![\"My](\"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screenshot_2024_06_25_at_12.21.22_PM.0.jpeg\")
The sequel is only on mobile and exclusive to Netflix<\/p>\n
When Spry Fox co-founder and studio director David Edery and his team set out to make a second Cozy Grove<\/a> game, they wanted to mirror the first game, but \u201cbigger and better.\u201d The concept of the original game and its new sequel, Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit<\/em>, is simple: Each day, you check in on the bear spirits at camp, helping them accomplish tasks in exchange for wares and spirit logs, which feed and grow your fire, Flamey.<\/p>\n When Flamey eats enough logs, new areas of the island get unlocked, with new spirits that reside there. Each day, you help the spirits return color to their sections of the map, learning stories of their living days as you go. Interactive elements like piles of leaves, fish, and bugs are randomly regenerated on the map, making the same areas intriguing to explore even after months of playing.<\/p>\n And if the satisfying task completion and foraging isn\u2019t enough to hook you, the story likely will be. As a human camper from another realm, the player is in a unique position to help the ghostly bears, who share very human stories of loss, regret, and fear. Their tales are written in quippy dialogue that only serves to further endear them to you \u2014 and that\u2019s to say nothing of the sweet symbolism of how they\u2019re illustrated, molded into cubic shapes and blended with items from their past lives. <\/p>\n As Edery said at a presser for Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit<\/em>, the games aren\u2019t necessarily for children. In the new game, developed by Spry Fox and published by Netflix, one NPC shares about their struggle to communicate with their immigrant mother who speaks a different language. Another navigates a deep betrayal by their business partner.<\/p>\n The gameplay is much the same between the two games, though Camp Spirit<\/em> incorporates lots of new elements and minigames like hosing down dirty buildings \u2014 and Edery said the studio plans to continue updating Camp Spirit <\/em>as it learns more about how people are playing the game. (It has no plans to keep the original Cozy Grove<\/em> updated at the moment, for the record.) <\/p>\n Spry Fox certainly accomplished what it set out to do by expanding the game while also fixing some quirks of the original engine that led to limitations and bugs. Camp Spirit <\/em>includes several buildings, for instance \u2014 not just your own tent, which was the only interior in Cozy Grove<\/em>. <\/p>\n \u201cBy taking the time to rebuild major parts of the Cozy Grove codebase, we unlocked the ability to add more interior spaces and even whole new islands to the game, should we choose to do so,\u201d Edery wrote in an email to Polygon. Those interiors, like the inside of Orsina\u2019s caves or the packed-up remnants of Kumari\u2019s failed business, leave room for novel illustrations that you wouldn\u2019t see in the rest of the game, which is set outside.<\/p>\n The revamped code also allows for something Cozy Grove<\/em> players have wanted for years: multiplayer. While I wasn\u2019t able to test multiplayer before launch, the game introduced me to the mechanics via NPCs. Players will be able to see their friends on their islands asynchronously (as in, you can collaborate with them to forage better items at any time, not only when the other player is online).<\/p>\n There are still a few of those small glitches that occurred in the original game, like the occasional frame skip. But the main problem with Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit<\/em> has nothing to do with the game at all \u2014 it\u2019s about the platform and publisher.<\/p>\n The only way to play Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit<\/em> currently is by downloading the game on your app store and logging into your Netflix account when the app launches. If you don\u2019t subscribe to Netflix, you can\u2019t play the game.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unhelpful to criticize Spry Fox for any of this \u2014 Netflix acquired the studio outright in October 2022 \u2014 and Edery described the relationship as \u201ca safe harbor in the storm\u201d of the current games industry. According to Edery, the Netflix deal meant the devs and designers didn\u2019t have to worry much about things like marketing the game \u2014 a huge win for what was once a small indie game.<\/p>\n But the way Netflix has decided to launch the game means that it\u2019s currently only available on mobile (iOS and Android). To play Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit<\/em>, you must first download the Netflix app and log in. Then, go to games, click on Camp Spirit<\/em>, and download the game, where you\u2019ll log in to Netflix once more.<\/p>\n I tested Camp Spirit<\/em> on my iPhone 15, using my touchscreen as my controller. It\u2019s often fine. It\u2019s also often cramped, if not occasionally frustrating. My finger covers up the grid when I use Decoration Mode to place items, and the UI overlaps with itself during certain actions, I assume due to the size of my screen. <\/p>\n The optional zoomed-out view makes this a bit better when you\u2019re traversing your island, but it irks me that I couldn\u2019t choose from the beginning to start my game on Steam for bigger screen real estate and WASD controls. (For what it\u2019s worth, that\u2019s coming from someone who plays mobile games daily.)<\/p>\n \u201cI can say that we definitely want Cozy Grove to be available on all the platforms that Netflix is, which of course, long-term, includes TVs and PCs\/Macs,\u201d Edery told Polygon. <\/p>\n In terms of input, you can play with any controller compatible with your mobile device, or even an Apple Pencil, according to Edery. In the past, Polygon reporter Nicole Carpenter has posited that the original game was actually better on mobile<\/a>, and Edery said the numbers back that up: \u201cGiven how well Cozy Grove did on Apple Arcade, my guess is that quite a lot of people are going to prefer playing with touch on a phone.\u201d<\/p>\n Those gripes aside, I can\u2019t stress enough that if you already have a Netflix account, you\u2019re going to want to play this game. The grind-to-fun ratio is excellent, and there\u2019s so little pressure to log in that it actually motivates me to log in more<\/em> \u2014 I\u2019m simply thinking about my bears organically, rather than stressing about whether I\u2019ll finish every daily task before the end of the day.<\/p>\n In that sense, mobile is a fitting platform for Camp Spirit<\/em>, because the game isn\u2019t meant to take up hours upon hours of your life (try me, Spry Fox). \u201cWe\u2019re a game that folds into your life \u2014 you have a lot of other obligations,\u201d lead designer Alicia Fortier said during the Camp Spirit<\/em> press event. <\/p>\n Rather than playing on your starved dopamine receptors like tons of other mobile games do, Camp Spirit <\/em>isn\u2019t so desperate for your attention. The feeling I get while playing the game, whether I\u2019m standing still and listening to the music while I write game reviews or hunting feverishly for a lost item I\u2019ve been looking for all day, is that the island exists whether I\u2019m there or not \u2014 but the bears really like it when I\u2019m there. <\/p>\n Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit<\/em><\/small> was released June 25 on Android and iOS. The game was played on iOS using a pre-release download code provided by Spry Fox. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find <\/small>additional information about Polygon\u2019s ethics policy here<\/small><\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Image: Spry Fox\/Netflix via Polygon The sequel is only on mobile and exclusive to Netflix […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6538"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6546,"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6538\/revisions\/6546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/IMG_9670.jpg\")
\n Image: Spry Fox\/Netflix via Polygon<\/cite>
\n <\/figure>\n![\"Bunch](\"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/IMG_9657.jpg\")
\n Image: Spry Fox\/Netflix via Polygon<\/cite>![\"Kumari](\"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Screenshot_2024_06_25_at_12.04.07_PM.jpeg\")
\n Image: Spry Fox\/Netflix via Polygon<\/cite>![\"Cozy](\"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/IMG_9666.jpg\")
\n Image: Spry Fox\/Netflix via Polygon<\/cite>