Tag:

cosy

After Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail, gacha master HoYoverse set its sights on the Animal Crossing-like cosy sim genre

by admin September 27, 2025

Petit Planet – a new cosy life sim from the creators of Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail – has been announced.

The game currently has PC and mobile versions confirmed, with “additional platforms” in development according to the official press release alongside the reveal. Petit Planet has you build up and develop your own tiny planet, eventually venturing out into a galaxy filled with other planets owned by cutesy NPCs.

A reveal trailer (which you can watch below) showcases what the game will look like, with a character building up a nice little home, meeting various animal friends, before hopping in a car and taking to the stars to meet a cast of other furry fellows on their own home planets.

Here’s the Petit Planet reveal trailer!Watch on YouTube

Those interested can pre-register for the game right now on the official website, as well as sign up for upcoming beta tests. There’s no word as to when these beta tests will occur or when the sign ups will close as of writing.

Rumours around a HoYoverse life sim have been circulating for a while, with the internal name Astaweave Haven known thanks to early leaks. However, this recent reveal marks the first official word on the game as well as the first peak we’ve been able to get of polished gameplay.

There is no information on how monetisation will work for Petit Planet, though given this is a HoYoverse game the expectation is that the game will feature gacha mechanics as found in Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, and Zenless Zone Zero.

This isn’t the only game HoYoverse has in the works. The developer revealed Honkai: Nexus Anima earlier this year, a Pokemon-style creature collector and auto-battler. Petit Planet has entered a somewhat contested genre, interestingly enough. Both Pocket Pair and Nintendo have announced their own cosy farm sims in Palfarm and Pokémon Pokopia.

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September 27, 2025 0 comments

Game Reviews

Cosy builder Town to City feels like a lovely autumnal treat, but honestly I’m just having fun planting flowers

by admin September 21, 2025

I knew Town to City had ensnared me in its nefarious trap the moment it told me I could customise individual window boxes. Yes, this early access city builder is one of those games, seemingly aimed specifically at weirdos like me whose idea of bliss is hours spent in a serene reverie of fastidious path-laying and flower-planting, all in the name of aesthetic perfection. And if you count yourself in that number, Town to City might just be the ideal retreat as the cold autumnal nights draw in.

Town to City

Developer: Galaxy Grove
Publisher: Kwalee
Platform: Played on PC
Availability: Out now on Steam

If Town to City seems familiar, it may be because it’s a follow-up to developer Galaxy Grove’s equally minimalist (and equally voxelly) Station to Station. As with that earlier game, Town to City slides into that inescapable subgenre of ‘cosy’, which – for those of you who haven’t already succumbed to the allure of a digital turnip – essentially means it’s designed to be soothingly friction-free.

Cosy games tend to be a little impervious to standard criticism, given they’re more about the vibes rather than any clever mechanical sophistication, and that’s the case again with Town to City. Its campaign (there’s also sandbox mode with various tweakable parameters) unfolds across a well-worn loop of upgrades and expansion – one that’s pleasantly propulsive but otherwise fairly unremarkable.

Town to City launch trailer.Watch on YouTube

Essentially, citizens produce goods; goods increase happiness; the happier your citizens are, the more will move to your town. More citizens means more goods, means more people, until you’ve crossed a threshold that allows you to turn your dwelling into a hamlet into a village and so on, unlocking new buildings and customisation options each time.

It’s familiar stuff, and Town to City streamlines the formula down to the absolute essentials. There’re a few wrinkles, mind, but these ultimately boil down to space management – don’t expect to see anything like cross-border trade agreements or complex production chains here. Plop some buildings down to satisfy early demand – a couple of single-story houses, perhaps, or a vegetable stall – and it won’t be long before you’ve built yourself into a corner, and the only way to continue catering to your citizens’ ever-escalating whims is a town redesign. But that’s fine! Really, design is what Town to City is all about. Think of it more as a beautification tool with a few simple progression knobs on, and its appeal is immediately clear.

A plan comes together! | Image credit: Eurogamer/Galaxy Grove

Town to City’s boxy voxel aesthetic might look restrictive, but its grid-free construction system – similar to the excellent, and more mechanically complex, Foundation – means your grand expansion plans can unfold in satisfyingly organic ways. Each of the five bucolic maps included in Town to City’s early access release are intended to invoke a sort of peaceful Mediterranean air, and by the time you’ve delved deep into its toybox of customisation options, and your creations are bustling with life, those boxy visuals pack in a surprising amount of charm.

Kudos, too, for a construction tool kit that manages to feel creatively flexible without ever being overwhelming. Sure, I’m already assembling a mental wishlist of additions I’d love to see – a path smoothing tool to counter my wobbly mouse hand, for instance – but this is still in early access development, after all. And honestly, I’ve been having a genuinely lovely time – to the tune of far too many hours, frankly – building my beautiful boxy dioramas, lost in a blissful daze of quaint market squares, picturesque parks around crystalline lakes, and palatial residences high on hills. And the well-featured camera tool has sucked up a decent amount of my time too.

Photo mode is pretty compelling too. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Galaxy Grove

Town to City might be in early access, but it already feels incredibly robust. Galaxy Grove seems to agree, too, given its Steam page suggests future updates will be more about refinement (and animals!) than dramatic reinvention. So if you’re also the kind of person to get an involuntary quiver at the merest mention of customisable window boxes, this’ll almost certainly be right for you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some flowers to stick in the ground.

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September 21, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Whisper of the House takes the cosy isometric decorating of Unpacking and unleashes it upon an entire town like an ultra-relaxing endless mode

by admin August 21, 2025

Unpacking is one of my favourite videogames, where you grab things out of boxes and neatly pop them around an isometric home. It’s pretty linear though—not a complaint, it needs to be to serve its excellent narrative—but I’ve longed for a similar game with fewer shackles ever since.

Whisper of the House is that exact game, if my time with its demo is anything to go by. It takes the same cosy isometric vibes with wee pixel art decor as Unpacking, but gives me that bit more freedom to decorate however I want.

(Image credit: GD Studio)

Instead of following one character’s life as told through the places they live, Whisper of the House plonks me in a town where I can rearrange both my own space and the spaces of villagers who reside there. I’m first tasked with getting my own place in order, before mail requests come through each morning from folk who want my help moving in.

A wee robot helps me pull items out of a moving box one by one, and I can rotate objects and place them on top of each other—plants that go on shelves, boxes that perch atop refrigerators, plushies that adorn an otherwise plain bedspread. Each location has multiple rooms, but I’m not actually confined to placing the objects inside each one.

Wanna stick a microwave in the hallway? A little weird, but sure thing. You’re the interior designer. Want to keep every photo in one specific location? You can easily bring items between rooms as you please. It’s not quite as tactile as Unpacking—I can’t open every single cupboard and drawer to store things out of sight, which bummed me out a little—but every item is gorgeously crafted with a wee description when you hover over it.

(Image credit: GD Studio)

There are some loose parameters around each villager request. My first job is the dog-loving Luna, and while I’m given free reign across most of her house, her one request is that I create a gallery of photos in her hallway. My second task is a little more out there, requiring me to literally go back in time and help my client clean up his move-in day mess, which I guess makes things better in the future. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but having to tidy up everything scattered across a tiny apartment broke up the standard “grab item from box, place item” pace.

One of my favourite little additions in Whisper of the House, though, is being able to roam around the town and rummage in various dumpsters for trinkets and doodads. I am an absolute clutter fiend in The Sims—if it doesn’t look majorly lived in, I don’t want it—so grabbing random Ramune bottles and snacks to adorn my tiny loft apartment with was a real treat.

Even more furniture can be unlocked through nabbing vouchers by completing tasks or picking them up out in the world and then spending them on decor loot boxes. Normally I’d much prefer to pick and choose items myself, but being given random pieces encouraged me to think outside the box and use items I would have normally condemned to my storage for all eternity.

The demo is pretty short overall, but thankfully it’s not a long wait to dip my toe into the full thing, as Whisper of the House launches on August 27.

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August 21, 2025 0 comments