying. The main way to showcase your progression in Heartopia is through your plot and self-expression via building. And yet, this may be the most rage-inducing building mechanic in any game, period.
It doesn’t feel rewarding until you finally exit build mode and look upon your creation, hours after wrangling the clunky controls and weird movements.
For a cosy game that revolves around building, this is the least cosy aspect of the entire game, in my humble opinion.
So Many Bugs
Coming to a standstill due to bugs and breaks isn’t very cosy. The game, whilst new globally, has existed for about a year before that on Chinese Servers.
I fail to understand why game-breaking bugs existed for so long, enough so that they’re also surfacing in global servers, unless they’re exclusive to the January release, in which case, what a warm welcome…
To rhyme a few, pets were bugged, audio was bugged, and interactions were also bugged. But…
That’s Not The Worst…
All I mentioned above were the small and negligible issues which I persevered through for the sake of enjoying a F2P game with friends.
That said, Heartopia’s criticism is far from over. Over the past few weeks, huge issues with the game have surfaced, and the game has reared a dark side, one which I found entirely unforgivable.
And, if you haven’t already stopped playing, the climax of this feature may change your mind.
Predatory Gacha
If you strictly stick to F2P, this problem may seem minuscule. But for the majority, this issue is relentless.
The Gachas offer no pity, and honours duplicate rolls with tickets to exchange for undesirable products. Not only that, each roll increasingly costs more, with banners potentially totalling $200+ if you want everything from it.
If you’re the type of person who doesn’t have hobbies to invest in, $200 could be reasonable hobby money if you enjoy gachas. However, I can’t get over how this all feels so predatory to make people feel complicient into gambling against an unforgiving RNG, curated to work against the playerbase.
Blatant Racism
This occurred recently, and Heartopia has since remedied the issue, but letting something like this slip through the cracks at all is highly unforgivable.
In short, a new gossip quest appeared to give the Travelling Gourmet NPC (a black man) a Bizarre Mushroom. Upon eating it, an uncomfortable cutscene plays where he writhes around and does a monkey emote.
This is an incredibly harmful stereotype, and may I also add, Heartopia would have had to add a custom emote for this to happen, as such an emote isn’t available to players. At least not globally.
I simply don’t fathom why this seemed like an appropriate executive decision on Heartopia’s behalf. Was isolating an entire community and ridiculing worth it? A lot of players immediately took to Discord to complain about this quest, which was met with staff quickly deleting comments. Insane.
As I said, they’ve since changed the Travelling Gourmets reaction to the mushrooms, but having such a harmful and inherently evil act of segregation implied in the game to begin with was my final straw, and what led me to quit full stop.
The Use of AI
As an art advocate, I was so disappointed to learn about the game’s use of AI. Heartopia clearly earns enough to support artists, and yet uses a soulless generator for their boring NPC translations and some art within the game. Again, this calls back to the NPCs issue I had earlier, where they all feel so stiff and samey. A real translator would’ve elevated the characters and made them unique.
I also find it ironic that the most expression we’ve seen from NPCs was during a racist cut scene. Very telling.
AI is uncanny and gross. I’m a strong hater of generative AI due to its environmental harm and complete lack of honour when scalping art and writing from creators. I myself have had my work be victim to AI, both written and drawn.
Why This Cosy Game Connoisseur Is Quitting Heartopia
If you’re still here, you may be wondering why it took me so long to throw in the towel, and honestly, I’m wondering that myself.
I enjoyed some parts of the game, primarily making outfits and hanging out with my friends in a chill environment as escapism post-work.
But, for a multitude of reasons I’ve disclosed, I’m done. I prefer my games without endless bugs, controversies, and evil gachas. It’s truly disappointing, especially since the game had a good hook during its release. I remember being especially excited for the MLP collab because, at my grown age, I LOVE MLP. It’s such a comfort show and nostalgic.
Even then, the event is so lame, and the only thing they got right was the outfits, which are, of course, trapped behind a painful gacha. Awesome.
I’ll instead be living vicariously through everyone enjoying and streaming Pokopia until I can get my hands on a Switch 2, or until Petit Planet or Grave Seasons drops.
If you’ve stuck around for this extremely long rant, thank you. On a more positive note, my good friend Adele recently played Resident Evil for the first time and documented it in her own Feature.
The post Why This Cosy Game Connoisseur Is QUITTING Heartopia: The Downfall. appeared first on Gamezebo.
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