Cozy grove is a pretty enjoyable game with the signature alphafox art style that while playing i was like wow this looks like alphafox and then realized it was, overall it is a good game that has some pretty enjoyable story and dialouge with good hidden object search, fishing, cooking, and more.

However this game relies on day to day mechanics and has many time locked aspects, i enjoy games more when everything is possible from the beginning or based on an in game timer that or a timer that is a few hours long, i do not have the patience to come back to something everyday, and it would take me way too long to progress in this game. If you have the patience for daily quests, i would highly suggest this and can see how hundreds of hours can go in and how this game can easily be a top 10, or a 5 star game, it has the premise but is just not for me.

Honestly this aspect could also come from me playing on the switch, if you have an iphone, i think it is on the ios store and would probably make more sense as a ios game, however i have an android and prefer gaming on the switch even if it is a mobile game, when played on the switch it does not feel like a mobile game and is well implemented, however i just do not have the patience

• Playtime: 5,5 hours (day 5)

• Played: 2026

• Context: I was browsing my Epic giveaways, i like some farm life sims and this looked cute.

The Good

• Not the usual "you inherited a farm" story.
• Automatically picks the right tool for gathering.
• Freely move buildable objects, including trees.
• Cute artstyle that looks very pretty in colour.

The Bad

• The gameworld starts out black and white and you have to complete an NPC's quest every day to make them colour things near them.
• And by days i mean real-life days. You can only do 1 quest per NPC per day, then you have to wait for the next day.
• Quest rewards sometimes take a day to arrive, slowing progress.
• Increasingly often you can't complete a quest on the day you get it, slowing progress and leaving the world black and white.
• Most of the quests are basically hidden object puzzles except you have to look on the entire island (it's small, but still) and everything is usually black and white so it's hard to spot some items. I've played dozens of HOGs but i still bought hints (at least you can do that) because this aspect is so obnoxious.
• The island is tiny and expands only slightly. There is no exploration or mines or something.
• Using fishing poles, bug nets, etc. requires you to drag the icon above your head like a mobile game.
• Objects are 2D so you have to click/stand in the small gathering zone in front of trees, rocks, bushes and such or they go transparent and can't be interacted with.
• One time i got a tree as quest reward. My inventory was full so it dropped to the ground, where it was instantly built. But because the NPC who gave it kept standing behind it i couldn't pick it up due to transparency.
• The game wants you to put items close to each other because they get bonuses depending on tags. Combined with the transparency issue this makes harvesting very tedious.
• Moving placed items requires you to interact with each item individually. Which is incredibly tedious and made much more difficulty due to the transparency thing.
• The flimsy story is fed to you piecemeal. Same with NPC backstories. There are only a handful of generic lines (used by everyone) outside of quest dialogue too.
• Claiming rewards for bringing a newly discovered object to the "museum" NPC is incredibly tedious. You have to click through several menus to claim money from every singly object.

The Ugly

Cozy Grove may actually have the worst inventory and storage limit i have ever seen. Your backpack can hold very few items and you can't just build chests to dump items - you have to grind a substantial amount of money to "improve your tent". On day 4 or 5 i managed to free up 7 of my 28 backpack slots and they filled up again within minutes. I constantly had to exchange items with my storage, which filled up very quickly too. The game also gives you quest items that you can't even use yet but still take up space. The inventory limit is far worse than in any other farm life sim, it's bizarre.

Conclusion

Cozy Grove is a game where you can only play for an hour, then have to wait until the next day. When you come back all the progress you made making the world colourful is reset and every singly NPC wants you to find items based on vague hints in a black and white world. Also you inventory is full, so have fun dealing with that. Nothing says "cozy" like inventory management.