Petit Planet preview: HoYoverse plays it safe with its first family-friendly game

HoYoverse — the studio behind Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail — is stepping well outside its comfort zone with Petit Planet, its first family-friendly game. Early impressions suggest it's a careful, by-the-book entry into a genre that's been crowding up fast.

The Animal Crossing influence is hard to miss. Petit Planet sits alongside a wave of life-sim-adjacent games — Heartopia, Pokopia, the returning Tomodachi Life — all chasing the same cozy, low-stakes energy that Nintendo's series made mainstream. HoYoverse's take doesn't appear to be pushing any boundaries, which is either reassuring or a little disappointing depending on what you're hoping for.

The preview author makes no secret of their Animal Crossing bias — New Horizons is framed as the defining game of the early 2020s, the one that carried people through lockdown. That context matters, because it explains why so many studios are still chasing that formula years later, and why Petit Planet feels like a deliberate, cautious move into proven territory rather than a bold new direction.

Whether HoYoverse's gacha and live-service DNA bleeds into Petit Planet — or whether the studio keeps it genuinely accessible for a younger audience — is the big open question heading into release.