I’ve played a lot of life sims but, as much as I love the routine of setting up a new life in a small town, I’ve started to find myself getting bored much faster than I used to. If there isn’t something to immediately sink its hooks into me, like a unique mechanic or a particularly whimsical world I can lose hours to, there’s a much higher chance of me bouncing off. Given how many life simulators are churned out each year it’s unsurprising but, for someone who has dedicated so much time to this one genre, it’s disappointing to feel that way.
Fortunately, the pastel-coloured, My Sims-esque world of Heartopia came along just as I felt myself disconnecting from life sims entirely. And, while it’s by no means perfect and there are a number of bugs (like the fact it keeps snowing inside of my house) I keep coming back each day to check in with my little avatar and see what quests are waiting and what daily rewards I can redeem. But, one feature of the game above all else is what keeps me so captivated in its world: the introduction of hobbies.
In a lot of the life simulators I’ve played in the past, you’re usually given the same few tasks to pass the time with: gardening, fishing, decorating, and cooking. You know, most of the things you’d do each day in real life to relax you, though I can’t say I’m particularly laid back when I have to cook. Heartopia on the other hand takes these activities one step further, adding seven different hobbies for you to make your way through rather than the usual suspects.
These do of course factor in the more traditional life simulator mechanics, so fret not: you still have fishing, gardening, and cooking. But, you’ve also got insect catching, cat caring, dog caring, and birdwatching—the hobby that made me exclaim quite loudly in excitement when I realised I could birdwatch as part of the game rather than walk around and point them out to myself and never do anything else with that information like I have in games in the past.
As you get set up in Heartopia, you’re given short tutorials involving one or two quests around these hobbies by various characters around the map. These introduce you to what the general activity involves and how you can get started, before leaving you to work away in your own time and upgrade your hobby when you fancy it. There’s no real rhyme or reason about which hobbies you should prioritise either, which gives you the freedom to only focus on the ones you like rather than having to slog through several units all about gardening or cooking.
The more time you spend completing tasks within these hobbies, such as cultivating crops and plants, or catching more bugs, the higher your hobby level will climb. Each time you complete a task you’ll earn proficiency points which can be used to upgrade your skills, and in return you’ll unlock important quality upgrades for things like fish, or crops.
While there are other things to do in Heartopia, like crafting and exploring the town while completing tasks for the residents, I very quickly became slightly obsessed with upgrading my hobbies whenever I had the opportunity to. There’s a lot of satisfaction in watching your avatar get even better at something so normal like cooking or gardening, despite there not being a huge payoff, but maybe that just goes to show that a life sim doesn’t always need a grand reward for it to be worthwhile. Sometimes all you need is a little reward like the promise of a general quality increase on your harvests to send you on your way.
I like to think this current setup makes way for more hobbies in the future of Heartopia too. As it currently stands, you can only increase your D.G. level to 12 to unlock all of the available hobbies. But, there’s nothing to suggest this won’t be added to later down the line, and given how invested I already am in my virtual day-to-day life, I can’t wait to inevitably spend even more time with tasks I could quite easily do in real life but choose not to.
