Critter Cove on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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A deep, open world life sim and town building game set in a cozy post-apocalyptic paradise. Restore your town, sail across a mysterious archipelago, rescue animal pals. Hunt for relics and farm, fish & craft everything you need. Can you help turn Critter Cove into a thriving tourist town once again?
Critter Cove is a relaxing, cozy and singleplayer game
developed and published by Gentleman Rat Studios.
Released on September 10th 2024 is available only on Windows
in 8 languages: English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, French, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, German and Spanish - Spain.
It has received 1,421 reviews of which 1,350 were positive and 71 were negative resulting in a rating of 9.0 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 24.50€ on Steam, but you can find it for less on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified Critter Cove into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Core i3-2100 | AMD FX-6300
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX760+ or AMD Radeon 7950+ equivalent with a minimum 4GB of VRAM
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 20 GB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Mellow, slice-of-life in tropical island settings. Crafting not arduous. Farming can be frustrating with some things that are not "perennials" (i.e., require planting new seeds after each harvest). Most frustrating farming thing is that, after harvesting a non-perennial, it too easily lets you accidentally replant a random seed you happen to be carrying (not the one you intended). And, if that seed *is* a perennial then you can never remove it from that planter. Be careful what seeds you are carrying. (E.g., seeds you might have just harvested as a side effect from a prior planter.) Second most frustrating farming thing is that once a perennial is growing in a planter you can never remove it, which means you can never move or destroy the planter! Be careful where you place planters!!!
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Absolutely obsessed with this game. My irl problems suddenly dont exist anymore. Im literally just a kitty on a boat dont talk to me.
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It's not a bad sim and I've put a lot of hours into it but it has some drawbacks. The game starts of great and then drags for quite a while into what feels like a meaningless grind, then you get another couple quest lines just as I was about to call it a day. They'd probably be better spacing out the quests better. The biggest issue the game has, I think, is the farming grind - and farming in general: You only get one item for every item you plant, and to get seeds you have to recycle an item and you get two seeds, so you have to plant twice as much as what you're going to get back. This is also the only game with fish traps I've played where the trap only provides one fish at time. Most of them have one bait = one fish, but you can usually load your traps. It's very cumbersome and time consuming to constantly rebait to get one fish. I have 120 vegetable/fruit planters, 40 sea planters, 36 flower planters, and 5 fish traps and can't keep up with all the various kiosks. And then you get asked for a dish with some plant you've never even heard of. Ugh. The farming also seems unbalanced. Some of the plants you need for lots of things are slow to grow, like poconuts that you need to make sugar - which you need for lots of recipes, and you also need poconuts in their raw form. And a bunch of recipes where you need poconuts *and* sugar. Perhaps the biggest issue with farming is planting. I have had to dig up so so many plants. It doesn't ask you what seed you want to plant. If you're harvesting and actually activate the same planter again, you plant a seed from your inventory (and the most common plants drop seeds when you harvest them) PLUS you can't tell what you've planted until it's started to grow - there's no tool tip or label. So instead of planting a tatordrake which you need to make flour, you might have accidentally plant a raspberry which are common and grow everywhere. The game also doesn't update quest lines until you do hand-ins which can get incredibly confusing, and doesn't tell you information you should probably know - like that there is a population limit on the island. Too bad if you get everyone you find at the beginning and noone wants to work in one of the stores, you'll just have to put up with a bad fit. The map on the island also doesn't tool tip the name of the critters so you're constantly having to check back who looks like what, unless you've got a good memory, especially when you have to run around the island to hand quests in. At some point, every critter resident has a house. Just give them a letterbox so you can hand in when they're asleep or you can't find them. If they can fix the grind, the pacing and a few QOL issues, then once the new islands and regions are available, this charming, tropical island game would be very worthwhile. It is now, just be aware of these issues.
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I installed Critter Cove three days ago and since then I have put in a little under 30 hours. I could not have found this game at a better time as my 16-year-old kitty Morgan died recently and I needed something immersive to distract me from my grief. She kept me alive when suicidal, her company kept me sane throughout loneliness and despair and she made me smile and feel grateful for life. I've been able to recreate Morgan (no tortie color pattern, but a calico is passable) and taken her on adventures, built and repaired the town, made friends and scavenged for treasures. It might be an odd way of grieving, but it somehow helps now she isn't lying next to me or on my lap anymore. Gameplay: Think Stardew Valley/Animal Crossing/My Time in Portia/Subnautica, MtiP being the closest match with its bright and cheerful take on a post-apocalyptic world, littered with old trash which you gather and use for crafting and relics from the ancient times you display in a museum. There is displayable Easter egg-type objects hidden around the map, something I'm always a sucker for 😅 It´s a kid friendly single player game and you own it fully when bought, no micro transactions and so far no DLC. The story is the classic moving to an empty, worn-down town and then repairing and building it back up, while exploring, crafting, making new friends and gathering/foraging. You can´t die, you simply pass out and wake up with low health in a safe place nearby. The quests encourage exploration and teach the game mechanics fairly well. I hope to learn more about Captain Anchor and the other characters, but at this point it's mostly crafting and fetch quests as well as a few treasure hunts. This doesn't faze me or diminish my love for this adorable and beautiful game. Again, it's Early Access, there'll be more to come back to in a year or two. I'll replay it for certain. Combat: It has no combat, not even hunting as meat is grown on plants. Fishing: The fishing mechanics are simple, you just click once when the fish bites (which is very clear) and the character does the rest. You don't have to spend ages waiting for fish to bite, something always bites. Lures and locations determine what you may catch. Gathering: Intuitive, fast and easy. Blueprints are gradually learned as you dismantle the devices you find and your progress is shown as you do it and recorded in your journal. About 70% of your gathering will take place underwater. This made me nervous, but I learned that you cannot die and simply wake up floating on the surface and that fixed it for me. Something about gathering makes the monkey part of my brain go completely ballistic. Spotting a tuft of grass when low on fiber or that last popcorn stand needed to unlock the blueprint is an instant dopamine rush and a very large part of why I play these games. Crafting is relatively intuitive if you're familiar with this genre, starting with simple stuff crafted by hand, then moving up to different crafting stations etc. Even the handcrafted items keep being relevant and I haven't noticed any stations or resources becoming obsolete as I progressed. It was actually the opposite as the higher tiers of planks builds off the lower, just with added resin. Which.. yeah, not a fan. Friggin resin. There are two major resource bottlenecks I noticed: fiber and resin, resin being the worst. Fiber is found as small tufts of slim pale green grass or obtained as a byproduct from harvesting crops. Start up farming asap as you´ll need the fiber! Resin is dropped when you chop up the dead trees lying about, though not every log will drop resin. Alternatively you'll have to craft it from oil and wood and until you meet Riggs, oil is rare. Buying it from the shop every day helps a bit. Cooking: The cooking mechanics are a mix of SV and MtiP. You learn recipes by experimenting and when it results in something other than Slop, the recipe is recorded and can be scaled up according to the amount of ingredients you have. You do have to have the ingredients in you inventory afaik, which is annoying, but maybe I´m just spoiled by the crafting stations, who´ll just yank whatever they need from my trunks (trunks are btw interconnected and all are accessible from any one of them, because of Trunk-Space, presumably). Hidden around the map are written clues to a few of the recipes, but it would be cool if you could get clues from conversations too. You thankfully don't have to manually stir, add ingredients, chop etc like in Palia and MtiP. I enjoy cooking in Palia but it´s enjoyable because it´s co-op. Visually: This game is gorgeous with vibrant colors, a cartoony art style, beautiful environments with alien plants and animals and the characters actually have some facial expressions and body language, something I've only seen in very few games of this genre to this day. A few things I absolutely LOVED: The regeneration of resources and salvage is from the tropical lightning storms sweeping the islands every so often, throwing up salvage, sinking ships (if you catch the ship before it sinks you might find a treasure chest) and stranding new characters for you to invite to your . You do not get assigned a house. Bar shops and lighthouse, you can pick any home on the island and That. Is. Brilliant! The town changes around you as the houses and shops are repaired and used by the NPCs and you can place most decorations anywhere on your island and the NPCs will interact with them! Both are features that I've wanted in other games and is deeply satisfying to experience. My greatest gripes: I somehow ended up with 95% villagers of the jock persona before learning to tell the types apart. Since the persona decides what they like and where they will work, and you can't evict them once there, this is a real hassle. The "tsundere-mean-girl personality" is not cute. It's not funny or endearing. I actively dislike those villagers and will avoid them. The few treasure hunts I've had were ruined for me by the great big fluorescently green arrow pointing to where I was to dig.. Like, really? Seriously, guys? Sea of Thieves shows how to do treasure hunts beautifully, I hope the devs will look at them and adjust. Afaik, no one lives in the lighthouse that I worked so hard to repair. That annoys me no end, but that might just be me being weird. Repetitive music. It´s really good, don't get me wrong, but after 10 hours of the same two or three melodies I turned it off. Last but not least: Let me pet the damned turtles! I don't know if my gripes will be changed or tweaked later, the way all the other stuff I'm iffy about surely will: The bad clipping (islanders floating in the habour when they actually are on an island far away according to the game??) as well as the general lack of content after approx 25 hours play, you know, all regular normal Early Access stuff, but I haven’t seen any game breaking bugs at any point, and that is worth noting. I love this game. I lived and breathed this game three days straight, to the point of a shoulder in so much pain from continual use of the mouse, I had to eat painkillers to be able to sleep. Then I woke up and did it again, because: worth it. I want to live in Critter Cove. I found this game through a collaboration between Dinkum (Animal Crossing set in TotallyNotAustralia, with Minecraft graphics, I highly recommend it) and Go-Go Town, because Go-Go Town and Critter Cove were sold as a package deal, and I had a bit of money to burn on games and needed something to distract me from my grief. I hope you´ll at the very least take a look at the free demo with around two hours worth of play in it. It deserves it. Please support it´s devs <3 #critter cove #video games #indie games #cosycore #cosy games #furry #computer games
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Honestly..i am absolutely terrfied of the ocean irl, even showering or taking a bath or swimming in a pool is highly. stressful. but...this has helped, like, the fact that the sea in this game, doesn't have monsters, or aggressive sealife, and is just like...weirdly pretty & alien, instead of being the terror fest most ocean games seem to be....it's.....it's like a relaxing version of exposure therapy, i'm somewhat nervous, but the more i explore and see, the less...anxious i've been becoming around water irl, and to top it off i love the game to boot, it's cute & fun ^^
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Frequently Asked Questions
Critter Cove is currently priced at 24.50€ on Steam.
Critter Cove is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 24.50€ on Steam.
Critter Cove received 1,350 positive votes out of a total of 1,421 achieving a rating of 8.99.
😎
Critter Cove was developed and published by Gentleman Rat Studios.
Critter Cove is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Critter Cove is not playable on MacOS.
Critter Cove is not playable on Linux.
Critter Cove is a single-player game.
Critter Cove does not currently offer any DLC.
Critter Cove does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Critter Cove supports Remote Play on TV. Discover more about Steam Remote Play.
Critter Cove is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Critter Cove.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 20 January 2026 12:03 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 23 January 2026 14:30 |
| Steam price | 28 January 2026 20:49 |
| Steam reviews | 28 January 2026 08:00 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Critter Cove, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Critter Cove
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Critter Cove concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Critter Cove compatibility
Game modes
Features
Online players
74
Developer
Gentleman Rat Studios
Publisher
Gentleman Rat Studios
Release
10 Sep 2024
Platforms
Remote Play
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