What do you get when you mix Animal Crossing at its best with a cozy town building, crafting, life sim game set on a post-apocalyptic archipelago paradise? Why, you get Critter Cove! Though it's premiering in early access on Steam, it is well into the “worth it” category already upon initial launch. I’ve spent a good 15 hours in the world of Critter Cove and it has flown by. There’s a wonderfully pleasant and interesting gameplay loop that involves exploring the world bit by bit, picking up important resources along the way, and finding new villagers and questlines as you go. You can find furniture for your house, improvements for your town, or new tools to create lots of usable or displayable objects. I was impressed by how much I kept discovering new areas to explore, each holding a new trinket to collect for my museum, or rare items to dismantle and eventually build in my house. There’s a lot to unpack, so let’s get started!
You start off on your adventure around the Cove by creating your “critter” with an absolutely glorious and “furry friendly” character creator, which allows you to easily craft your perfect player-controlled character. I was able to make my personal fursona Daxel within the game without any trouble, and with some pretty nifty design options. What’s great is that as you continue into the game and tourist critters start visiting your town, you get to see fun examples of all of these options portrayed in their own way. You’ll have animals and robots and other creatures of all types running around your little town in no time. Getting to see how deep the options go was a treat every time I discovered a new potential villager or greeted a tourist visiting.
After sailing up to the dock and being instructed that you need to choose where you’re gonna live, you set off on meeting all of the NPC helpers and vendors scattered around the island. The buildings and town are all dilapidated and needing repair, with trash and random debris scattered everywhere. As you clean up, you learn about the inventory management system within the game, along with how your house and crafting work to enable you to improve your town. You can build friendships with local townsfolk you convince to stay at Critter Cove, and help them establish housing on the island. You get to sorta “choose” which villagers stay around as you pick them up from various islands, after the first initial ones are sorta pre-set to keep you company and eventually take up jobs around the town, like cafe worker or clothing store proprietor. The ability to have critters you especially like be housed up close to your own house or wherever you want around town is fun and harkens back to the fun personalized features of Animal Crossing townsfolk. There are plans to make this process of picking and choosing who inhabits your town more intuitive in the early access roadmap laid out by the developers, which is awesome to hear.
When you do eventually leave the safe land of your home island and sail out onto the open waters, what you find is a beautiful, yet touched with that “apocalyptic” feel, set of other islands to discover, each hand designed with their own useful materials for crafting, or fun side quest, or new craftable furniture. Finding these islands, along with scuba diving through sunken ships or underwater relics of the past to find new recipes for cooking or other special discoveries, is a huge part of what makes Critter Cove different from its counterparts. It’s a joy to hop from island to island and back home again, managing the treasures you find and new stuff you unlock to build. It’s a bit time consuming sometimes, and I found myself struggling to let go of things so I could make some money to improve my storage on my boat while traveling around. However, it was so very satisfying and not at all frustrating to figure out what I needed to do to advance my story or town, and the quest system and how the villagers would approach you personally to give out extra tasks or move you along in your journey to grow the town was very accessible and approachable.
As for sound design, Critter Cove has, as you would expect from a cozy exploration game, lots of pleasant background music that adapts to the environment and time of day you find yourself in. If you take a dip under the water, the music will change accordingly, accompanying your journey under the sea with music rivaling the most well-known creature comfort games. If you’re walking through town at night, expect to be serenaded by comfy tones throughout. I did, however, find an issue with the “critter talk” that the NPCs use while chatting with you. They quickly became a bit too distracting, and after a few minutes I went into the options menu and turned off the sounds they made. Having them off didn’t detract from the game, but I would’ve been concerned if the option wasn’t there. There’s just not enough variety in how each critter sounds to warrant keeping them on. Overall, all the other sound effects in the game were without issue, and I found myself sitting back and just enjoying the vibes sometimes.
I’ve said a lot about the visual appeal of the character creator, and it is indeed a treat, but the world of Critter Cove is so much more than just the critters (though they’re a big part of the appeal.) Everything has a fun, toony feel to it, and it was really cool to see how, as I improved the town, the buildings in disrepair got spruced up and came to life, filling my town with color and light. Lots of the furniture and objects you find or dismantle in your travels can be placed around your town however you’d like, really giving you the chance to make your Cove your own. I haven’t had the chance to fully immerse myself in this venture, because I’m still exploring the world around my island, but I can see the potential that’s there, and the town is sizable enough that no one town will look the same.
As you explore, you find these little clues about how the world wound up in the state it's in, whether that’s through little scenes in buildings frozen in time underwater, or in notes left behind by those who thought they had a lot more time to live. I’m a sucker for bittersweet and beautiful, and Critter Cove surprisingly had a few moments like that. Additionally, the underwater creatures you see while swimming are so diverse and colorful, whilst also sometimes being a bit freaky. It kept even the most routine swims back to locations interesting.
Critter Cove’s developer Gentleman Rat Studios has published an already stellar game here, and with the exhaustive roadmap for content they have already planned, it’s only going to get better. I couldn't recommend this game enough for our audience, and if you’re itching for a new, fun, furry-filled life sim game, this is absolutely a must-get title.
