Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is a better, faster version of the lo-fi life sim
When Spry Fox co-founder and studio director David Edery and his team set out to make a second Cozy Grove game, they wanted to mirror the first game, but “bigger and better.” The concept of the original game and its new sequel, Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, is simple: Each day, you check in on the bear spirits at camp, helping them accomplish tasks in exchange for wares and spirit logs, which feed and grow your fire, Flamey.
When Flamey eats enough logs, new areas of the island get unlocked, with new spirits that reside there. Each day, you help the spirits return color to their sections of the map, learning stories of their living days as you go. Interactive elements like piles of leaves, fish, and bugs are randomly regenerated on the map, making the same areas intriguing to explore even after months of playing.
And if the satisfying task completion and foraging isn’t enough to hook you, the story likely will be. As a human camper from another realm, the player is in a unique position to help the ghostly bears, who share very human stories of loss, regret, and fear. Their tales are written in quippy dialogue that only serves to further endear them to you — and that’s to say nothing of the sweet symbolism of how they’re illustrated, molded into cubic shapes and blended with items from their past lives.
As Edery said at a presser for Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, the games aren’t necessarily for children. In the new game, developed by Spry Fox and published by Netflix, one NPC shares about their struggle to communicate with their immigrant mother who speaks a different language. Another navigates a deep betrayal by their business partner.
The gameplay is much the same between the two games, though Camp Spirit incorporates lots of new elements and minigames like hosing down dirty buildings — and Edery said the studio plans to continue updating Camp Spirit as it learns more about how people are playing the game. (It has no plans to keep the original Cozy Grove updated at the
Read more on polygon.com
