Game: Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit
Genre: Puzzle, Adventure, Simulation, Lifestyle, Indie
System: Nintendo Switch/Switch 2 (Also on Netflix Games, Steam (Windows), Xbox One/X/S and PS4/5)
Developer | Publisher: Spry Fox | The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
Age Rating: US Everyone | EU 3+
Price: US $19.99 | UK £17.99 | EU € 19,99
Release Date: July 15th, 2026
Review code used, with many thanks to ICO Partners.
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit started as a Netflix exclusive in June 2024. When Spry Fox re-established themselves as an independent studio, they were able to launch this second entry in the Cozy Grove series across PC and consoles.
As a newcomer to the series, this is my first enrolment as a Spirit Scout, so let’s see how good I am at keeping the campfire burning!
Welcome to Camp Spirit
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit starts with a group of Spirit Scouts standing around a campfire, getting ready to leave on the bus. Before they do, they gather for a group photograph. This is the opportunity to customise your Spirit Scout. If you played the original Cozy Grove, the selection will be very familiar. There are eight skin tones, twelve eye colours, and nine hairstyles, each with four colour variants. This offers enough to get started, and you can change skin tone and eye colour from within the game. You’ll also have plenty of opportunities to buy additional clothes, accessories, and wigs, and occasionally you might receive some as a reward.
Your character repeats the Spirit Scout oath, with you choosing the tone of the recital, be that confident, whispered or bored. Climbing aboard the bus, the troop start singing, and before long you drift to sleep. You suddenly wake up to find yourself alone next to a wrecked bus.
To introduce you to the basics, Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit starts with a play-and-learn tutorial. Tips appear above your character and the controls are prominently displayed around the screen, as they are throughout the game. I was never left in any doubt as to which buttons to use!
A quick wander, and you’ll soon find the campfire, Flamey, who will guide you through your Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit adventure. Flamey provides a circle of warmth, which pushes back some of the dark forest surrounding the area, and encourages you to see who else might be drawn towards the light and warmth of the fire.
If, by chance, you roam in the wrong direction, a guiding arrow appears showing you where the first ghost bear is located. Orsina, a Spirit Scout herself, sets various tasks to work out whether you are imaginary or real. To start, she’ll test your fire tending skills, asking you to find and feed a spirit log to Flamey. She’ll introduce the hint dispenser, which helps with locating quest items, before sending you on another task to find Bradley, rewarding you with a shovel.
And so begins your excursion into Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit.
A Spirit Scout’s Role
The main role of a Spirit Scout is to carry out acts of kindness for the ghost bears to enable them to find peace. When a ghost bear first appears, or at the start of a main quest, they will appear as a blue, ethereal being.
Completing their request, generally some sort of fetch quest, will encourage them to share some of their memories, maybe hand over a spirit log, and spread colour around their area. Not all of the requests can be completed in the current day, as it might require purchasing an item from the shop, waiting for letters, or simply because the bear is not ready to ask for more help.
The spirit logs can be fed to Flamey, and once he is full (the number required varies), he will burn with a blue flame and clear away some of the dark forest surrounding Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, revealing another ghost bear to help.
The Day in the Life of a Spirit Scout
The initial quests will teach you about the different activities within Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, like power washing (a particular favourite of mine), bug catching, mining or fishing. You might need to dig artefact spots, collect shells, rustle through piles of leaves, hack down shrubbery, or even try your hand at skipping stones or dowsing. There is a lot to keep you busy!
New discoveries can be given to Tallow, filling her cabinet of curiosities. With each donation, you are rewarded with coins, and maybe a gem or recipe. If you like collecting, you can also work towards various different scout badges.
Soon you’ll be able to cook food, craft decorations, and use lamps to spread Flamey’s light around the island. Other decorations can be used to help trees, bushes and flowers bloom, according to their preferences. Placing decorations is simple, as no-go areas are clearly shown in red. I enjoyed the challenge of getting the right combination of decorations to make the plants flourish, although I did struggle to line myself up with the plant to harvest it.
It’s not only botanicals which have preferences. Pets, such as birds, lagomorphs, deer or indoor cats, all have their likes and dislikes. The cats are particularly fussy about décor, with most only liking one specific type, and they all dislike other cats. This makes placing more than one tricky unless you upgrade your tent, so you have multiple rooms.
Pets, like the imps which roam around Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, will get hungry and ask for certain items. All pets will want some sort of cooked food, and after five meals, the pets will grow from young to adult, and after even more food, finally become mature. You are rewarded with different resources, which are used in recipes for décor and cooking.
Yes, you can pet the animals and give a hug to some of the ghost bears!
The Bugbear in the Cozy Grove
If you read Paula’s review of the first Cozy Grove, you’ll know that there is a limitation as to how much of the main story can be progressed in each real-world day. Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is no different in that regard, with around four to seven spirit logs available from day two onwards. Day one is around three times longer, collecting over 20 spirit logs.
Whether this is an issue depends on your gaming style. Generally, I played for 1.5 hours per day (nearly 3 hours for day one). This time included playing through the available main story quests, carefully reading the narrative, collecting resources, feeding the pets, harvesting the plants and trees, and occasionally cooking dishes to give to Tallow, buying new pets and making them happy in their environment, or placing lamps to spread the light. It did not include excess bug collecting or fishing, or doing activities just for the sake of spending time in Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit. A couple of the days were shorter, and it felt disappointing at 40 minutes.
I also tried the speed run approach; focusing on the main storyline to collect the spirit logs, skipping through all the narrative, and only collecting needed resources. This approach took 20 minutes (about 40 minutes for day one).
Another aspect of Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit which might not appeal is the guidance. If you pause for more than a couple of seconds, then a black bar appears on screen, reminding you of the controls. The quest log details where to search for an item, even though you have the hint dispenser if required, as well as other options as you progress. In addition, pink arrows appear pointing in the direction of an interaction. It can feel a bit overbearing at times.
With so many resources, different fruit and flowers, managing your inventory can be challenging, especially when you don’t know what might be needed at a later date. You can buy more backpack slots and upgrade your tent to get more storage, and although it’s relatively cheap to do so initially, the upgrade costs do rocket. Luckily, clothing is stored separately in the closet, which has a very generous starting space. There are chests available to buy, but the cost far exceeded my purse! Personally, I thrived on this aspect of converting surplus into crafting materials or décor, and carefully managing each storage slot, but I appreciate it’s not for everyone.
Controls and Options for Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit
The controls for Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit are clearly displayed on screen. The text can be clearly read on the Switch Lite, and there is full touchscreen functionality.
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is available for both the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, with a free Switch 2 upgrade pack if you transition to the newer hardware. For this review, I played on three Nintendo Switch variants, and whilst Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit runs relatively smoothly on the Nintendo Switch 2, I encountered a lot of juddering on the Nintendo Switch/Switch Lite, especially during longer gaming sessions. Fortunately, restarting the console lessened the issues.
A manual save is available in Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, alongside its autosaving. There is only one game instance per user. Time passes in real time, although there is a setting to force the graphics to perpetual daylight or night.
Conclusion
There is so much to salute in Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit: the graphics are super cute, and there are lots of different activities to explore. Although I was initially apprehensive about the daily limit, I’ve only craved more fresh content a couple of times so far. I’ll continue stoking the campfire for a while, as I want to know more about each of the adorable ghost bears.
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit comes close to receiving our top ranking. However, struggling to select the right item to harvest or examine, combined with the performance dip on the original Switch, just marred my overall enjoyment.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot 
Do you like our content?
Subscribe to our daily news and never miss a review!