Cozy Island

Cute game! Played it with a friend it was a jolly experience c: It was some buggy during some tines, and some achievements won't pop up for some reason. HOWEVER, the game makes up for the negatives with the whimsical art direction and fun island activities.

Games really fun. But the hatch achievement is completely bugged and doesnt pop and it seems the devs arent going to fix it so prepare yourself to probably not 100% this game no matter how hard you try.

Honestly, with this one, I feel like I really must be missing something that so many others got from the game. As I personally can't understand how the game has had so many positive reviews, and so few people actually picking up on some of what I consider to be really annoying features, but when I look at the play time for a lot of the reviews, not so many of those players have gone back to the game repeatedly and built up any real amount of playtime, from what I am seeing most folks seem to play it for around 2hrs-5hrs, which seems rather low for a cosy farming game with so many positive reviews. For me, right from the start, the controls on the controller felt awkward and simply not intuitive to me, but changing the key mapping wasn't going to change that, as it's not just the controls, it's the interaction with stuff. Having to put items in a box to then only be able to buy something as a separate transaction drove me a little crazy, that stuff should have been one simple smooth interaction, like almost every other game, you have the items in your inventory, you click on the item you want to buy and the required items are simply removed from your inventory and replaced by the bought item. Not so in this game, you first have to go to the box, open your inventory, highlight the required item and then gingerly fast move that item into the box, or do it the painful way of doing it one at a time. Then once you've done that, you then have to go back to the item you are trying to buy, click on it and then click another button to actually stash it in your inventory. that to me is not how it should be, there is zero reason for it to not be as said, a simple transaction. Dealing with beets repeatedly right from the start feels like a chore and for me, it very quickly lost the fun element of having to pull them out of the ground. Then one of the very first tasks you face is actually collection 500 beets... As soon as I saw that, my heart sank and that just felt like a horrible early game task. Collect x of this, to get an item, that unlocks another thing needed to access something else, repeat, repeat, repeat, without actually having much of anything to show for it. When you are hit by this so early on, that really doesn't fill me with hope of an enjoyable game to follow. I have plenty of patience with this type of game, but for me, this one feels far less cosy than folks have been saying it is in the reviews. As the loop of chores just goes round and round. I've played a lot of cosy games, a lot of cosy farming games and a lot of games that do this same sort of thing and honestly, almost all of them felt more enjoyable to me than this one. Most fans of Stardew Valley, including myself, have maybe been spoiled by how smoothly everything can be done and there have been many different clones come about as a result, some using similar dynamics, others trying to do things a little differently, but for me, it is about all the little things that Stardew Valley gets right that make it so relaxing and enjoyable, and to me this game simply feels like it has made a lot of those basic things feel less simple and less enjoyable than they should be and feel. I may add, I played single player, so it may be that those who played co-op had more fun as they were playing with others, but I can't see that the fun of chasing each other with brooms and knocking each other over and silly things like that, having any lasting appeal. I feel I have to give this game an initial negative review, based on what I've written above. However, I am going to go back into the game in a day or two and have another go and try to look at it with fresh eyes and see if I feel any different after maybe a couple more hours of playing, maybe as I open more stuff up, it may start to feel more enjoyable, we'll see, if I do feel differently, I shall update my review accordingly, but if not, then it will stay as it is and if that proves to be the case, I shall elaborate…