Cosy adventuring meets collectable crafting in Lou’s Lagoon, a charming adventure game from Tiny Roar. Take to the seas and uncover the clues to find your missing uncle and save the locals from disaster.
Is this the perfect launch? Or is Lou’s Lagoon heading for stormy seas?
A Fairy-tale Adventure
Lou’s Lagoon begins with a voice-over telling the tale of Wind and Wave. This opening animation sets the tone going forward as the tension slowly rises. It toes the line well, maintaining a cosy atmosphere while introducing a story with stakes and emotion.
The plot naturally introduces the setting and the issues the locals face. This is largely done through side-quest dialogue since the characters aren’t voiced for the most part. It’s cute and full of charm. I’m also low-key shipping Lou with his first-mate.
Disaster Strikes
Lou’s Lagoon is a predominantly cosy game. Character designs are anthropomorphic in design while animals are more similar to four-legged sheep and dog-like creatures. There are no real fail states, no HP or hunger bars to manage, and no unnecessary difficulty spikes to contend with. You’re largely free to complete fetch quests, uncover new items, collect what you can, and craft to your heart’s content. But a cute story awaits you to uncover.
You take control of your avatar after a storm has destroyed much of Lou’s Island. Here, you’re introduced to a few characters and a gadget called the “Swirler”. This is the most important tool at your disposal and lets you collect/deposit items, as well as defeat enemies. Aim and press the trigger to start sucking up items, with rarer, more valuable items requiring more power.
The Power To Swirl
The Swirler mechanic is fun. I enjoyed running around slurping up items to an incredible degree. The later addition of a glider tool, fishing rod and means to dig underground were fun ways to freshen up exploration and hunting. However, I wasn’t as fond of the Swirler as an offensive tool.
Defeating an enemy or collecting resources uses the same system, requiring you to empty a suction gauge before you can collect the item. Being hit by an enemy doesn’t remove any HP or cause a game over, but it will knock you on your rear and break your suction gauge so that you have to start again. This means that avoiding being hit becomes your main priority while hooked onto an enemy, which is a lot harder than it sounds with multiple enemies in confined areas.
Thankfully, the “combat” system rarely comes into play outside of a few instances. I still appreciated the inclusion of a boss battle, however, as the mechanic is used really well in the final encounter.
The Heart Of The Storm
Rebuilding Lou’s Island takes you away from home and out onto the ocean in your own plane. The over-world map allows for fast travel or “auto-pilot” after completing the radio tower events, but it’s a fun map to traverse. There are collectables and resources scattered through the air and in the uninhabited areas for you to find, plus some challenges to complete. The plane controls were pretty standard and intuitive, but it did require some playing about.
Each area is brightly coloured and filled with unique characters and backdrops to explore. Even though there isn’t much to interact with, Lou’s Lagoon still felt full and lived-in. Houses have trinkets and characters have personalities, filling the cosy landscape with more heart than I expected.
Where Is Lou?
While exploring the 3D environments, I did wonder who the target audience is for Lou’s Lagoon. The gameplay reminded me of Ratchet and Clank and Jak & Daxter from the PS1 days, while the humour and stakes suggest it leans toward a younger audience.
Some puzzles and platforming were a little tricky, but the quest markers and search areas shown on the map also made things more accessible. However, most problem-solving requires materials and crafting to progress.
Quest To Success
The Lou’s Lagoon crafting system is fun but tiresome. It’s not a big problem; however, the bulk of your gameplay centres around this grind.
Using the builder tool, you can place machines in a small area of the island. Each machine crafts different items, and you can unlock these recipes with cores gained from finishing quests. It then spits out the items onto the floor when it is done. Unfortunately, you have to suck up each item as it hits the floor; a task that becomes tiresome after crafting 50 stones. Limited inventory space then forces regular clear-outs and tough decisions, but I eventually got a feel for what was worth saving/selling.
Running back and forth to sell, craft, and make space is tactile, but I longed for some storage boxes. Your plane has some storage, which does ease the pain somewhat, but not enough to stop the hurt of selling resources to make space for quest items.
One tool, a droid, will go out and collect items for you once you have found them. However, this costs money, which is a very limited resource. I mostly used this tool to get items I didn’t want to fight monsters for or rarer items that I had not fully unlocked yet.
Put It To The Test
I ran into a few errors while playing Lou’s Lagoon. However, they patched them out within a day of being reported. I also reached out via Keymailer and got a quick response.
There’s not a lot in the way of tutorials in Lou’s Lagoon, which meant that I missed a few things early on. Things like not realising the plane controls were inverted or forgetting which thumb-stick reels a fish in aren’t game-breaking, but some prompts and tutorials would not go unnoticed. I also found it unusual to use the square button (on PlayStation) to initiate the glider after double jumping with “X”, and I forgot that I could use it for most of my playthrough.
I also tested the building mechanics pretty thoroughly and was delightfully surprised by how high you could build. The options aren’t ridiculous, and the machines don’t really fit, but I built over several storeys and unlocked a good number of decorations. Not that I could interact with any of them…
Flying Off Into The Sunset
As the end credits rolled over Lou’s Lagoon, I reflected warmly upon my time with it and had a mind to return for the achievements. The final few quests and unlocks will require some heavy item grinding, though, as they add up to a whopping 500,000 shells.
If you are looking for a low-stakes, family-friendly adventure, then Lou’s Lagoon will be a brilliant addition to your collection. The crafting system isn’t too crunchy or unforgiving, and the story keeps it pretty light, making it a great game to snuggle up with this autumn.
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows
Publishers: Megabit Publishing, rokaplay
Developers: Tiny Roar
Played On: PS5
Key Provided By: Keymailer
About the Author
