Critter Cove

Oh my goodness - this is the game I didn't know I needed!!! You arrive on a dilapidated island and have to fix everything up so the island can receive tourists again. You place crafters in the workshop and forage all over the island and travel by boat to half a dozen nearby islands to find the things you need. You even dive down into the ocean to find things! The NPC's are funny, cute, and some can have snarky funny comments. They are all a variety of creatures. You can customize your character with a Large number of options to look like a unique creature or choose a human form. I am only a few hours in and barely getting started. I know I will enjoy many, many hours with this game. I am having a blast!! If you want cozy, relaxed fun in your life,,, Give This Game A Try!!!

This game has revived my love for gaming - I absolutely love Critter Cove! Perfect cosy game. It also runs on a near 10year old potato with low graphics, but even then it still looks so beautiful! It has a decent grind level, fun quests, amazing characters (you'll grow to love Pokee!) and fantastic story lines. Love that there's no combat & minimal danger, so I can explore the ocean in peace. The soundtrack is super cute & I wish they'd release it! It's madness that this is still in early access - there are fully released games out there that are far less developed than this was even last year. I can't wait to see what's next with this! Huge thank you to the devs - proving you don't have to have huge bloat for a beautiful & fantastic game. You nailed it! Thank you for creating Critter Cove!

I can't say enough good things about Critter Cove! I love repairing the rundown, resort island that you start on. It gives me a great sense of purpose and direction. But, even if I didn't have that, I would love all the exploring that you do. There are underwater ruins, little hidden caves, and all sorts of things to find. I personally like discovering the notes left behind that let you piece together what happened in this world. Honestly, Critter Cove has everything that you could want if you like a cozy, town-building experience. After storms, you take your boat out and rescue stranded NPCs. You can invite them back to your island and build them a home. Once you start repairing the shops, you can give those same folks jobs! You can craft and decorate, you can farm and cook, you can build robots to help automate things. It's a ton of fun! But, the cherry on top of it all is how awesome the devs are. I had a crash to desktop issue over a holiday weekend. I emailed them, figuring I wouldn't hear back until after the holiday, and I was fine with that. (Everyone deserves to have a holiday!) But, lo and behold, they got back to me over the weekend. They were helpful, cheerful, and a delight to speak with. <3

It's like if Animal Crossing was good. I made my actually convoluted Sona in like an hour, down to the fur patterns horns and weird wings 10/10 Made By Critters, For Critters, Of Critters.

This game is a hidden gem, and even if it needs some tweaks when it comes to the farming and swimming, it is really fun to play. I loved the questline and all the quirks. The critters I picked(I had no clue about their personalities)was so fun to talk to. My hope for this game is that the devs will try to fix the bugs that create some hick-ups here and there, nothing that really stopped me from playing but they are there and shouldn't be. Try it out if you like cozy games because this is cozy and really fun to play!

Like if Animal Crossing and Wind Waker had a child and it was awesome. Also one of the few games I can find that actually has good a anthro character customizer, I was never a big fan of games with such limited species and this game has really good coverage and customizability.

I liked the fishing was easy, there were no deadlines to complete it so was relaxing, and no fighting just to get supplies. The first real relaxing game I have played that is colorful, beautifully done, and a lot of fun,

I have mixed feelings about this game, but I recommend it to anyone who can live with the cons mentioned in this review. At the time of writing, I had played the game for 47 hours, which is more than most AAA games offer these days. To address the elephant in the room: yes, this game has pronouns, and yes, almost every third character is non-binary. But most of the time I didn't mind because the game doesn't hassle you with it. It only comes up when you get a request from them and read the description. So, with that out of the way: Pros Cute and diverse characters with a nice cartoony art style. Many customization options for the player (I'll come back to this later). Large open world. Many crafting options. Runs well. Funny dialogue (though it becomes repetitive after a while). I have not encountered any game-breaking bugs. There are some, but nothing to write home about. Cons The core gameplay loop is grindy. It isn't bad in the early game, but it becomes very tiresome later on. Many quests are very frustrating and are, overall, just fetch quests with very few exceptions. The biggest offenders are quests where you have to travel across half the map just to receive a request for an item that you have to craft back at your base. So you travel back, craft the item—if you have the resources—and bring it back, only to get a follow-up request for another item you'll have to craft. You do that four ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ times in the same quest! You cannot build an outpost to make crafting closer to where you're exploring. Later in the game, you gain the ability to access your chest from your boat, which is an improvement, but it doesn't solve the issue above. No fast travel. Getting the critters you actually want is an endless grind. I could have recruited the same stupid character three times while others just never appeared. A simple solution would be a menu where you can select preferred races (imagine that sentence in any other context). The customization options are lacking in certain aspects. The male and female body types are ambiguous at best. Female characters have, at most, an A-cup chest and very few curves. I'm not asking for Hindenburg-sized breasts, but a C- or D-cup option would be nice. You also can't make a muscular character, even though there are athletic NPC archetypes in the game, yet you can make your character obese (make that make sense). My biggest gripe is with the heads, though. They all look masculine. The angles, proportions, and the distance between the eyes vary from head to head and from eye type to eye type. Easy solutions would be sloders for rotation, size and distance. TL;DR I like the game for its art style and quirky dialogue, but the grind and repetitive quests suck all the fun out of it. Many of the issues holding this game back could be solved with additional sliders, more customization options, and QoL mechanics. If the developers continue listening to the community, which they sometimes do, this game could become great and even rival its inspiration, Animal Crossing.

Do you like Animal Crossing? My Time at Portia? Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker? Than stop reading this and play this game.