Early thoughts on Critter Cove

I originally meant to write some thoughts on the new English translation patch for Telefang, but I've been distracted. Last Tuesday, Critter Cove was released into Early Access and I've been playing a fair amount of that. At the time of this writing I've put 20 hours into the game, enough to have a pretty solid first impression.

But first, there are two major things that need to be brought up before I go any further. One of which is that this is an Early Access game and things are changing all the time. Heck, yesterday a big patch went through upping the potential town population of your island. Secondly, it is impossible to talk about Critter Cove without evoking Animal Crossing.

Lots of games want to evoke Animal Crossing right now. And why not? It's a great series, beloved by millions, stuck on a single platform, and the last game introduced a mechanic that polarized people.

Let me tell you, if you hate the crafting in Animal Crossing, you will despise Critter Cove. Just go ahead and remove it from your Steam Wishlist now, as it's impossible to do anything in that game without crafting. You'll be turning stones and sticks into bricks and planks for everything: your house, your villager's houses, your boat. The museum. The café. The food you eat from the café. The ingredients to make the food you eat at the café. I've never had a problem with crafting and I often really enjoy it, but I know it's not everyone's thing, so consider yourself warned.

Like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you're on an island. And like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can leave your island to go explore other islands, and even explore the ocean in between. Unlike Animal Crossing, this is considerably more involved than hopping on Kapp'n's ship and/or flying Dodo Airlines to explore. Critter Cove gives me hints of Raft with its sailing and stumbling upon floating debris that may be useful. Also on many of these islands are shipwrecked critters for you to potentially recruit to your island.

The villagers are my first issue with the game. Critter Cove has a surprisingly outstanding character creator at the beginning of the game. There's a wide selection of animal species, or even more exotic options like Cthulhu-esque squid-faced creatures, dragons, and robots. You can also just be a plain old human if you want, but my furry ass can't fathom why you would. The villagers have been pre-made with this same robust character creator, and they all look really great.

If you've spent any time with Animal Crossing, you know the villagers there all fit into one of eight distinctive personality types, like jock, snooty, lazy, or peppy. But the villagers of Critter Cove seem to only come in two flavors: dumb and mean. I'm sure that this is just an Early Access issue, and the official roadmap does mention "Townsfolk Relationship Enhancements" coming soon, but at this exact moment in time I don't find myself having any fun talking to the people that live on my island. Half of them tell me my breath stinks, and the other half aren't smart enough to know what a tent is. What's interesting is that when you first meet these critters shipwrecked on other islands, their personalities are much more subdued. The cranky critters come off more as a put-upon types, and the dumb ones are more well-meaning bumblers. Bringing them to your island immediately Flanderizes the lot of them, and any further interactions with your villagers will result in the exact same insipid/jerk dialogue over and over.
If you're familiar with the Animal Crossing fandom at large, you know a common talking point is "The villagers nowadays are too nice, I wish they were mean, like in the Gamecube era". I also love a good jerk character, but not when half of my island is filled with them all saying the same thing about my choice of clothes.

My second biggest issue with Critter Cove right now is that the same is fairly buggy. Again, I know this is the risk of playing Early Access, and new patches and hotfixes have come out nearly every day, but it's can still be fairly frustrating. In the 20 hours I've been playing, I've had one major story quest bug out on me which resulted in me starting the game all over with a new character. Fortunately I was able to catch up to my old file in less than an hour. I currently have another bugged quest, the result of which is that I can't change which villager is currently running the café. This means every few days tourists flock to my island only to complain about the crappy food quality, something I'd love to fix, but can't. The most annoying bug I've run into, however, is something with my controller. When I first got the game, my 8BitDo controller would wig out and turn off after 15-ish minutes of playtime. A day or so later a small patch was released and my controller issues cleared up. Yesterday a much larger patch was released and not only does the game run more choppy than before, but my controller issue is back. I'm still able to play with mouse & keyboard, and this doesn't seem to affect my Steam Deck at all, but still, pretty annoying.

Even with the bugs, even with the uninteresting villagers, I'm finding myself really enjoying Critter Cove. Is it up to par with Animal Crossing? At this point in time, no. There are a ton of quality of life touches in Critter Cove that I wish Animal Crossing had dearly (You can craft with stuff in storage! You don't need to have it on your person!) but there's still plenty of work to be done. If the game sounds even remotely appealing to you, I'd say maybe check back in a couple of months and see if these big bugs have been hammered out. Until then, all I want is Nyx out of my café, man. He's sinking my island's economy.