Let’s talk more about the demos I’ve played recently. Yesterday, I started talking about the Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit (Spry Fox) demo, which is the sequel to Cozy Grove. As I mentioned, it’s one of my top five non-From games of all time. I think I’d put it at three or four. (Behind Night in the Woods (Infinite Fall) and Spiritfarer (Thunder Lotus Games) definitely. I’m not sure if I’d put it before or after Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2!! (Vertigo Gaming. They are essentially tied.)
The art design is not my cuppa, but it grew on me. I liked the environments for the most part and the bears–it’s just the humans that turned me off, actually. It’s a bit too cutesy for me, but I can get past that because the game is so engaging.
As I said, one of the key hooks in the first game is that it ran in real time (sort of), and you could only do a set parts of the storyline quests per day. There were always side quests you could do at any time (and they rotated, so I got pretty tired of finding six cogs buried in the leaves (made-up example, but indictative of the side quests) for one of the bears every two weeks or so).
This was one of the games that saved me after my medical crisis. I was sad that I had broken my streak of days playing the game when I had was in the hospital for two weeks, but then I picked it up again once I was able to play games again.
When I was in the hospital, one of the physical therapists told me that one way to do rehab was to play video games. My brother laughed and said that I could probably handle that. The PT said that she and her son played an hour of Breath of the Wild (Zelda) every night together.
On the fourth or fifth day I was home , I fired up Dark Souls III (FromSoft). At that time, it was my favorite game of all time. I was still wobbly, so I didn’t do any fighting. Instead, I ran around Firelike Shrine, which is the hub world in this game. It’s a reimagining of Firelinke Shrine from the OG Dark Souls, and it’s fucking gorgeous. The first time I walked into it, I had tears in my eyes. It was a sight to behold, and it warmed my heart.
The first time back after doing a respawn in real life, I had tears once again. I could not believe I was alive and running around in my favorite video game in my beloved big hat (Sage’s Big Hat). I was so overcome with emotions and grateful to be alive.
Let’s talk about Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, otherwise knowns as Cozy Grove II. It’s not, but it’s what I call it in my brain. It’s the sequel to Cozy Grove–or maybe it’s just set in the same universe. My hunch is that Netflix did not want it to be known as a sequel since they had nothing to do with the first game. That’s my running hypothesis, and I’m sticking to it.
Oh, my additional hypothesis is that since it was initially made as a mobile game, that’s another reason Netflix didn’t want it to have a number attached to it. It would confuse people who didn’t know about the first game.
Side note: I just read a post about how the founders of Spry Fox (Daniel Cook and David Edery) bought back their independence from Netflix last year and are giving most of the equity to the employees (of which there are nearly fifty working on their *sigh* MMO, Spirit Crossing. The public beta is open now, and it’s…I’ll leave that for another post).
I was so happy to hear that they had unyolked themselves from Netflix (who is still publisher of Spirit Crossing) I read about it in Game Developer, and they highlighted a blog post written by David on their website. I am willing to support them in any way possible because I loved the first game so much and because they are trying to do right by their employees.
I had written off the sequel because it was on Netflix. Even though I had Netflix and played it in browser, it just didn’t feel right. The controls were janky, and it just felt very much like a mobile game. I’m not slagging the latter; I’m really not. I’ve played mobile games and have had a lot of fun with some of them. It’s just when it becomes noticeable in a negative way that I don’t like it. Also, there’s a difference between a game that is made for the mobile phone and is ported exactly as is and one that is made for mobiles, but is adapted to the PC.
The basic premise is similar to the first. You’re a Spirit Scout who is going on their first adventure with their ‘troop’ when disaster strikes. In this case, it’s a bus accident, and you wake up not knowing where everyone else is.
There’s a campfire called Flamey who you feed spirit logs to in order to make it bigger. This is the same as in the first game. In fact, so far, I would say this is the same game, but with different characters. This is not a diss, by the way. I’m not being snotty; I’m just being truthful. It’s like pulling on your favorite sweatshirt and snuggling down while sipping a hot cocoa. This is in winter, obviously. Today, it hit over 90F. We skipped spring and went straight to summer. It was only for one day, fortunately.
The gist of the game is that there are ghost bears who are basically in limbo. You have to help them finish their unfinished earthly business so they can move on. The stories get surprisingly deep, and the first game made me cry.
Also, there is so much game in the game. There are different resources for each season, and you can collect all of them. In fact, I spent so much time doing that just because. In the end, it was a good thing because it was a necessary part of the plat. The plat was so grindy; I really hate that, by the way.
You can fish; collect clothing (one of my favorite things); collect hairstyles; grow animals, trees, flowers;mine, dig, and collect other resources. You can craft items; collect bugs; and collect recipes (after you learn them). They added more things in the DLC, but I didn’t do much of the new resource stuff.
That’s all for now. I will write more about it tomorrow.