Cozy Grove, by developer Spry Fox and publisher The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild, is another entry into the life sim games that have taken the industry by storm. With this, it’s impossible to talk about Cozy Grove without also talking about the genre giant that is Animal Crossing. The game follows much of the same gameplay experiences as others in its genre, such as forging for items, fishing, crafting, and interacting with your friendly neighborhood wild animals (although with a spookier and more fantastical twist). Despite its similar flavors to its wildly successful older cousin (Animal Crossing), the gameplay often feels like it lacks substance, but the charm of the art direction and quirky characters might keep players revisiting their haunted humble abode with each passing day.
You play as a “spirit scout,” which is basically an extremely competent child that can summon sentient campfires and does things like mining, fishing, cooking – pretty much everything you shouldn’t do without adult supervision. A spirit scout’s main goal is to help lost souls. Gameplay wise, this usually involves completing quests by finding, buying, or crafting lost items. In return, the ghosts give you “spirit logs” that you can feed to your aforementioned sentient campfire to reveal more of the island and its inhabitants.
Following in the steps of its predecessors, there are only so many tasks to do in one day within Cozy Grove; you’ll have to come back the next day for more stuff to do. This gameplay loop is designed to give the player a stress-free experience, and even goes as far as to not require the player to return daily. However, in the process, the game loses the substance it really needed to continuously coax me to play regularly. For some players, the structure of the quest-based gameplay might be a welcomed change as it shortens the endless list of chores usually prevalent in life sim games to a digestible amount each day. For me, the effect was a lack of motivation to do anything beyond completing my short list of daily quests, and with the tasks themselves becoming more and more repetitive with each passing day, it just felt like there wasn’t much to do at all.
A major distinction from Animal Crossing is Cozy Grove’s focus on story. As the player completes quests given by your spectral neighbors, you unlock bits of their back story. This idea of weaving story elements to give the game a sense of mystery is compelling, yet the story is given in such tiny bites that it often feels like you’re progressing at a snail’s pace. The game’s sense of progress for a player is determined by progressing in the story vs. simply completing routine tasks like mining, forging, or fishing. For these reasons, the completionist in me didn’t feel as motivated to fish every fish I saw and shake all the fruit trees that ripened as I did in Animal Crossing. Some players might find that lack of self-motivated routine to be a relief, “thank god for not fishing all the fish!” one might say, but seeing as much of the gameplay is based around fishing the fish and shaking the trees, it again reinforces the idea that “there is not many things of interest to do in Cozy Grove”
This story element does serve to create more compelling characters whose warm dialogue and depth are much welcomed. The dialogue is whimsical, witty, and even a little morbid at times making up a wholly interesting cast of characters. I really do like the characters, so I’m sad to say that despite the great dialogue, they feel more “NPC” at times than Animal Crossing’s villagers. This is probably because the characters tend to be less great at pretending that they have their own lives and routines as they are fond of standing in their corner of the island and not really saying anything of interest until you do their quests.
The art and sound design are solid elements of Cozy Grove. The detailed environment is both Cozy Grove’s greatest asset and its most terrible liability. The frame rate on the switch is very disappointing, breaking up the most wondrous moments with the game into a slide show. When nothing fancy is happening on screen, the performance is (usually) just fine. I also encountered a recurring bug within the game involving misplacing items that was very, very frustrating. Beyond those technical flaws, it is no doubt a visually stunning game underscored by cozy soft tunes that give warmth to the game’s atmosphere.
Cozy Grove has some great ideas on how to create the healing properties of a modern life-sim but does not quite deliver on executing some of those ideas in a satisfying way. Despite how harsh I’ve been on this game, it’s really a heartwarming game with many elements that Animal Crossing fans would love. For those that love the atmospheric escapism and the short, but therapeutic daily sessions, Cozy Grove could be a wonderfully enjoyable experience for you.
Score: 6.5/10
Check Out the Cozy Grove Trailer:
Cozy Grove is available for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC via Steam and Epic Games Store, and Apple Arcade.
For more information, please visit: cozygrovegame.com
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/3sovkd1
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