HoYoverse is no stranger to "shameless ripoff" allegations, having contended with Zelda: Breath of the Wild comparisons since Genshin Impact released its first trailer. Genshin, as it turns out, isn't very much like BOTW at all. But Petit Planet? Yeah, I feel pretty safe calling it a blatant Animal Crossing: New Horizons ripoff. How could I not when almost every moment of its opening few hours gave me vivid flashbacks of Tom Nook and his merry band of mortgage apologists?
I'm not talking 'vaguely similar' in the way every life sim with fishing and furniture is these days, but almost scene-for-scene, feature-for-feature familiar. The influence of Nintendo's mega hit starts immediately, as I take control of the only human inhabiting a tiny planet with lovable anthropomorphic animals. From there I set off on a familiar journey creating a character, choosing a terrain type for terraforming my tiny planet to my liking, having a campfire meal with my neighbors, acquiring tools, setting up a few houses, and eventually having a weird dream about an intergalactic being called Oumuamua. (K.K. Slider called, he wants his dreamscape debut back.)
