It warms the cockles to see the surge of popularity that Cozycore games are experiencing right now. If you’re not aware of the Cozycore term, it’s a catch-all for games that couldn’t care less for difficulty, and instead want you to lose yourselves in them. You might gently follow a process, or explore without objectives. Some are more like tools for meditation than games. We’re happy that these games are finding success because gaming can be so mood-based. While we like tense encounters, we don’t want them all of the time.
Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission is every bit the Cozycore game. There is no combat and no time limits, which removes two of the most common pressures that you can find in games. It sets objectives but is laid-back about them: you can do them at your own pace, and enjoy the sights along the way. And, most of all, it is ridiculously, deliberately easy. This is an accessible game that the whole family could play.
The story is paper-thin. You are visiting your grandfather on Maupiroa, an idyllic island, which also happens to be the site of a marine conservation institute. While you might have expected to sit down and play Uno with your estranged grandpappy, you instead get caught up in efforts to clean up Maupiroa.
Honestly, we have no idea what happened at Maupiroa, but – if we were the mayor – our first proclamation would be to install some bins. The island is stupidly messy, yet there are no villagers on the island. We imagined a murder mystery game, but with the murder swapped out for flytipping. One of the conservationists is guilty of leaving this rubbish around, and we want to know who.
Except this isn’t a littering mystery game. Instead, it’s the key to a simple structure that Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission abides by until the very end. First, you are allowed access to a new area on Maupiroa. Then, you’re tasked with cleaning it up. That means manually walking over to bottles and cans and picking them up, watching numbers tick up until the whole area is clean. This triggers the next step, and you can imagine the cogs whirring in the background of Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission. The removal of mess allows birds to return to Maupiroa, which you can now photograph. But that’s just side-questing to the real main quest: the pollution has also leached into the ocean, and now it’s your turn to dive to the depths around the island. With your sidekick Keanu (not that one), who is a dolphin, you do much of what you did on the surface. You remove junk from the sea floor, which brings more fish to the yard to be photographed.
All of this is the definition of chilled. Anyone who has played PowerWash Simulator will tell you that there’s a great deal of joy to be had from cleaning up mess. It’s no different here, as you can either systematically comb every inch of a given area, or explore in the hope that you’ll come across some trash. Whatever your approach, it feels good to turn a messy area into a clean one.
Where Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission falls down is that the cleaning never really changes. Whether you are on the surface or underwater, it’s the same bottles and plastic jugs over and over and over. There might be some special tasks – to turn valves that pump out oil, perhaps – but the vast majority of Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission is hunting for the same trash models. And there’s no complexity in removing them. We could have done with some low-level strategy, or at least something to do with all the waste. Having played and enjoyed the similar Island Saver, we felt like Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission could have learned one or two things from it.
It’s a running theme in Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission: we were participating in lightweight tasks that reminded us of other games where they were done better. For example, you’re given a camera in Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission, which immediately got us excited. From Pokemon Snap to Alba: A Wildlife Adventure and Beasts of Maravilla Island, we absolutely love a photography sim with an idyllic backdrop. We’re in, sign us up.
But we soon realised that Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission was on a tight leash. This wasn’t a free-roaming photography sim: it was a controlled one. Take the range of creatures. You only have a few animals in each location as default, and they’re all easy to spot. It’s only when you gather up rubbish that animals return, but the fun of finding them has been completely stripped out. A cutscene plays, showing the animal making its entrance, and they almost always appear right next to you. That Pokemon Snap feeling of finding a rare Lapras is completely gone. It’s presented on a platter to you.
Rules get in the way of enjoying yourself. The camera doesn’t recognise animals, even when they’re in the middle of your shot. Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission deems them to be too far away, obscured by some coral, or not on the list of animals it wants you to photograph. You have to line them up in a very particular manner for the game to register it, and there’s no fun in that. Plus there are no filters or times of day to tinker with. You have a set number of photos you can keep, sure, but there’s nothing that truly rewards you for a miracle shot.
Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission is at its best when you’re exploring. When you’ve got a new area to explore, particularly underwater, it does actually get out of the way and let the Cozycore creep in. While the rubbish on the seafloor is uniform, the areas are not, and it’s possible to come across some landmark ruins, temples and natural phenomena. There’s a neat little Metroidvania system at play, too, as you gain the power of the totems through your actions, and those powers let you pass currents, thermal vents and jellyfish. Revisiting locations with these new-found powers means access to more creatures and more landmarks, with the possibility of exhausting the area of its potential photographs, as well as litter.
While these sequences will have you lulling into a peaceful state of bliss, we do wish the pay-off was a little more satisfying. Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission takes a thoroughly educational approach to its story, and it’s a noble effort. You can find out more about the real-world threats that Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission is conveying. This isn’t just a game: you are participating in conservation efforts that happen around the globe.
But while it might convert a few younger players into future marine biologists, it doesn’t make for a gripping tale. The story is just a sequence of environmental calamities. It doesn’t take much to imagine a version of Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission that leans more into the fantastical or spiritual – something it dips into only on occasion. With more of that in the mix, and an overarching narrative to go with it, Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission could have been so much more.
We certainly felt relaxed as we traipsed and swam around Maupiroa. Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission achieves the basics of any Cozycore game: it gives you a space to explore and removes anything that might look remotely like friction or pressure. Too often, though, we felt like we were going through the motions, following a process that didn’t leave any room for things like creativity in the photos, surprise in the animal-spotting, or unexpected moments in the story.
Dolphin Spirit: Ocean Mission attempts a lot for an indie game, yet it’s a jack of all trades and master of very little. The photography isn’t a patch on Pokemon Snap; the cleaning can’t match Island Saver; and spotting and identifying animals isn’t as charming as Alba: A Wildlife Adventure. The result is wishy-washy, but there are still moments of charm and calm to be found amongst the coral.
