“Welcome to Loftia, a cozy, multiplayer world where you can build towards a brighter, more sustainable future! Connect with friends both old and new, to farm, craft, explore, decorate, and create a meaningful impact – together.” – Steam Description

Loftia is a cozy lifesim MMO. It’s not a genre I would have expected to really take off, but we are seeing like 3? in this 6 month span alone. We had Loftia this week and in two weeks we are getting Spirit Crossing which is marketing itself as the MMO for the Introvert. I never played Sky: Children of the Light, but I watched my partner play it. I couldn’t understand it, she would just go around with her friends and collect candles. Surely that can’t be a game, right? Well anyway I am here to eat some crow because apparently the Life Sim MMO Genre was made for me. Loftia has the right ingredients of farming, gathering, exploring, and (most importantly) decorating that became an All-I-Can-Eat buffet. I wasn’t even going to pick Loftia up, I turned my nose up at it, but I ended it buying it late Tuesday night (Nov 3rd the day it launched) on a whim and in the last 5 days (at time of writing) I have sunk 50 hours into the game. Listen to me, I stopped basically all non-essential tasks around the house and in my life so I could farm tomatoes and basil on repeat for 50 hours. This game consumed me and even now I am taking breaks to log back in when my crops should be done growing because I need to be on cycle for efficiency. It’s a problem.

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Gliding Through Life

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You start in Loftia city. You gather resources and get acquainted with the NPCs that live there. The main story has you investigating these strange earthquakes that are causing a lot of destruction. From there you are tasked with rebuilding and helping the citizens reclaim the lands and making improvements so they can better understand the cause of the earthquakes. This journey takes you through three very distinct islands each with different aesthetics, resources and even their own districts. You will always come back to Loftia City as it is the main island. From there you will have access to the Dome, which the community is in the process of rebuilding at the time of this review. Rebuilding the dome requires submitting resources, either crafted or gathered, or breaking a certain number of nodes. It is very reminiscent of rebuilding the Firmament in Final Fantasy XIV’s Ishgardian Restoration event back in 2019. Because each zone feels so unique, the game feels large. You feel like you really are traveling to different islands and it’s interesting to see how the NPCs living on that island are using the space and interacting with their environment. The developers did a great job of making the places feel lived in and that the islands aren’t just copy pasted with different backdrops.

When you’re tired of the solo grind or running through the story quests, you have a few options. Every hour you can partake in an event at the community farm if you manage to make it to the sign ups. Only 10 people can participate and they got live at minute 55 of every hour so a lot of us were posting up and playing with the bounce ball from minute 50 and on. There is also a treasure hunt that can happen on any of the 3 islands once you have them unlocked where you collect shiny gathering points. They are the normal ones like Clay, Grass, Berries, etc., that you’d normally see but the ones for the event in that particular district just sparkle. You can use this event to get purple keys to open chests you might find in the wild or in your dungeon dives.

You can also take part in “Adventures” which act very similar to World of Warcraft‘s Island Expeditions if you played during the Battle for Azeroth expansion. You are transported to an instanced island and you are given 4 minutes to complete a random assortment of tasks. Some of the tasks can be done solo such as repairing a tower with your trusty hammer, but others require teamwork like spinning and realigning an antenna. There are also some mini-dungeons which are jump puzzles for 1-2 players or other puzzle activities. It’s a nice change of pace and you can only get certain cosmetics from doing them so if you’re a completionist you’ll definitely not want to miss them. Also, you’re given a currency for each completed task which you will need to progress your House island. Be careful though, the Adventures do not care how far you have progressed in the game so if you start doing them as soon as you unlock them, you may not have the tools to complete some tasks. Make sure to use the chat function to communicate with your party!

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Eat Your Heart Out FFXIV

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Imagine you want to play with Final Fantasy XIV’s expansive housing system. You’ve been throwing your name into the housing lottery for weeks maybe months and you are no closer to being a homeowner. Now! Imagine there was a game with a similar decorating system except that you are given the house off the rip. That’s right, welcome to Loftia baybeyyyyy. You are given a house, sure a little basic. In the housing tutorial you are guided through crafting a few basic items, a table, a chair, a bed. After that, though? The game just says “Here you go!” You will soon be able to help the carpenter NPC in town get “inspired” and she will unlock new housing items for you to craft in different styles. If crafting ain’t your bag, you can buy them from her after you have inspired her instead. Once you have the furniture almost all of them can be painted to match your color or aesthetic. For instance, I am using some rugs that I painted a rock-like gray to be stepping stones in my yard because they developers haven’t let me had walking paths yet.

There’s even an NPC who will let you purchase different housing types and a different island. In the beta and some earlier playtests, there were also different island sizes. Those were not available at launch and I think I know why as a story reason, but you’ll have to play through it to see what I mean. I kept my island the base one but I did change my house. I have been spending a lot of time trying to craft my house as I like it, and I’m still not done! There is one furniture set that I am missing access to which is preventing me from being satisfied fully (for now.)

Every time that you load into your house, you are put in a random neighborhood. A neighborhood is just 4 players and if you are friends with people in game you can visit their neighborhoods. It’s really a nice sense of community walking over to your temporary neighbors and seeing how they have their houses laid out, or gardens set up. I have sat on benches just having conversations with my neighbors about their playtime and ideas for their houses for improvements.

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Dripping with Style

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Another big draw to an MMO for me (or any game really,) is cosmetics. If you’ve read any review by me for a game that has cosmetics, I can usually be found ranting and raving about it. Loftia is no different. Just like how you can inspire the Carpenter NPC to unlock more furniture options to craft or purchase, you can inspire the Tailor NPC to do the same. Just like the furniture, you can dye the clothing different colors. You can choose different tops, bottoms, hats, accessories so you’re not locked into a full set or anything (notable exception is the pajama onesie but.. that should be obvious. I’m sure there are others.)

The developers have shared a lot of the different aesthetics and references they use for designing the clothing and outfit types/themes. While a lot of them are not my style, I still love to see the art direction, the passion and the love that the artists are putting into them.

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• Graphics– Really cute artstyle that works for 97% of the game. A lot of the characters look like children because of the nature of the chibi style which is fine EXCEPT for some of the NPCs who are supposed to be elderly.
• Gameplay– This is such an addicting loop. I could not stop playing even after I completed the main story. There is always just another resource to gather, another plant to harvest, another piece of furniture to craft. I was perpetually stuck in “Just one more thing.”
• Sound– Sound design was fine, notification sounds were a little annoying when I was spam cooking but I am not sure that it was meant to be done in this way. Satisfying fishing reels, satisfying mining clinks.
• Controls– Controls worked as you’d expect.
• Story– The story surprised me, it was written well and it lays the groundwork for where the Loftia story is going. I won’t spoil it for you here, but it left off in a way that made me excited to play more when new content drops,