6/16 Update- Everything in this post was written before it was
disclosed that Spryfox makes use of Anthropic's Claude in the code; as this is a somewhat developing matter I'm keeping the post up for now but may delete if it turns out the game does use generative "AI". There's no place for AI in art - and even if it's "just code", code is art, AI is environmentally and cognitively damaging theft, and this fucking sucks man
Cooperative play in the Crosslands is so goddamn satisfying
I've spent the last few days playing the Spirit Crossing playtest and man, I gotta put these thoughts down somewhere because it's a TREAT.
First, some background
When Spry Fox's Cozy Grove launched, it became a household regular for me and my kids. Something about the art, the writing, and the fact that the gameplay was focused on "there's only so many things you can actually do in one day, pace yourself, come back tomorrow if you want to do more" was this incredibly beautiful convergence.
I had a free subscription to Apple Arcade (one of the 'benefits' of working for a startup that got swallowed by Apple and eaten alive - story for another day but somewhat relevant here) which is how we were playing it at first but the game left that service a while after Spry Fox was acquired by Netflix as one of their game studios. Sure it was available on other platforms but had a kind of clunky process to transfer a save over from iOS to Steam. This is not Spry Fox's fault to be 100% clear, getting anything out of an iPhone is made complicated by design. Again, thanks Apple.
As I understand it, while under the Netflix brand, Spry Fox began developing Spirit Crossing, a "cozy life sim cooperative MMO" that at the time was limited to mobile and only available to Netflix subscribers. As someone who'd backed off on Netflix I wasn't really paying attention and instead had sights on the planned Cozy Grove sequel (which I believe was still called "Cozy Grove 2" at that time - now known as Camp Spirit).
But ultimately, the relationship with Netflix was not to be and in a rare moment of capitalism not being super destructive (for once??), instead of Netflix just firing everyone and closing the studio, Spry Fox was able to ** buy itself back** from Netflix.
I had tangential knowledge of that story in the background via news articles, via my kids asking about Cozy Grove sequel updates - but it wasn't until the 2026 Wholesome Direct (one of the few Summer Geoff Fest events I actually watched live this year) that Spirit Crossing popped up on my radar. Here's the trailer I saw:
Given everything positive about this game I'm about to say, this is going to sound absolutely bonkers - but I'm generally really skeptical about self-defined "cozy games".
It's a hard line to walk between "head in the sand" and "art is political even if you don't think it is", and while plenty of games in this descriptor address tough topics: race, violence, sexuality etc - there's plenty where they are presented as "good clean fun" with unremarked-upon colonialism (stay with me on this) that's either juuust under the surface or the outright text of the thing. "Move to a new place, deforest the landscape, strip mine for resources, and by nature of video games you are more important than whoever (or whatever) was already living there" etc etc.
To a lesser extent (as I previously have mentioned on this blog) I'm mostly not into fishing, farming, crafting or almost anything else that tends to pop up in this genre 1.
Or so I thought??
The art style of Spirit Crossing mixed with it having a free-to-join playtest intrigued me and so, me'n my kids booted it up and god damn.
God DAMN.
My original selling points for Cozy Grove if you recall from above were: the art, the writing, and the gameplay focus around non-compulsion - and all of those are on display in Spirit Crossing times like, 1000 but then you mix in that it's massively multiplayer (with plenty of boundary setting built-in) and the whole thing clicks.
Within a few minutes of reaching the post-tutorial section where I could interact with other players, I found a piece of rubble I couldn't clear by myself; a passing rando saw I was in distress, helped out, and then went about their day with a wave.
So this many paragraphs in, you're gonna talk about the game now maybe?
Dude one of the many reasons I don't review games for a living is that I would be shit about it. No review would OPEN a review with a story about how working for a company they really liked was bought and destroyed by Apple, perpetually resulting in being bitter toward one of the most inescapable brands on the planet. They'd much rather hear about how the greatest new video game character in 2026 is a rectangle bear who LARPs and protests labor violations.
I just gotta keep on bloggin, man.
But yea. Gameplay. Stop me if you've heard this one before:
You create a character by tweaking visual appearance and pronouns, then hop into a world that's nebulously the afterlife perhaps? You help both a small spirit that brought you there (seemingly on purpose but it's not super clear yet - I'll talk about story progression soon) and an iconic rectangular bear that fell upon hard times with a bucket.
Your basic verbs are:
- Move
- Jump
- Climb
- Interact / Talk to
As you unlock a paraglider pretty quickly (first ten minutes if even that) and there's a stamina bar for climbing, the Breath of the Wild influence is fully on display (complimentary).
But this game isn't trying to be a Zelda game. There is no health, no combat; you and every other player are visitors to the "Crosslands" which is populated by some humans, some rectangular bears, and shitload of seemingly wayward or lost spirits (many of whom are either in some weird candle cult or running financial schemes).
There are concrete locations (The Village for example) but the Wilderness area changes every 3 real-world days to a new location. It's unclear if these are handmade (it really feels that way) or procedurally generated but I've now experienced 6 days of play (so 2 Wilderness cycles) and while the geography stays the same for those 3 days, the experiences within do not.
As an example; day 1 of the current cycle (yesterday) Rudi the rectangle bear (the "labor" screenshot earlier in this post) showed up to populate the land with cardboard cutouts of slimes you can destroy for resources (I don't know if this is an explicit nod to Little Gator Game but I love it nonetheless). We're on day 2 and not only is Rudi gone, but there's a footrace challenge set up.
All of this would be totally great in a single player experience but the neat thing is how collaborative it CAN be. So there's a footrace challenge today, right? Get to X point on the map, collect an item that'll track how long it took you and report back your time with said item. Fantastic - but the world allows players to place certain items in it, so a part that might have a difficult climb this morning might (by later today) have a bounce pad installed by someone to make the climb easier.
And that doesn't stop at these events; items can be placed and interacted with by everyone but so far instead of "dog ahead" Elden Ring status, it's mostly traversal assistance (ladders, fans, bounce pads) and moments like this:
I think it got to about 32 comments of pro trans joy before that Wilderness cycled out. For context, both signs, the bouncy pad, the fan and the balloon decoration were all placed by random players at the top of the tallest mountain in the current world
And man, the community stuff is just so cool
There's this mechanic where "storms" are bad things - big ones hit every few days and cause rubble and messes that need to be cleaned up, but smaller ones hit multiple times a day in the Wilderness map and during them, you can't do a lot of the Wilderness activities (and your stamina is reduced) - encouraging you to seek shelter at a bonfire with other players.
Which usually just devolves into a ridiculous jam session. That's me in the center with the bassochord and the bucket on my head.
Blurred out friends names since they are Steam usernames
There are traditional "harvest" mechanics from a "cozy" game; flowers, ore deposits, wood stumps (I don't know if it was intentional but you can never chop down a live tree; you can only collect wood from stumps. It's cute and feels less invasive) but these have a set amount per real world day in the Wilderness map, so if you've done your harvesting then that's it until tomorrow. Go talk to NPCs, go do some other quests, build / decorate your house or Waystation? Or just spend time in this beautiful world??
There's a surprising amount to do, but the game is paced in such a way where it asks you to put it down and come back later. The first day, my main quest ended in a "Talk to me tomorrow" to proceed.
Marj's tea shop in the Village is a great place to put on a show
And each day not only do stories and quests progress, but so do the options available to you as a player. I unlocked the ability to join a Waystation (read: a sort of community housing project that players get put in to) on day 3 and that's lead me to all sorts of adventures. By Day 6, I'd unlocked a new role at my Waystation; the ability to decorate and move objects around like I can at my own house. Lets me help out with the place a bit more than I could as a resident.
Ahoy, motherfuckers
I'd also unlocked a Camera by day 6, allowing me to take glorious photos of the scenery:
The Village is so goddamn scenic
Ahoy, motherfuckers
But ultimately it's just so satisfying to explore and help out others along the way. I saw a person struggling with a fish today (first time I've ever seen this) and I was able to jump in and help:
BETTER WITH FRIENDS
The only downside I'm seeing with the game so far is that I can't steal Joule's truck. Look at this thing!!!
Wait so Should I Play it™?
It's currently free on Steam and available on mobile devices for all Netflix subscribers (the dev team has written about their ideas for how to actually charge for the game proper once it's ready to launch - it's worth a read) so there's minimal entry barriers. It is not hardware demanding at all on the Steam side (one of the kids is on a laptop with Win10 and an intel graphics card from 2018) and dude it's just fun. Play for like 20-30 mins a day (longer if you want obviously) and if we're steam buddies, lemme know. I can invite you over to my house and you can hang out in my secret waterfall cave.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Here's your end-of-post cat, her name is Gargoyle. Why would I watch the Wholesome Direct if I feel this way? Partially for my kids, partially because I often have friends working on projects that get announced there, and also because ultimately I
dovalue the work the WG team does. We gotta be critical of the things we care about.↩