Game: Cozy Grove
Genre: Adventure, Simulation, Puzzle, Lifestyle
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, PS4, Xbox One & iOS)
Developers | Publishers: Spry Fox | The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
Age Rating: US E10+ | EU 3+
Price: US $14.99 | UK £10.99 | EU € 13,99
Release Date: April 8th, 2021
No review code used, I purchased the game myself.
Cozy Grove is a life-sim game about camping on a haunted, ever-changing island. We published an article on Cozy Grove last month when the game was announced for the Switch and you can find that here.
Become a Spirit Scout
In Cozy Grove, you play as a Spirit Scout that’s sent to an abandoned, haunted island in order to soothe the spirits of local ghosts, who just so happen to be animals. Many spirits, such as a merchant who is a fox, a stranded seagull and a ranger who is a bear and more.
Bring Colour to the Island
When you begin, the island is full of sepia tones, but as you explore and complete tasks for the spirits each day, vibrant colours return to the world. The ghosts can’t pass on until they come to terms with something in their past lives, so you’ll need to restore the island and help them find their way to the afterlife. Each islander has a series of hearts over their heads, empty at first. The hearts fill up as you complete pieces of their story. To do that you talk with them, complete quests, and learn who they are.
You’ll find objects that you can log with a sailor bird spirit on the island, who will then give you rewards and document the items for you. As your inventory and storage at your camp are limited, you might find yourself with too many items anyway. There are coins to be earned, the ability to upgrade your camp, and a shop that has new items every day for you to take a look at and sometimes buy.
Chat to the Sentient Campfire
Your helper is a campfire. A spirit-sensitive sentient campfire called Flamey, who constantly wants to eat spirit wood which you get from the ghosts for completing quests. Aside from doing the quests, you can catch fish, gather fruit, collect seashells, and craft new tools and items to decorate your campsite.
The ghosts will ask for very specific things, like finding some lost earmuffs or catching a particular fish for dinner. You can be asked to find an item, that is hidden in the surroundings, making some of the quests feel more like you are playing a hidden object game.
You can do a handful of these tasks each day. Doing so will earn you some spirit wood, which you then feed to your campfire, and the island will grow. There are only a certain amount of Spirit logs you can collect in a day, Flamey will let you know how many you can collect so when there’s zero he will be like ‘okay that’s it for today, come back tomorrow.
Compared to Animal Crossing
Cozy Grove has been compared to Animal Crossing, and in a way, I can see that in the game too, it also reminds me of Spiritfarer. Catching bugs, fishing and listening to the islanders is similar to AC. Though there isn’t a day or night cycle, you can craft furniture and place it around your tent, a tent which you can not enter. But I think that’s where the similarities stop as far as I can see. The decorating of your camp is very limited, the furniture is for decoration only as you can’t use it.
Check Back Tomorrow
I enjoyed speaking to the quirky spirits to learn more about the island and complete various fetch quests for them. As Cozy Grove runs in real-time, you’re able to pop into the game each day to speak to the islanders and receive new tasks. However, since the game runs on this system, there’s only so much story-related stuff you can do each day.
Each day’s activities are about 30-45 minutes long, and you’re meant to come back day after day to do what you can as the story slowly progresses. Sure, you can fish and hunt for resources, but that only lasts for so long. Certainly, you can keep grinding these things but it all seems kind of pointless especially when the main objective is put on hold for the next day.
40+ Hour Campaign!??
Developers Sry Fox says the Cozy Grove has a “40+ hour campaign filled with side quests, designed to span months of playtime”. Well, there would be months of gameplay if you are limited by the game to only be able to play as short as 45-60 mins or so a day. I understand the concept of making you take your time, but surely that should be the players choice to decide when they have finished playing. I love Animal Crossing and can happily play it for hours on end, but I don’t get that same feeling when playing Cozy Grove as I know I’m going to be told very soon to “check back tomorrow”.
To me, this feels like the developers are padding the game out, they don’t have enough content to keep you busy. By adding a “check back tomorrow” they hope it will prolong the game, and you’ll be playing the game months from now. That might work for a while, but I’m sure the novelty of it will wear off quickly with most gamers, especially when their next new game purchase lets them play for as long as they want. And if I wanted a playtime limit imposed on me I would be playing mobile games with micro transactions!
Visuals and Controls
Cozy Grove art style is dense with detail and colour. I like how the game looks, especially once you have helped a ghost and the colour returns to the island. The music is lovely and chilled and relaxing to listen to.
As you move across the island, trees, rocks, and objects fade in and out of the scene, making it slightly easier to search the landscape. However, since everything becomes transparent, it can be hard to tell where you can walk and where you can’t. My little character has gotten stuck in the environment on more than one occasion.
The game has a fixed camera which makes setting furniture down exactly where you want it to go a little difficult.
Cozy Grove has had an update since it was launched, with a few bug fixes and such. Unfortunately, this hasn’t changed too much of the performance of the game on the Switch. There is the odd shudder of the frame rate and the game will pause slightly for a second or so during playing. I do wonder at times whatever happened to days of making sure your game worked properly before it is released to the public. Anyway, Cozy Grove is controlled by the joy-cons and that works as it should.
Conclusion
This is a game that won’t be for all. Those that do not like being told they can “check back tomorrow” should probably steer clear. The game is quite cute, the artwork is lovely and helping the bear-like islanders is a lot of fun. It does look like the developer is intent on keeping on top of the game performance on the Switch, by continuing to release updates for the game.
Cozy Grove is perfect for someone with a short amount of time to spend on games each day. I would have gone for I Like It a Lot if it weren’t for the limited gameplay per day. As it is now, I can only give it….
Final Verdict: I Like It 
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