Hands-on with Cozy Playtest is here, where I discuss several games I have had the pleasure of playtesting, this time I look at HOZY. You can find my other playtests here.
Hands-on with Cozy Playtests: HOZY
I was able to participate in the playtest for HOZY, which was developed by Come On Studio and published by tinybuild. It’s a game where you clean up very, very messy rooms, paint them and put furniture in them. It’s a single-player game, and I played on a PC. There is no controller support.
Let’s begin with the name – HOZY. I assume it’s a combination of cosy and house? If so, it’s spot on! The game starts with a mysterious statement made by an individual moving home to live with their parents again. They said something to the effect of “I hope two wrongs make a right”. What is the backstory of that statement? It wasn’t clear in the playtest, but hopefully it will be clear in the final game.
The Gameplay – Cleaning first
HOZY begins with you in a very messy room. You are given a list of tasks to complete and the tools to use. I often have difficulty understanding what to do when I start games, but this game was as clear as a bell; it was very intuitive. The first item on my list was to empty the trash in the room. That was quite satisfying!! Sometimes when I picked up too much trash at once, some of it fell to the ground. Very realistic.
Next up was to clean the windows because they were very dirty. I loved how the squeegee I used actually squeaked when I used it on the window. Plus, when I opened a window, I could either see leaves blowing in the breeze or I could hear a lot of city noise, birds singing, or dogs barking. I wonder if future rooms will have all different effects like this? In addition, as you cleaned the window, you could see sunlight appearing on the floor. What a great effect.
Then I was instructed to paint the walls. (I wish painting a room was this quick and easy in real life!!) I thought it was a really nice touch that my paintbrush needs to be reloaded with paint from time to time. Just like real-life painting. The last cleaning step was to mop the floor, and boy did that clean up nice!! I especially liked how the game literally crossed off the items you have completed. I love a list with everything crossed off!
Then the fun of decorating begins
After the room is clean, the boxes arrive! They are labelled with vague descriptions like “furniture, “big stuff” and “small stuff”. After you open each box, you can try to find a place in your room for the item. If a particular item does not spark joy, you can toss it into the void and move on without it.
The background music in the game is a bit jazzy and a bit relaxing. I really liked it! The game has no energy levels, no timers – nothing to upset the chill of cleaning and decorating. Kind of a mash-up of the power washer-type games and decorating games.
You can rotate your view of the room and also zoom in and out. That really helps when you are cleaning the trash out of the room and when you can’t find that one last piece! The level of detail on the items in your room is mind-blowing to me. It looks like a photograph.
Plus, there are actions beyond opening windows that you can perform. You can turn on a fan, which will make a breeze and cause your plant leaves and wind chimes to move. You can light your candles and electric lights. There are so many possible ways to breathe life into the room you’ve created.
I believe each level in HOZY will have the same gameplay loop since the playtest consisted of 2 rooms, and they both had the same loop. Clean, paint and decorate. It’s a very satisfying loop, though. In the second level, we are able to pick up more trash at once, so perhaps other tasks will get easier in future levels? I’m not sure. I also believe the final game will offer more color choices for wall paint.
I spent one hour playing the 2 playtest levels. The full game will have 10 levels. So by my estimate, it should offer at least 5 hours of playtime just playing through once. However, I believe HOZY will have a lot of replay value. Moving just one piece of furniture around can change the entire room.
Final Thoughts
I liked HOZY just as it is! It was quite intuitive; I knew right away what I was supposed to be doing. I did learn some things in the Discord group that were not immediately obvious to me. But it’s a lot of fun to redo a room, I wish it were that easy in real life! I imagine it would be a lot of fun to be in a group with other players and show off how you all decorated the same room with the same items, but in different ways. You can find the Steam page for HOZY here if you would like to Wishlist the game.
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