Lou's Lagoon Review

Lou’s Lagoon offers a refuge from a hostile world, and it’s a place that I sunk into almost instantly. While this isn’t quite the modern “TaleSpin” we were led to believe, as the flying actual takes a backseat to many more activities, it is a great time. This new “cozy exploration-and-crafting adventure” has this as its backbone, and it kept me engaged throughout because of how frictionless of an experience it was. Lou’s Lagoon rejects cozy-genre complacency, delivering a heartfelt adventure that keeps both its story and the player moving.

After an introductory cutscene hearing a story told by your Uncle Lou as a child. Since then you’ve grown up and have come to find out Lou has gone missing. You play as an unnamed character that you are able to create the look of yourself. From there you head to Lou’s Lagoon to take over his business and find out what happened to him after a perpetual storm has ravaged the islands of the archipelago. As the island’s inhabitants work to rebuild, it is up to you as the niece or nephew to help the people and uncover the truth to his disappearance.

At first you’re given quests that help you come to grips with the tools and tasks that lie ahead of you. With the introductory bits over with, you’ll have your tasks split between Job and Lou. Lou had a business, and you’ll have to continue to make deliveries and help the people who are still recovering from the recent storm. Quests are obtained by talking to folks with exclamation points over their heads, and they’ll ask you to craft things that would put them back in business. Interestingly, the “delivery” aspect of the game is never fully realized, and I never quite felt like I was delivering anything from one point to another. Aside from the titular Lou’s Lagoon, the starter island and hub of the game, there are three other areas to visit: Tanglebloom Town, Gleam Reef, and Boulderia. All three islands are free to explore and discover at any pace you like, as soon as you have access to your seaplane. The quests themselves aren’t always surprising, and are really straightforward in their design. However, the game is not without its surprises as innocuous quests lead to big reveals that I wasn’t expecting. And that’s where the game really shines.

You have a personal inventory called a zipper, and rewarded by exploration will allow you to increase that inventory by a single slot in some of the game’s hidden treasure chests. When your inventory gets full (because it will), you can transfer or offload some of your items to the plane’s cargo, if you’re close enough to it. The game has a lot of craftables, buildables, and materials, far more than I would have expected. Lou’s Lagoon is a bigger game than it lets on, and the way that all of the upgrades and even unlocks snowball into each other are so well done, and exactly how it should be to help reduce friction.

The game’s currency is hilariously and fittingly named shellings. There are vendors you’ll encounter in the world where you can sell excess items, or find hard to acquire items needed. As you get more established on Lou’s Lagoon, you’ll acquire new tools. The first of which is the Swirler, a vacuum type weapon that lets you collect resources. Next is the Builder, the device you’ll use to craft machines and objects for decorations. The fishing rod and glider are self-explanatory tools, offering ways to acquire new sources and traverse the world, respectively. Lastly there’s the Scooper, despite its name, only scans the ground like sonar to find buried items. There are a series of upgrades you can invest in to make each of these better at what they do.

As you arrive at each island, the storm has taken out the radio tower that allows you to fast travel to its location and take on jobs from the board. The concept of fast travel, called autopilot feels introduced way too early. Now, being able to repair a lot of the game’s radio towers to enable fast travel is the counter to this, and does balance out the mechanic. You do have the option to freely fly from island to island as you wish, or fly and explore the ocean. Don’t have some resources, or having trouble getting them? There are balloons you can fly into to get a random assortment. At first I didn’t know they were things you should hit, but when I didn’t have guns on my plane, I figured it was a safe bet to try. The aforementioned perpetual storm makes its way around the archipelago in a way that feels dynamic and fun to get involved. Since this is game where you can’t die, the stakes are essentially zero.

Your character will get new or have the ability purchase new clothing throughout the game. You’ll be able to even fully re-customize your character if you happened to make a mistake, or want to try something new. There are challenges you’ll receive that put your piloting skills to the test, and have you fly through rings for style points. Doing so will increase a series of challenges that will continue to unlock lots of new customization options for your plane from wings to engines to paint schemes. It’s also fun to have the game roll a random customization roll on your plane to see what it comes up with.

I did encounter some bugs throughout my time with the game, but none of them were game breaking. Though there was one instance where I almost got hard locked from progression, but I was able to fix it and I anticipate it’s not likely going to be a major issue. Things like map icons going missing until I restarted the game, fast travel being finnicky, my character clipping through rocks, and the like.

Lou’s Lagoon is a game that doesn’t really have much in the way of graphical settings. Setting the graphics to “high” did everything for me, and I had no problem achieving my monitor’s maximum framerate of 180fps. The game is incredibly gorgeous, coupled with vivid and bright visuals. There’s nothing to dislike about how it looks or performs.

Lou’s Lagoon doesn’t offer a groundbreaking story, yet it sparks curiosity with a missing family member under mysterious circumstances. What hooked me was its satisfying loop of tool upgrades and exploration. It’s as cozy as the genre gets, but with enough constant interactivity to ensure your hands are never idle. Lou’s Lagoon has been worth the wait, and while I lament that this isn’t the “TaleSpin” game it could’ve been, it still manages to deliver in new and exciting ways.