Life Sim Floatopia’s Humor May Help It Carve a Unique Cozy Corner
Restart spoke with Floatopia’s lead writer about the escapism, comedy, and “useless superpowers” of the upcoming Animal Crossing contender.
Posted 2 months ago
Animal Crossing: New Horizons offered many of us a much needed digital escape during 2020. A chance to connect with friendly faces and enjoy a sense of community, even if only with a mummified dog named Lucky. Floatopia hopes to hook onto that lingering urge for a lovely getaway, though it does so with far more explicit escapism.
In the intro to my short hands-on session with Floatopia at Gamescom 2024, I was shown a cutscene of a woman trudging drearily through her day-to-day life. Someone numbed by exhausting and unfulfilling workdays. Then, an invitation to Floatopia. An island escape that, it isn’t quite made clear, may exist purely in her imagination, built from the dolls she crafts in her free time. In either case, I was soon plopped onto my own island in the sky, designing an adorable character for a breezy life in a land of sustained soft focus.
We're not sure all of those vehicles have been rated for air travel!
©NetEase
Escaping to Floatopia
After spending some time setting up the foundations of a house, collecting some basic resources, and getting to know the handful of starting locals, I was able to speak with Floatopia’s lead writer Anne Pang. Nintendo’s beloved franchise looms ominously over Floatopia's core premise. As such, I was eager to know how the in-development life sim hopes to differentiate itself from the likes of Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, and to learn why the game opens with a notably dark reflection on the real world.
“We realized that in today's society there are a lot of social conflicts and economic pressure,” Pang says. “So we want our players to escape from that world to a joyful and humorous world where the players can get healed on a leisurely journey. We hope that our players can get into their own zone, their own story, and create their own life in this world. So we have many scenarios where we show a real-life scene.
“The main message we want to convey to our players is that no matter what kind of bad things you experience [during] the day, you can still have a joyful day on Floatopia. And to embark on a new adventure, a new journey where you can say goodbye to all the bad things.”
Useless superpowers
Recognition of the less glamorous realities of life is one of the ways Floatopia looks to distinguish itself tonally. But rather than acting to dampen the mood, it’s an ingredient folded into the idyllic island through humorous touches. Each of Floatopia’s residents bears their own unique ability, referred to as a “useless superpower.”
Joy, the tutorial character who offers your introduction to the world, suffers from permanent insomnia. She’s eternally dazed and run down. But her inability to sleep also makes her reliable. No matter what time of day you choose to play, you can be sure she’ll be awake and around to help out.
Floatopia's buildings and environments immediately evoke Animal Crossing.
©NetEase
“Our idea is to get our players to make use of these ‘useless superpowers,’ to make extraordinary value or words out of an ordinary thing,” Pang explains.
The other resident we’re introduced to is Mystica, a gothic lady with an icy personality. A trait that, in Floatopia, can have a literal impact on her environment.
“She can create a so-called creepy atmosphere,” says Pang. “When she gets emotional, she triggers that superpower and she can affect the temperature around her and around you, if you are there as well. It seems very useless, but you can use this superpower to freeze fish, or meat, or something, which you can also get from the cloud river.”
Crafting life and laughter
Small touches of wry humor were dotted throughout the cutscenes and writing in the snippet of gameplay I tried. Each element was conveyed with impressive timing and delivery. As anyone who’s watched their share of dubbed shows will attest, that’s no simple feat to achieve across multiple languages. But it’s an area the Floatopia team is giving particular focus.
There's a soft-edged, dreamlike quality to all the visuals in Floatopia.
©NetEase
“Our team are not native English speakers,” says Pang. “So there are many cultural gaps they faced in the developing stages. We have two methods of improving the development at the language level. First of all, we have very immersive research on the cultural gaps. We have team members from Japan, from America, who provide us enormous help. Secondly, we have a very professional translator team. We have many rounds of interviews so that we find the right translator for that specific language.”
The team is also running playtests to gather feedback from international audiences, ensuring that they understood jokes and felt they landed appropriately.
My time with Floatopia at Gamescom was fleeting at best. And the opening steps I saw took clear inspiration from Animal Crossing’s early stages. As such, it’s not yet possible to assess how well it’ll stand apart from contenders in the cozy genre. There’s also the lurking specter of free-to-play gacha systems to contend with. Without being able to see how they integrate, it’s difficult to know just how much of an escape from our real lives (and finances) Floatopia will offer. But my short session was enough to show that the developers clearly have a lot of love for the genre, and are eager to stir their own mix of dry and mildly dark humor into the cozy cake.
“Our team, for game design and script writing, they have an enormous passion [for] life simulation cozy games,” Pang says. “They are gamers themselves, and we hope that we can add some new features to this genre of games or make some special contributions to that.”
Our thanks to Anne Pang, the NetEase team, and their translators for taking the time to speak with us about Floatopia. Catch up on more Gamescom coverage with our interview about card-based FPS FragPunk!
