A cozy island crafter that lets you fly
Cozy gaming as a genre really isn’t anything new. It’s been around since at least the mid-90s when Harvest Moon first dropped. The release of Animal Crossing in 2001 proved that the concept had staying power. Stardew Valley hit in 2016 and has since gone on to sell over 50 million copies across the various platforms on which it’s available. The Pandemic certainly helped grow the genre as people were stuck inside and just wanted to disconnect from the horror show of reality. A quick search on Steam for “cozy” returns over 10K results with more and more titles coming. In order to get noticed new games have to offer something a little bit different. Lou’s Lagoon, developed by Tiny Roar and Published by Megabit and Rokaplay, puts their own spin on the genre in a charming little adventure.
MSRP: 24.99
Platforms: PC (reviewed), XBOX, PlayStation, Switch
One of the biggest features of Lou’s Lagoon is the traversal. Usually done on foot in relatively small areas in cozy games, Lou’s Lagoon gives players the ability to fly in their very own, customizable sea plane. The game starts with a bedtime story about the creation of the Limbo Archipelago. Light and Dark had two children, Wind and Wave. As the children played together, they caused extreme weather events. Unfortunately, the children had a fight and Wind abandoned Wave. Wave, being the typical petulant child, threw a tantrum causing a massive storm that hammered the archipelago. Uncle Lou, the legendary delivery flyer, flew into the heart of the storm to investigate and, naturally, went missing. The player then arrives to help the island out and solve the mystery of the missing Uncle Lou. After customizing your character, in a fairly robust and inclusive character creator, you are tasked by one of the NPCs Hefty with restoring your uncle’s seaplane and taking over the delivery business.
In order to get your seaplane up and running you do have to spend the first little bit of the game collecting materials. Collection is done with the Swirler 2000, a simple vacuum reminiscent of the VacPack in Slime Rancher. It’s a, thankfully, streamlined mechanic that allows players to focus on gathering the materials they need without tons of inventory management. NPCs around the island will give you quests and as you gather the required materials, you’ll either rebuild the island or your plane. The game begins to open up once you get your plane up and running as you can travel to 6 distinct locations with their own resources, quests, and communities. Each area offers up more clues about your uncle’s disappearance, pushing the player closer to finding out the truth. Interestingly, while there are a few combat adjacent sections with pirates in your seaplane, there is no life bar or stamina limitation in Lou’s Lagoon. You are free to explore the islands at your own pace, focusing on solving the mystery of simply rebuilding the different communities.
Everything looks very nice and runs really well. There is a lot to do in Lou’s Lagoon but it unfortunately begins to feel a bit too samey to really break through into that next tier of cozy games. The basic loop of finding material, upgrading some items, finding more materials, upgrading more items, is nice enough at first but becomes rote as time goes on. Sure, there is the mystery of what happened to Uncle Lou but with no stakes tied to the player character, it really doesn’t push the game narratively. You can spend hours just exploring, which has its merits for sure, without ever really doing much. The inventory management can be a real slog at times with all of the different materials available. Ultimately Lou’s Lagoon is a nice little adventure with an interesting world to explore and decent writing that gets in its own way with the lack of focus and overwhelming number of items.
Review copy of game provided by publisher.