When Cozy Grove first arrived, it quietly became one of the Xbox’s most relaxing games. We enjoyed our time helping its ghostly bears find peace, and when the excellent New Neighbears DLC landed later, it reminded us just how special Spry Fox’s charming island could be. Now it’s time to return.
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit has made the jump from its previous mobile-exclusive life, launching today on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC with Xbox Play Anywhere support. Priced at £16.74, it’s a full sequel that expands the original formula with a brand-new island, fresh spirit bears, campsite customisation and even asynchronous multiplayer.
At A Glance
- Game: Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit
- Developer: Spry Fox
- Publisher: The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild
- Platforms: Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PC, Xbox Play Anywhere
- Price: £16.74
- Genre: Cozy Life Sim
Back To Cozy Grove – With A New Mystery To Solve
This time, your peaceful camping trip doesn’t exactly go to plan. A bus crash leaves your Spirit Scout stranded on a mysterious island inhabited by a new cast of ghostly bears. As before, your job isn’t to fight monsters or save the world. Instead, you’ll spend your days helping these spirits come to terms with their pasts, uncovering their stories and slowly bringing colour and life back to the island.
It’s a wonderfully gentle premise, and one that immediately feels familiar to anyone who played the first game. Newcomers, meanwhile, can jump in without worrying about prior knowledge, as Camp Spirit tells an entirely new story with fresh characters and locations.
While kindness remains the heart of the experience, there’s much more to do this time around. Camp Spirit expands almost every aspect of the original game. You’ll craft furniture, decorate your own campsite, plant flowers and fruit trees, raise ghostly animals and customise your character with plenty of new cosmetic options.
Fishing, bug catching, cooking, mining and shell collecting all return too, alongside new features like a power-washing tool and additional activities that reward daily visits.
Perhaps the biggest new addition is asynchronous multiplayer. Rather than dropping into someone else’s world, you’ll occasionally encounter the astral projections of fellow Spirit Scouts, exchanging gifts through the mail at your own pace. It’s a social feature that fits perfectly with the game’s laid-back philosophy, allowing interaction without ever becoming intrusive.
“Our studio rarely makes sequels, but we wanted to make Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit because of the large number of people who have reached out to us to say how much the original game meant to them. We’ve heard from our players that Cozy Grove helped them process the loss of a loved one, or push through a period of depression, or work through their own feelings of disappointment and frustration with experiences from their past. We’ve never made a game before that had that impact on people, and it meant a great deal to us.“ said David Edery, co-founder and CEO of Spry Fox.
One Of Xbox’s Most Welcoming Worlds Returns
We enjoyed our original visit to Cozy Grove, awarding it 3.5/5 in our review.
As we said at the time: “There’s plenty of room on the Xbox for an experience as undemanding and beautiful as this one, and you’ll find yourself rummaging for walnuts in a spare thirty minutes.“
Our opinion only improved when Cozy Grove: New Neighbears arrived. Awarding that expansion 4.5/5, we concluded: “The New Neighbears DLC underlines just why this superb sibling to Animal Crossing is such a 4.5 out of 5 game.“
Camp Spirit looks perfectly placed to continue that upward trajectory. With a brand-new island to explore, new spirit bears to help and a host of additional activities, it feels less like a simple follow-up and more like the next natural step for one of Xbox’s cosiest adventures.
If you’ve been waiting for an excuse to return to Cozy Grove – or discover it for the first time – this sequel looks ready to welcome you.
Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and PC with Xbox Play Anywhere, priced at £16.74 from the Xbox Store. You will also find it on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch.
