HANDS-ON: NetEase’s Floatopia feels like it could surpass Animal Crossing in a lot of ways

If there’s one type of game we certainly haven’t been short of in recent years, it’s the life sim.

The ongoing success of such series as Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon has always ensured a steady supply of similar games, but it really does feel like the 2020s have seen a surge of them, often with the latest buzzword ‘cosy’ attached.

While most of these have come and gone without causing tremors in the industry, a few have made their mark by offering something different (I’ll defend Disney Dreamlight Valley to the death). NetEase‘s Floatopia will hope it lands in the latter category, and the half hour I spent with it at Gamescom suggests it just might.

Blink and you’ll miss the surprisingly dark premise. Whereas Animal Crossing has you simply moving to a new village for a change of pace, your relocation in Floatopia is one made out of necessity. The world is about to be destroyed, as per the intro, which briefly shows a city being ravaged by earthquakes and tornadoes.

Realising that every cloud has a silver lining – in this case, one that’s literally in the clouds themselves – your character uses the planet’s imminent destruction as an excuse to escape to a floating island in the sky and start a new, significantly more chilled life there.

One of the twists that sets Floatopia apart from other life sims is that everyone on the island gets a superpower. The problem is, superpowers are given out on a first-come, first-served basis and so the initial villagers on your island moan that they were given underwhelming ones.

One character makes the air chilly when they get emotional, another has the ‘power’ of insomnia and is therefore always around no matter when you’re wandering the island, while another has the power to fit any item into a perfectly-sized shopping bag. Guess where she works.

The game’s art style is charming, making use of a sort of handcrafted look. The characters look like your typical ‘chibi’ types from a distance but when the camera zooms in on them (usually during dialogue) you can see they’re all actually little fuzzy dolls with Sylvanian Families-style flocked hair and skin.

This style extends to the buildings, which look like they’re made of cardboard. The shop is a fairly innocuous-looking building, but when you step inside it folds out to reveal a larger interior, where you can see the corrugated card in the walls keeping everything together.

“One character makes the air chilly when they get emotional, another has the ‘power’ of insomnia and is therefore always around no matter when you’re wandering the island”

The comparisons to Animal Crossing are inevitable, and can’t initially be ignored. After all, the game opens with the player being given a home and wandering around the village looking where to place it, and early tasks involve finding recipes which tell you which materials you need to craft specific items and furniture.

There are plenty of differences, however, that make Floatopia its own game and give it the potential to – whisper it – perhaps surpass Nintendo’s title in certain ways. For starters, one of the most tedious aspects of Animal Crossing is the daily collection of ingredients and items by shaking trees, picking things up and the like. Here you’re quickly given a loan of a vacuum cleaner which you can use to wander around the village, hoovering it all up a lot quicker.

There’s a slightly sillier feel through the game too, one that’s not exclusively limited to the characters having rubbish powers (though it should be pointed out that it looks like you can get better ones – the demo gives you the ability to fly around the island at one point, which is rather useful and certainly not as bad as those of your fellow islanders).

The dialogue is pleasantly daft (and the player can also choose what to say back), and there’s a more whimsical, fantasy-like vibe to proceedings. At one point you wake up and find that the insomniac character is sitting on a swing that’s hanging from the clouds, just because. Another day it just starts raining coins – when you ask what’s happening you’re told not to question it and just embrace it.

The island setting – not to mention the underlying ‘the world is doomed’ element, can’t forget that – also suggests more variety to come. The opening island is your typical idyllic, green paradise that bears more than a strong resemblance to the world of Tom Nook and chums, but the game’s trailer shows the player visiting other islands, such as one made out of food, and the developer promises there’ll be continual updates adding new environments to explore.

With this promise of future evolution, and an apparent heavier leaning towards plot than you see in Animal Crossing, it feels like Floatopia has the potential to go in its own direction and build its own unique following. It’s already got the charm nailed, let’s see how it fares long-term.

Floatopia is set for release in 2025 for PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PC and mobile.