Cozy Grove Review

I've recently been playing Cozy Grove. Due to the game mechanics and how the time works, it's become one of the activities I do daily. It's practically become a habit at this point. I've been really enjoying it so I thought I'd share my thoughts about the game.

Cozy Grove is not a life or a farming simulator game. I'd personally classify it as a hidden object game with life sim features. What sets Cozy Grove apart from most other games is that it is based in real time. If it's morning for you in real life, it will be morning in the game. If it's night for you, it'll be night in the game. Time moves according to your system clock. 

Days are based on real life days. Cozy Grove is not the kind of game you can play for 6-7 hours in one day and finish in 2-3 sessions. It's the kind of game to play for 1 hour every day and it takes you many many real life days even months to finish. There are limited things to do in the map, resources don't spawn indefinitely. You will eventually run out of things to collect and do and be forced to quit the game for the day and revisit it another day. Progress is slow.

I've never played a game like this before, unless you count doing daily quests and weekly raid resets in World of Warcraft. So this game felt like such a breath of fresh air for me. Especially since I can't really play in long sessions anymore. It feels very freeing to make progress even if I  play for only 30-40 minutes. 

Before I delve deeper into the gameplay mechanics, I'd like to recommend playing Cozy Grove with a controller. Controls on mouse and keyboard are extremely awkward and clunky. However the game is extremely controller friendly and it's a lot more practical to play it with one.

Now let's take a closer look into the gameplay. You start the game in front of a basic campfire. The island you are on is quite small at first and offers very few NPCs in the beginning but it expands as you progress through the story and you get to meet more new bears. On this island you can do various activities like doing quests for bears, fish, collect insects and materials, cook, craft, pet and feed animals. 

The island is black and white but it's colourful near your campfire. You can expand the radius by placing lamps at the edge of colours. You can also colour the area by completing quests for bears. Once you finish a quest for a bear, the immediate area around the bear becomes colourful. Colour is important in the game because you can't collect resources from trees, potted flowers or bushes if they are not coloured. Speaking of plants and trees, you do not have to water or use fertilizer. You simply harvest them and then you wait for a few real life days to harvest them again.

Quests are very straightforward. You are given a list of items to find around the area and there is a little hint about its location along the lines of "I've last seen it around a horned skull" or something like "It was near a supply tent" etc... If this item is hidden behind an object, the hint will say "Behind something" at the end. Then you simply find the area that's hinted and search around. Then you deliver the item to the bear. Doing quests for bears increases your friendship with them and you also get various rewards such as clothing items, crafting recipes, cooking recipes, gold and gems. You can only do one quest per bear per real life day. However some quests can take multiple days to finish. While a quest is in progress, you can't do more quests for the same bear until that quest is finished.

In the beginning you meet very few bears. To meet more you need to expand the island. To expand the island you need to feed spirit logs to "Flamey", the campfire. Spirit logs can be rewarded for doing quests for bears and you can also find one to buy at the merchant. Your campfire Flamey also allows you to upgrade your base camp which gives you more storage for items and clothes and even new rooms for your house. You start with a basic tent but as you upgrade, you will eventually have a house and even get additional rooms. You can decorate your house with furniture. However, it doesn't feel satisfying to decorate because of how the animals work in Cozy Grove. 

Animals have happiness levels and each animal has different likes and dislikes. For example an animal might like natural decor or spooky decor but dislike the furniture to be of common quality. Decoration feels very limiting. There are many furniture options but you can't really decorate the way you want cause you often find yourself trying to raise your animal's happiness by placing decorative items that they prefer. The more happiness an animal has, the more resources you get for feeding them. Most animals are outdoor animals but cats are indoors only and they are very particular about their likes and dislikes. 3 of my 4 cats dislike cats so I can't even put them in the same room. Well technically I can but that means their happiness levels will be low and I won't get many resources from them. When I had only one cat but 2 rooms, I set up a bedroom for myself in the extra room but after getting my 2nd cat, this bedroom turned into a room that is spammed with random natural decor items to raise my cat's happiness.

This would be my biggest criticsm about Cozy Grove. The activity I enjoy the most in cozy games is decorating our space and not being able to do it the way I want makes me enjoy the game a lot less than I want to.

Another criticism I have about Cozy Grove is how difficult it is to select something specific. For example when you are trying to select an animal to feed among all other decorative items that you placed to boost your animal's happiness, you will constantly be selecting some random item within the vicinity instead of the animal you want. Even if you place your character right in front of the item you want to select, the game might select the item on the side or at your back instead.

One feature I love though is that you don't have to have specific tools equipped to be able to collect resources. Digging, mining and chopping bushes don't require you to have those tools equipped. However you do need to have the fishing pole, skipping stone, bug net and dowsing rod equipped to be able to collect their respective resources. Shovel, pickaxe, dowsing rod and machete have durability. Once their durability expires, the tool breaks and you are required to repair it before you can collect more resources with them.

Fishing is extremely simplistic, just the way I like it. No fancy minigames. You simply wait for fish to bite and when it does you hold the reel button to catch the fish. No fuss, no stress. The only issue is that some fish require the bobber to be exactly in front of them, they won't be triggered if it's on the back or at the sides. It isn't like that for basic fish though, they get triggered as long as the bobber is around them.

Cooking and crafting are also quite straightforward, there are no minigames attached to them. You simply go to the appropriate NPC and press craft or cook and you get a list of the recipes you collected and you simply craft at the click of a button. The best thing about crafting is that you don't have to have the resources in your inventory. It works even if they are in storage at your basecamp.

Cozy Grove has a "museum" mechanic like most life/farming sim games. As you collect brand new items, you are given the option to donate them to finish various collections like food, fish, relics etc. Of course you get various rewards in return such as new crafting/cooking recipes, gems and gold.

Cozy Grove is a very "cozy" game like it says in the title. It is a very relaxing and stress free game that doesn't demand too much from the player. Progress is slow and doesn't require you to spend extended time in front of the computer to accomplish anything. Just 30 min or 1 hour session per real life day, depending on how fast you are with finding the quest items, is more than enough for you to make progress. 

For its cheap price, Cozy Grove offers tons of content for the player to enjoy. There is tons of things to do and collect but you can do that without having to spend an entire day playing. Each new day, you will collect brand new items, fish brand new fish, catch brand new creatures and so on. During seasonal events you will even have extra things to do and collect. It's a game I recommend highly.