All of us at Spry Fox have felt the impact of this emotional and chaotic year. So we are excited to share Cozy Grove, a comforting oasis of beautiful art, deep storytelling, and delightful surprises coming to PS4 on April 8, 2021!
Cozy Grove is a life-sim game about camping on a haunted, ever-changing island. As a Spirit Scout, you’ll wander the island’s forest each day, finding new hidden secrets and helping soothe the local ghosts. With a little time and a lot of crafting, you’ll bring color and joy back to Cozy Grove.
Cozy Grove was inspired by relaxing life sims that encourage the player to unwind, explore and express themselves through decorations and clothing. But we wanted to push the genre in a few interesting ways, so for example, we used procedural generation to change the island itself on a regular basis, so you’re never quite sure what you’ll come back to each day.
We’ve also added an original new gameplay mechanic in which large parts of the island are “uncolored” until you reinvigorate them. Once you do that, not only does the desaturated world literally become more colorful and beautiful, but plants begin producing fruit and characters become happier. I’ve witnessed this sort of moment in Cozy Grove a thousand times and I never get tired of it; it’s a perpetually delightful experience.
We also wanted the game to have characters and stories that would really mean something to players, so we’ve given every character in the game a tale that slowly plays out over weeks or months. Some of those tales are silly, and some of those tales are deadly serious. We hope the result will be a narrative and game that makes you delighted to play for a few minutes or an hour every day for a long time to come.
Cozy Grove’s distinctive look has been driven in large part by Noemí Gómez, our wildly talented and charming Spanish colleague. Noemí brings an extraordinary whimsy to everything she draws, which is perfect for a game that includes vegetable-bear hybrids and giant fox salesmen on a constantly shifting, limbo-esque island.
Cozy Grove is ultimately intended to become a game that you comfortably settle into. It doesn’t make you feel like you need to play for 8 hours in a single sitting to “maximize” your experience, and it doesn’t make you feel like you’ve seen everything there is to see in a few days either. We want Cozy Grove to become a delightful ritual that you look forward to every day, and for it to remain that way for many weeks, months and possibly even years. When everything else in your life might be chaos, Cozy Grove will hopefully be a place you can predictably and regularly find a bit of joy.
Finally, we wanted to let you know there will be a native PS5 version coming shortly after release with improved load times. Both the PS5 and PS4 Pro will also let you enjoy the game’s art in sweet 4K. The PS5 version will be available for free to PS4 players and you will be able to bring over your save between versions.