Cozy Grove Game Review - A Creepy Cute Camping Life Sim

In the vein of Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Spiritfarer, comes, Spry Fox’s creepy cute, cozy life sim, Cozy Grove. Help the dearly departed residents of a small island restore their memories and breathe a bit of life back into the Cozy Grove.

Game Details

Life Simulator | Management | Cozy
Price: $14.99
ESRB: E
Where to Play: Nintendo Switch | Steam
Similar Games: Spiritfarer | Corrine Cross’s Dead and Breakfast | A Short Hike

The Story

Welcome to Cozy Grove, a life-sim game about camping on a haunted, ever-changing island. As a Spirit Scout, you’ll wander the island’s forest each day, finding new hidden secrets and helping soothe the local ghosts. With a little time and a lot of crafting, you’ll bring color and joy back to Cozy Grove!

Features

Beautiful, dynamic, hand-drawn landscapes that come alive when you help a spirit in need.
Dozens of memorable characters and spirits for you to find and befriend. Each spirit has a unique, extensive story for you to unravel over time.
Collect spirit animals, craft decorations, go fishing and more!
Cozy Grove is synced to real world time, and provides 30-60 minutes of new quest content each day. After that, you can fish, craft and decorate to your heart’s content!
40+ hour campaign filled with side quests, designed to span months of playtime.

A Creepy Cute Life Sim

In Cozy Grove you take on the role of a Spirit Scout who is sent to a haunted island full of anthropomorphic ghost bears to help them recover their lost memories so they can move on to the afterlife. With each spirit that you help, the colorless snow bound island of Cozy Grove will start to come alive revealing a lush, cozy camp. Along your journey, your talking campfire, Flamey will help you by illuminating the island revealing more of the Cozy Grove’s spirit residents in need of your assistance.

Most of the gameplay consists of you running around the island completing simple tasks for a quirky bear spirits–like the sea faring bear with the spirit of a majestic bird, hunkering for a fish. Occasionally, you’ll need to find specific items for one of the residents, which will involve kicking over piles of snow (or leaves), digging some holes, and more. You’ll also scavenge for food, fish, craft, upgrade your own personal campsite, and unlock achievements in the form of cute scout badges–there’s no end to things to do!

Also, y’all know that I stand behind any game with character customization and Cozy Grove gives you the chance to craft the cute Spirit Scout of your dreams. I especially want to note that I love how positive the descriptions for the natural hair styles are–the entry for Medium Dreads reads “The envy from the other scouts is palpable” damn straight, my scout is lookin fly with her locs! Of course there are a range of skin tones to select and as a Black gamer, I appreciate having more than one shade of brown to choose from!

I’ll be honest, I consciously avoid life simulators and management games–yes, that includes the much beloved Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I have a hard enough time keeping my one bedroom apartment in order, God forbid I have to maintain an entire island and keep up with the well being of it’s cute residents. But, unlike Animal Crossing where I’ve seen friends wrack up gameplay hours in the triple digits, Cozy Grove is a game that encourages play in short one to two hour daily sessions. On top of that, there’s a very clear gameplay structure that makes it easy to set manageable goals for yourself without getting too overwhelmed.

With it’s chill, cozy vibes, cute hand-drawn artstyle, and quirky whimsical characters–Cozy Grove is one of those rare management life sims that I could see myself coming back to again and again.