Real-Time Social Simulator
Developer/Publisher: Spry Fox LLC
PlayStation 4
When I first heard about Cozy Grove I thought it was going to be like Don’t Starve by way of Lumberjanes (and thus without the constant fear of death) and I was immediately on board despite that I’ve never been able to get into Don’t Starve. It wasn’t until reading the press email from developer Spry Fox that I realized it was in fact much closer to Animal Crossing by way of Lumberjanes, and that got me more on board. As I started playing my excitement was tempered somewhat by a fair number of flaws, but there are still enough positives to make it a relaxing and enjoyable foray into the digital wilderness.
In Cozy Grove, players assume the role of a Spirit Scout whose solo camping trip accidentally lands them on the extremely haunted island of Cozy Grove. After customizing their appearance and setting up a campsite/home for their friendly fire spirit Flamey, the protagonist takes things in stride by promptly speaking to and helping the first ghost they meet – which, as with all but one of the other ghosts, is an extremely rectangular bear. Helping ghosts in Cozy Grove typically means foraging to either find a lost item or craft something to give to the ghost and jog their fractured memories a little more. Once you help a ghost, they give you a spirit log to feed to Flamey and power them up, at which point you’re done with that particular ghost until the next day, measured by a real-time clock. As Flamey consumes more spirit logs and grows more powerful more of the island is revealed, along with more ghosts to meet and provide assistance to. The more days you play, the more the game opens up and the more you are able to do on any given day.
The fact that what you can do in-game is somewhat limited by the passage of time in the real world helps to keep the simple gameplay loop from becoming monotonous, but there are also aspects of its design I wasn’t fond of. Chiefly, cooking anything will not provide the final result until an hour after crafting it, which slows things down in a way that is annoying where the overnight delay things are not. There’s really not anything that could keep me playing Cozy Grove more than an hour at a time, but if I stop playing I’m not going to come back in an hour either because I’ll forget or be in the middle of something else by that point. Even if you had to wait a whole day for recipe delivery I doubt it’d be as frustrating, but the ideal scenario would have cooking be instantaneous, especially since that’s how other crafting methods function.
The other big issue I have with Cozy Grove is how cluttered the game feels. The island you find yourself on is mostly wilderness and uninhabited by anyone besides ghosts, so it would make sense for there to be a lot of underbrush and trees, but even so the designers went a bit overboard and it’s hard to tell what’s what. To make matters worse, at the start of every day most of the island has it’s color drained until you can help some of the ghosts, at which point an area around the ghosts you’ve helped has color restored to it. Though interesting in theory, this mechanic only makes it harder to pick apart the visuals when they’re all the same color, and if something you’re looking for happens to be in an area for a ghost you can’t help for whatever reason then you’re just out of luck. Though the frustrations this all causes can be mitigated somewhat by the first NPC being able to guide you to lost objects for a small fee, it feels like that feature should be reserved for “I can’t figure out where I should be looking” rather than “I was in the right area but walked right past what I wanted five times because I couldn’t see what it was.”
It’s possible that there’s a way to clear away some of the clutter and give yourself a bit more breathing room, but if so then I still haven’t found it after nearly two weeks of steadily plugging away. I suspect that there isn’t one, as that would be in keeping with the old adage of “take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints” – an admirable philosophy to be sure, but one that’s frustrating in this particular circumstance. To top it all off, it makes placing any sort of decorations seem a bit daunting, especially since resource-producing items such as spirit birds or fruit trees have happiness meters that make them produce more materials the more things they like are placed nearby. The already scarce patches of relatively open space can very quickly get cluttered up as well, which in turn creates another issue (at least on the PlayStation 4 version) of making it hard to select the right thing if you have several placed objects near each other. The lack of any sort of cursor is a serious detriment to the game’s playability. Another issue that may be unique to PlayStation is the performance, which frequently slows down and has very long load times to boot.
I recognize how odd this may sound given the harshness of the last three paragraphs, but I do enjoy Cozy Grove overall. Despite the amount of elaboration I provided, the flaws aren’t so major that they completely overshadow everything else, and it is entirely possible to grin and bear it. The general vibe of the game is one of heartwarming sincerity, a world where helping others is its own reward even though they will help you in turn. Many text blurbs throughout the game emphasize the importance of recognizing the self in the other, often as a directly oppositional response to the alienating forces of the modern world. It’s refreshing, to say the least, and the kindness of the characters along with the chill-but-catchy score and generally low-key, low-stakes nature of the game make for a relaxing time.
Calling Cozy Grove relaxing may seem contradictory given that I previously described it as overwhelming, but it’s not, really. To get personal for a moment, one strategy that I’ve been using for years now is to tackle seemingly overwhelming tasks one step at a time; when a mess seems too big to handle, you only think about one little section at a time and take frequent breaks if need be. In Cozy Grove’s case, the fact that there’s only about 30 to forty minutes worth of stuff to do on any given day makes it easy to step back when things start to get too much and just come back after a rest. Incremental progress is the name of the game, so to speak, and every so often chipping away at your goals will award you a scout-program-style badge which feels pretty satisfying.
If I spent far more time criticizing the game than praising it, it’s only because there’s not much to be said about its positive qualities on account of how simple it all is. It’s far easier to point out the specific things that don’t work than it is to explain why the things that do work… well, do. At the risk of relying to heavily on comparisons to other games, if you enjoy the part of Animal Crossing that’s all about coming back every day to do just a little bit more, Cozy Grove is a pretty solid newcomer to the real-time social sim genre.
Cozy Grove is very much not for everyone, but I’m certain there are plenty of people out there who would absolutely adore it.
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