If you love the very special brand of relaxation that comes from the Animal Crossing series, but after over a year with New Horizons are looking for something similar but just a little bit different, then maybe Cozy Grove is the game for you. It doesn’t feel so much like a game, as it does a relaxing space for you to drop by and visit every day. Instead of a number of cute animals to interact with, the island is inhabited by friendly ghosts!

You play as a spirit scout who’s dropped onto an uninhabited island with the task of helping any ghosts on the island to finally pass on. When you first arrive, the island is completely rundown and displayed in only blacks and whites. Then as you start meeting and helping ghosts, the island becomes brighter and busier. At first, your sole companion is your friendly fire pit pal Flamey, a sentient flame who loves eating spirit wood and is willing to answer any questions you might have about the island. Spirit wood is obtained by helping out ghosts, and after feeding enough of it to Flamey, he is able to reveal other ghosts for you to meet. It’s a good little gameplay loop.

This is actually a big part of the game. Patience. Even after you have finished all your possible tasks for the day, you can still fish and collect shells to your heart’s content, but none of the main plot will continue. There’s a postman ghost who delivers new letters to you every morning, and all of the ghosts on the island will only ask for you to complete a new task the day after you finish the prior. It managed to incentify me to check on the game day after day in a way that was similar, but altogether different from Animal Crossing. It wasn’t just to see what new items might be around, but also because I wanted to learn more about the ghostly inhabitants haunting the island. This is where Cozy Grove manages to supersede even Animal Crossing. The ghosts are each their own individual characters with memories and regrets that you need to help them remember.

The main driving force behind the game is the past that these ghosts all need to let go of. For every task that you complete for one of them, you get a little bit closer to finding out the memories that the ghosts have forgotten. New pieces of information are shown through artwork or dialog, as they try to piece together what their lives were before they passed away. Every ghost is completely unique, with different character traits and hobbies, along with individual problems that need solving. Animal Crossing really doesn’t have anything like this. Each character in the Animal Crossing games instead comes from a certain preset ‘personality’ and they repeat the same dialog over and over. Whereas the ghosts in Cozy Grove ironically feel so much more alive, and discovering the history of both them and the island itself is what will bring you back to play more each day.