Like crafting and building? Cozy Islands is a cute simulation game about rebuilding island villages
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SHOULD I PLAY COZY ISLANDS?
If you’re looking for a cute and cozy game to play when you have some downtime, you should definitely check it out. That said, if you’re looking for a title you can play for hours at a time, you might want to look elsewhere. Cozy Islands is a crafting and building game about rebuilding a series of islands. Resources on the islands are pretty scarce, but they automatically refresh every ninety minutes. I found Cozy Islands to be most enjoyable when I treated it like a semi-idle game; I’d work on a few building projects, put my phone down for a while, and then stock up resources when I picked it up again.
TIME PLAYED
I spent around five hours playing Cozy Islands, which was enough time to finish constructing my house, build plenty of crafting stations, and open up pathways to several new islands. I had to take a few breaks during my play sessions so that I could wait for resources to refresh, but I still felt like I was able to accomplish a lot.
WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT COZY ISLANDS?
• Adorable visuals. Cozy Islands is a ridiculously charming game, and its visuals are a big part of that. There are delightful little details scattered across every island, like a smiling scarecrow in a field of wheat and a swingset perched next to a tree.
In addition to its appealing setting, Cozy Islands is filled with cutesy character animations. NPCs waved at me every time I walked past them, which always put a smile on my face. Whenever I completed a new building project, I was treated to a short cutscene that showed my character hard at work. All of these scenes are totally unique, and they were fun to watch every time.
• Automatic tool selection. Switching between different tools can be a hassle in crafting games. Thankfully, Cozy Islands makes things easier by automatically selecting the tool you need for any project. That means I spent less time fiddling with my inventory and more time mining rocks and chopping down trees, which is a win in my book.
• Tons of building projects. Cozy Islands is absolutely packed with crafting and building projects, from constructing houses to building bridges leading to new islands. Having so many things to craft is extremely motivating, and the variety of available building projects meant I could focus on whatever caught my interest. I wanted to explore more islands, so I put most of my efforts towards building bridges, but there are lots of other projects waiting for me when I’m ready for them.
WHAT SUCKS ABOUT COZY ISLANDS?
• Resources are scarce. Like most crafting games, Cozy Islands requires you to gather materials before you build new structures. Normally, I enjoy this process, but as I mentioned earlier, the resources in Cozy Islands are very limited, especially when you get to the larger and more complex building projects. I typically ran out of crafting materials about forty-five minutes before island resources refreshed, which left me waiting around with nothing to do.
There are gems that you can use to skip past this waiting period, but these gems are hard to come by during normal gameplay. Gem packs are also available for purchase with real money, but since gems get used up pretty quickly, these packs didn’t strike me as a great deal. That said, if you’re okay putting Cozy Islands down every once in a while, it shouldn’t be too hard for you to gather all the resources you need.
• There’s not enough inventory space. Inventory limitations are an issue in many crafting games, but it’s especially bad in Cozy Islands. There are only a hundred slots in your inventory, and these spaces get filled up very quickly. Managing your inventory gets even trickier later on when you have access to a wider selection of crafting materials. I received blueprints for a storage facility about four hours in, but since I haven’t finished building it, I’m not sure how much it’ll help my inventory issues.
PLATFORM TESTED
Android via Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G phone.
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