Colorful tropical islands, a missing relative, piles of resources to collect and enough crafting stations to make me wonder why I suddenly need another twelve pieces of wood. Where’s my Hawaiian shirt when you need it? Lou’s Lagoon has plenty of things I already know from cozy adventures. I spent a lot of time gathering materials, crafting, and rebuilding, although Lou’s Lagoon also gave me something I don’t usually get in these games: my own seaplane. Whenever I’d had enough of whatever I was doing on the ground, I could take off and head somewhere else. Once there, I was climbing around and sucking up resources with a ridiculous vacuum-like tool, because apparently using your hands is terribly old-fashioned. I kept thinking about Super Mario Sunshine, Rayman and Disney Dreamlight Valley while playing, which sounds like somebody threw three completely different games into a blender. Somehow, Lou’s Lagoon survived the experiment. Let’s hop in!
Welcome to Limbo
The setup is pleasantly simple; after receiving a distress call from Uncle Lou, you travel to the Limbo archipelago and discover that a storm has caused quite a bit of damage, oh, and Lou is missing, which feels slightly inconsiderate considering you have just arrived. From there, you start helping the local communities while gradually figuring out what happened to him, which means repairing buildings, collecting materials, crafting useful objects and exploring the different islands scattered throughout the archipelago. I didn’t spend all my time hanging around one village, though, because the seaplane gives you a pretty good excuse to head somewhere else whenever curiosity takes over. I’d fly to another island, land somewhere and usually spot something nearby that made me forget what I had actually come there to do. I could have followed the story marker, obviously, but there was a path over there and something suspicious on that hill, so Uncle Lou would occasionally have to remain missing for another ten minutes. I’m sure he understood.
Most of the collecting is done with the Swirler, a multipurpose vacuum that immediately brought Super Mario Sunshine back into my head, with maybe a little Luigi’s Mansion thrown in as well. You’re not washing colorful sludge off Delfino Plaza, though; instead, you use it to suck up resources and interact with objects around the islands. Considering how much material you need throughout the game, I was happy that collecting it involved more than walking up to another tree and pressing the same button for the hundredth time. You’ll be doing plenty of it too. Raw materials can be refined and used for repairs, crafting, and whatever project you’ve currently decided absolutely needs your attention, so I quickly started grabbing things simply because I happened to walk past them. Not because I’m a hoard…, uh, no, because I knew I’d probably need them eventually. Anyone who plays these games knows exactly how this goes. I don’t need twenty pieces of scrap right now, but at some point somebody is absolutely going to ask me for twenty pieces of scrap. Yoink.
Crafting works, although it takes its time
Crafting follows the usual idea of turning whatever you dragged home into something actually useful. Some resources need to be refined first, after which you can use them for repairs or eventually start building things of your own around the islands. I liked reaching that point because I wasn’t constantly fixing somebody else’s mess anymore and could finally decide a little more for myself what I wanted to build. It can take a while to get there, though. Some materials need to go through several steps before they’re ready, and certain machines only process things one at a time, so I regularly found myself standing around waiting for the thing I needed. I don’t mind Lou’s Lagoon taking things slowly, but once I’d repeated the same process a few times I really wanted some of those machines to hurry up. A little more automation later in the game would have saved me quite a bit of waiting, especially when I already had everything I needed sitting in my inventory. Flying itself though, was probably my favorite part of Lou’s Lagoon. I know I’m technically just traveling from one island to another, but putting me behind the controls of the seaplane made me want to do it myself instead of looking for the nearest fast-travel option. You take off, see the islands below you and can change course when something else catches your attention, while balloons scattered through the sky give you something to aim for along the way. I regularly ended up flying somewhere because I could see it in the distance and wanted to know what was there, which is a pretty good reason to give me an airplane in the first place.
The islands themselves gave me plenty to climb around on once I landed. There are cliffs, different routes, and small distractions tucked around the environments, so I spent more time jumping and climbing than I expected from a game where I’d also spent the previous twenty minutes processing materials. That’s where some of those Rayman thoughts came from, while the freedom to wander off and do whatever caught my attention reminded me more of Disney Dreamlight Valley. Lou’s Lagoon has a little bit of both, except Dreamlight Valley never gave me a seaplane, which now seems like a serious oversight.
Cozy doesn’t necessarily mean effortless
Lou’s Lagoon also looks like something you could easily put in front of younger players. Everything is colorful, the characters are charming and messing something up generally isn’t a disaster, so I can imagine plenty of parents taking one look at it and thinking they’ve found the perfect game for their kids. Well, maybe. Some younger players will have absolutely no problem with it, but there were parts where I needed a bit more precision and patience than the colorful presentation had led me to expect. The platforming never becomes brutally difficult, although certain sections do require you to be fairly accurate with your jumps, and figuring out where to go or which materials you still need can take some work as well. I actually liked that Lou’s Lagoon didn’t treat me like I needed my hand held all the time, but I wouldn’t automatically assume that every young child who likes the characters will have an easy time playing it.
I also rarely ran out of things I wanted to do. If I’d had enough of collecting resources, I could work on a building, take the seaplane somewhere else, pick up a side quest or completely ignore whatever I was supposed to be doing because I’d spotted something interesting in the distance. My plans regularly changed halfway through doing something, usually because I needed one material, went looking for it and came back with an inventory full of everything except the thing I’d originally needed. I suspect anyone who spends too much time with these games knows that problem.
Conclusion
I had a good time with Lou’s Lagoon, although probably not for the reasons I first expected. I enjoyed collecting resources and slowly fixing things around the islands, even if waiting for materials to finish processing tested my patience more than once, but give me a seaplane and apparently I’m willing to forgive quite a lot. Quite often, I’d head somewhere, get distracted along the way and eventually realize I had completely forgotten what I was supposed to be doing. Lou’s Lagoon gave me plenty of excuses to do exactly that, whether I was flying to another island, climbing around looking for materials, or sucking up everything that wasn’t nailed down with the Swirler. I would be a little careful buying it for very young children because some of the platforming and figuring out what to do next can ask more of them than the colorful presentation suggests. For me, though, that was never a problem. I was having too much fun flying around and hoarding materials I absolutely, definitely, probably needed.