Lou's Lagoon

Lou's Lagoon is a crafting platformer adventure set in a colorful archipelago that's just starting to recover from a tempest caused by bickering gods.

Lou’s Lagoon offers a relaxing and charming cozy experience built around exploration, crafting and freedom, allowing players to progress at their own pace. Its colorful cel-shaded visuals and tropical setting create an inviting atmosphere that makes it easy to unwind, although limited guidance and some repetitive exploration can hold the experience back from reaching its full potential.

It is a game about traveling that has unsatisfying travel. The Switch 2 version comes with far more compromise than it should, especially in handheld mode. If you can put up with uneven gameplay and a lot of loading, there is plenty to enjoy here, but it will take a bit of work to find it.

Lou’s Lagoon delivers chill gameplay for a few comfy nights in of busywork without any actual physical labour. At times, the process of completing tasks can feel overly repetitive. Still, Lou’s Lagoon is a cute, casual game that blends plenty of elements of a wholesome, cosy game into one whimsical little package that might still be worth picking up for casual gamers.

All in all, Lou's Lagoon is a fun excursion that brings together many elements from early PS2 platformers into one engaging craftathon. With that said, the focus on crafting comes with its own limitations, particularly inventory management and lack of explanation. If you know about some of the nuances ahead of time, Lou's Lagoon is a fabulous little romp.

I’ve had a tough time reviewing Lou’s Lagoon. On the one hand, I absolutely adore the game. The bright colours and varied landscapes of the different islands are a pleasure to explore, flying around the archipelago is great fun, and I like having plenty of quests to keep me busy. However, would I recommend the game? Well, no, not in its current state. There are too many issues and frustrations to justify a recommendation. While I appreciate that porting to Switch can sometimes reveal issues unseen before, it currently feels more like an early access version. Hopefully, one day I can return to Lou’s Lagoon and bask in the sunshine, but at the moment, it’s a bitterly disappointing and ultimately very frustrating experience.

There is a genuinely good game underneath Lou's Lagoon's rougher edges. The world is colorful, the characters are memorable, the crafting systems have a clear purpose, and flying around the archipelago can be a lot of fun. When all of the different systems click together, you can settle into a nice rhythm of exploring, collecting, crafting, helping people, upgrading your gadgets, and heading back out to discover something new. That loop is where the game's cozy qualities become most apparent. The problem is that getting into that rhythm can take some patience. Expensive upgrades, limited inventory space, crafting timers, resource gathering, loading screens, unclear moments during exploration, awkward platforming, and technical bugs all have a way of interrupting the flow. None of these problems completely destroy what Lou's Lagoon is trying to accomplish, but together they make the game feel less polished than it should.

Featuring cartoony graphics and a fun premise, Lou's Lagoon is an enjoyable game that evokes classic 3D platformers while offering fresh elements through its mix of crafting mechanics and airplane segments. Unfortunately, however, its launch is marred by inconsistent performance, bugs, and slow segments that require a lot of grinding.

While it may not have a great deal of depth, it has a satisfyingly laid back quality that makes it feel like a reliable cozy crafting adventure

There’s a lot to enjoy here, especially for those looking for a cosy aerial adventure, or those playing with children, etc., but this is a few patches away from being a recommended title, and it’s a real shame because of it.