Floatopia Hands-On Preview: Animal Crossing meets superpowers in the sky

At Gamescom, the Gamereactor crew got to check out a lot of games. High-octane action fests, plenty of hacking, slashing, looting, and shooting. However, we also managed to get a chance to play some cosier games. The titles that let you take a breath between appointments, where you didn't want to leave because for just a few short minutes, you had found a semblance of peace amongst the chaos spreading outside a stuffy little booth.

That's the experience I had with Floatopia, the new life-sim from NetEase. If you've not yet seen the trailer from Opening Night Live, Floatopia essentially takes the cutesy, cartoonish characters of Animal Crossing and jettisons them off into the sky. It bases itself around the idea of giving up the grind, the 9-5, for a permanent holiday experience in the sky.

When you first land on your island, you'll be greeted by Joy, a sleepy secretary who doesn't embody her name by any means. She explains that you, like other like-minded folk on this island and the surrounding islands, have all grown fed up of work, and have decided to make a new life here. You'll be given a plan for your new mini-house, as well as a couple of tools and tips to help you get started from the eccentric businessman who's in charge of this new, floating society.

Oh, also I should mention the superpowers in this game. Floatopia takes place in a world where a company has the power to grant people their own super abilities. However, due to popular demand, most of the best powers have been taken, and so the powers you'll see and your own ability is quite lacklustre. It better suits the atmosphere of Floatopia for your power simply to be expression lines appearing atop your head whenever you experience a strong emotion rather than having laser beams shoot from your eyes or you be able to teleport anywhere.

You still get to fly, though. Early on, you'll be granted a gizmo that lets you up and fly wherever you please, meaning you can find your way more easily around the elevated landscapes of Floatopia, and jump to islands that are off in the distance. You fly more like a bumblebee than Superman, but once again it's all part of that aesthetic and charm of Floatopia, which comes across very well even to someone who's rarely a fan of this overly cutesy Chibi look.

In our short time with the game, we didn't get to experience much. Floatopia is the type of game you're going to lose hours and days to. Fishing, flying, decorating your home, it's all part of the process, but there's a lot here that made Floatopia feel unique as a life sim. The superpowers, relationships that you build with your fellow floating island residents, and the fact that money simply falls from the sky (wouldn't that be nice). It all adds up to make an experience that is mechanically familiar for anyone who knows life sims, but will be stylistically different in a lot of ways. Considering how pressurised the modern day working environment can feel, it's a strong choice to provide some escapism from that in Floatopia, even if we only got to experience it for a brief period of time.

Overall, Floatopia feels like a game that'll perfectly slot in among other life sims, designed for an audience I can't say I'm a part of. One that adores just sitting back and relaxing in a world unlike their own, building their own little house and making friends along the way. It's the ideal experience, really, and perhaps if I get the time, I wouldn't mind settling back in Floatopia.