I played this game A TON in the past days (when it released on PC through TapTap and Mobile).

Let's get the bad out of the way: the PC controls are BAD. They need a big quality pass for the camera controls, advanced building mode etc. And they need to add controllers controls.

Setting the controls aside, i have enjoyed this game so much as an online cozy game and easily made a lot of friends by just living in this little cute world.
It has elements that i wish Palia had, because in Heartopia you get paired with other random players for each login and you see their houses in the world, not instanced away.
So you can visit them, water their flowers (to give them bonuses), heart them, hang out with them and its just fun.

The houses in Heartopia, once you unlock advanced building mode, are built piece by piece and expanded with plots as you progress: you can have a giant mansion and build it how you want it, full of furnitures that you unlock in game.

I don't like Gacha cosmetics, but to be fair in Heartopia there are soooo many items to unlock with normal in game gold by just playing the game that i didn't feel the need to spend real money at all (aside of 3€ for the montly sub).

I suggest you get past the questionable PC controls and play the game, give it a little time as you unlock more and more features as you play, and there are a lot of them.

You can adopt pets, train and play with them (they hang out in your house!), catch bugs, cook, plant crops, tend to animals around the world, build your nice house, play public events like sea fishing by traveling with a boat with other people, group bug catching and much more.
Each day you get different set of clothes and furnitures in the towns shop, and after a few days you will have adorable features unlock like the drawing one, which allows you to draw pixel art in game, then apply it to furnitures, put it on picture frames (you can also put other in game photos there), and sew it on clothes to wear.

Or the book writing feature.. You get a desk with a PC to put in your house and you can sit there, then it opens a text editor to write your book! You can put pictures taken in game or drawn, choose a cover, write and format the test in chapters. Then you can publish the book and make it public, it will then get sold in the game library to other players. You can also hold the book in your hands in game and read it anywhere. Absolutely adorable.

The online is nice as it feels pretty seamless as you get paired with random players or friends. I had many cute moments, like a player sitting on the porch of my house, so i went and cooked some food for them. Then i could share it with the share button which offers them the plate and they eat to recover energy. After that we added each others as friends, i had many little moments like these that are fun.

I have been enjoying Heartopia a lot despite the bad PC controls, so if you like cozy games you should at least try it for a bit in my opinion.

I want to be clear in saying that I really do enjoy Heartopia. It has a very cute and easygoing vibe that is a lot of fun to wind down for a few hours at the end of the day. Right now, the biggest thing keeping me from recommending it is that the PC version feels like an afterthought.

Everything is formatted and served to you as if it were going to be played on your phone. Build mode camera is aggrivating with no clear way to swap between the X,Y, and Z-Axis, making it frustrating to use the free/advanced build mode. Looking up controls for the camera leads me to recommendations to "pinch" for zooming in and out. For obvious reasons, this does not work on a computer.

A small, nitpicky issue is also that all the text will prompt you to tap or otherwise use your finger. This doesn't impact gameplay but indicates a lack of polish that I think was not given to the PC port. It shows, at least to me, that proper attention wasn't really given to the difference in platforms.

By far the worst issue though is the lack of controller support. I and many others probably wanted to be able to play this handheld. It's a huge disappointment that there is no controller support, walling me out from using my steam deck completely. There's no reason why this shouldn't have controller support.

The game is cute but the controls are absolutely diabolical and unplayable... please add controller support!!!