Cozy Grove is a wholesome, relaxing life sim by Spry Fox LLC that came out April 7th, 2021. The gameplay cycle is particularly reminiscent of games like Animal Crossing, with a focus on collecting and crafting, but the in-depth narrative and character interactions really make this game stand apart. 

Neighbears by Chance

In the game, you are a Spirit Scout sent to the titular Cozy Grove to help its wandering spirits back to the afterlife. You arrive on the shores of this tiny island and set up your campsite, complete with your ancestral fireplace familiar. Pretty standard Spirit Scout stuff, really.

Your familiar, Flamey, informs you of any nearby spirits you can interact with. At first, there is only one, but by meeting and helping the spirits you gain spirit logs. Filled with spiritual energy, feeding them to Flamey gives him the ability to guide more spirits and more land back from the beyond. It also gives him a very fun Calcifer-like transformation.

There are a total of seventeen bears for you to help and befriend in Cozy Grove, four available merchants, and four more bears in the New Neighbears DLC. Each of them has a unique job and design, sometimes mixing them with other animals, or even vegetation! Overtime, befriending these bears and completing their quests unlocks new tools, crafting recipes, and lore. You have to take your time getting to know them, and enjoy the lazy daily life in Cozy Grove.

A Day at A Time

Cozy Grove has been designed so that it is literally impossible to complete it within a day, a week, or even a month. That isn’t because it is too boring or too difficult. The game runs in real time, and is optimized for one to two hours of daily play. That’s about enough time to do 5-7 tasks for the spirits, as well as any other activities you want to indulge in. Flamey will let you know when there are no more tasks available for you to complete by going to sleep.

The game plays somewhat like an Animal Crossing game. You can fish, collect seashells on the beach, mine ore, dig up treasure and veggies, collect fruits, decorate your tent, and far more. Often, your spirit tasks will involve these activities and make you gather items for the bears, or look for things in specific places on the map. One difference is that your pets and plants like certain decorations over others, and the essence and other materials gathered from them will increase or decrease depending on how much they like your decorating.

Craft Like No One’s Watching

There’s also a robust crafting system. The first layer that is open to you is cooking or burning items with Flamey. With your familiar, you can turn ore into ingots, fish into bones, ect. Occasionally, you’ll need to take these refined ingredients among others to Jeremy Gruffle, the second bear that you meet in Cozy Grove. He unlocks the second layer of the crafting system, and is the person you go to for making furniture and the like. There’s also Allison Fisher, who unlocks cooking options, needed to feed your pets.

A couple of spirit bears also unlock new shops, in addition to the four already open to you. Mr. Kit is the first merchant that appears, and he implies that he’s been following your adventures for a while. His shop is always open, 24/7, unlike the others, and has a number of important quest items. Pandam only stops by on Wednesdays after you have played at least seven days. Darla O’Hare appears on Saturdays and offers fashion challenges. Then there’s Ms. Carouse, the rarest merchant. She only shows up for active festival events and sells seasonal items.

 You stop getting new gameplay unlocks around bear #12, but by that point you’re well taken care of in terms of content. If much more had been added, Cozy Grove would feel overly bloated. As it is, the game is quite relaxing, and good at making itself a daily habit. Having a limit on quests makes it easier to time and limit yourself than when playing Animal Crossing games, while providing an incentive to keep coming back for more.

A Watercolor World

Cozy Grove is just such a cute game. The graphics are very much inspired by watercolor art. The whole map starts out monochrome and lifeless, paper-like, gaining just the slightest bit of color after you set up camp. As the light of your fire spreads, so does the color. Every time you first help a bear for the day, they and their area also gain color, spreading out like paint following water. Over time, your efforts will fully color the island. 

Your character is a chibi, and while cute, I think it does a bit of a disservice to the clothing options you have. I find it hard to tell much of a difference when changing clothes, outside of your hat. Considering how many clothes there are and the number of merchants dealing in them, they could have been shown off better.

The bears, on the other hand, are just so fun. Literally, there is a bear that is corn. A BEAR that is CORN. And a bear that is a seagull. It’s just so ridiculous, but well thought out and potentially explained as the spirits’ manifestation of their characters and passions in life. It makes each character instantly recognizable in and out of game, and certainly unforgettable. 

Overall

Cozy Grove is such a cute and clever game, innovating in ways that improve on the life sim genre. While having to wait for each new day to progress the storyline can get frustrating, it also keeps Cozy Grove from being too addicting. In the current gaming culture, that kind of consideration is rare.

I’d definitely recommend Cozy Grove for anyone who just wants a game to sink into after work or school for an hour or so. There’s enough content that you’ll probably find new things and missions after a full year of playing, so it’s more than worth the cost.

Cozy Grove is available on mobile through Apple Arcade. It was also released on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4/5, as well as on Windows and macOS. Its sequel, Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is out on mobile through Netflix Games.