Cozy Game Restoration – Review
Cozy games have been booming for several years now, and a lot of these games actually revolve around romanticizing ‘mundane’ tasks, such as cleaning items or decorating. Even so, the lack of real ‘challenge’ or expectations is what makes them so relaxing. Cozy Game Restoration targets a niche audience of retro game collectors by letting players clean old, grimy cartridges and discs, while also collecting and displaying the games you purchase in-game. On paper, the game sounded both relaxing and interesting for retro game enthusiasts, but we still found the game a bit too rough around the edges at times.
Story
The story is purposely kept really simple in Cozy Game Restoration. There’s a mention that you’re basically finishing your grandfather’s collection of retro games by restoring dirty cartridges and discs, and hopefully purchasing the titles on his wishlist. Outside of this mention at the beginning of the game, Cozy Game Restoration moves the narrative to the background so you can focus on cleaning different games.
Graphics
Graphically, Cozy Game Restoration looks nice. The cartridges and discs have nicely designed label art, many of which subtly refer to famous retro games. The details are nice, the dirt looks fairly realistic, and your workstation looks simple and clean. The sticker residue was the only part that felt a little unrealistic. Other than that, you can decorate your room with different assets.
For the most part, the UI is clear and not too cluttered, but the in-game visual feedback isn’t always that great. It’s really hard to spot specks of dirt, even when zoomed in. The black-light flashlight doesn’t help much, as the lit-up spots of dirt disappear way too fast. Sadly, there aren’t any real options for games with less than optimal eyesight.
Sound
All in all, the sound design isn’t bad. The mellow background music fits the cozy vibe, and the backdrop is ideal for the game’s concept and setting. The SFX are decent and provide okay audio feedback, but they’re nothing to write home about. As a whole, the somewhat simplistic soundscape works perfectly for a title such as this.
Gameplay
Cozy Game Restoration is, as the name implies, a title that revolves around restoring games. You’ll have the option to clean cartridges and discs, but the game limits itself to exterior cleaning rather than actually opening up cartridges. So you’ll just be cleaning grime and dirt, removing stickers, polishing surfaces, etc. On top of that, there’s the game collecting aspect, where you can decorate your room and display some of your titles. These displayed titles will also provide passive bonuses. The concept and gameplay loop are straightforward and, on paper, rather relaxing.
For the most part, the intended purposes of your available tools are clear, but a few additional tutorials would have been welcome. For instance, in the game you’ll use the heat gun to heat up stickers, making them easier to remove with the tweezers. In real life, a lot of retro game collectors actually use a liquid sticker remover. So, it didn’t make much sense at first to use the heat gun. The toothbrush was also not that clear when it got too dirty to keep using, and in general, the controls are very clunky. It actually takes a lot of effort to clean the cartridges and discs, and we noticed we would only clean one or two games per session, as things got too tedious after that point. It feels like your tools are extremely underpowered for the job at hand, and we personally detested sticker removal. It’s mainly the controls and the lack of diversity holding the game back from actually being relaxing.
The gameplay loop by itself is enjoyable, as you can buy several games per day, which you can clean, display, or sell. With the funds you acquire, you can purchase more games. When purchasing games, you only get to see what platform they are for, and not what game you’re getting. It’s basically a type of lootbox, albeit one that doesn’t cost you any real money. This does mean you can get doubles, which also tends to happen in real life if you buy bigger bundles of retro games.
Conclusion
Cozy Game Restoration is a fun title to play in short bursts, but the controls and overall clunky mechanics are what hold the game back from being a truly cozy and relaxing experience. We quite enjoyed cleaning old retro cartridges and discs, but the lack of variation in the available platforms in the game did also get boring after a while. Once again, we liked what was on offer here, but the developer still has a bit of work to do. Fortunately, they seem to be very active, and several updates have already been released during our testing period.
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