Cozy Liora Preview – Dear Diary, I Changed My Room Again
You know, I'll think I'll just stay here in my room.
In the article, yesterday I’d brought up that Cozy Liora was the title I preferred by RedenelGO. Well, I inferred that, or directly wrote it. Either way, I wasn’t that thrilled about Kickslaught and would rather play this.
The first obvious observation is how much more visually appealing Cozy Liora is. Granted, we all have our tastes, like black walls and purple ceilings, and maybe, just maybe, you prefer pixel art football players over fluffy cats. I’ve already made my assumption.
A strange disclaimer, but the artwork uses AI, so highlighting that if you don’t look at the Steam page. I have no issue with it, as the developer hasn’t created Lara Croft and marketed a new IP. It’s a welcoming style, and if I, the player, can delve into it and it serves a purpose, why not?
You don’t have to like it, and you don’t have to play it.
Lo-Fi Pets and Palettes
As a dog person, though in appearance, mostly human, I warmed to this cat-occupied space straight away. While it resembles an idler with soft palettes and a lo-fi soundtrack, there is quite a bit you can do, and it’s all at your pace.
The bedroom is where the magic happens. The soft colours, well-placed rugs and colour-coded lighting and bedding don’t match my own room of USB cables, ‘dirty’ clothes worn once and left on the floor, or numerous mugs with coffee residues, fruit flies and beard strands scattered in places my wife won’t notice.
Cozy Liora resembles a ‘lived-in’ space for influencer studios, Pinterest… er, pins, and IKEA setups. Anyone who lives this way doesn’t have kids or work a full-time job. Or they hide it well. However you look at it, the bedroom is enviable and a nice space to zone out in.
Items can’t be customised individually, though a palette icon to the side will scroll through various designs. If you like one, you have to keep tapping, since you can’t select anything specific. That said, I stuck with one, only to change to another, then another, as they all looked so inviting.
Hello, Stranger. You Look Nice
There’s a community feature where you can send messages to other players and receive them, giving them a little heart if you like them. A real heart, on ice. This is a great idea, but it relies on the community, and the word might not be on the street that Cozy Liora is about.
On a concept level, I like this, and it was a pretty good mechanic in Kind Words. However, I’m anti-social and say nice things to the people I like, not strangers. That wouldn’t stop me, but I’m just a little private. Duh – pseudonyn…
What else can you do? You can skip through the various tunes. They’re quite generic, but that’s no reflection on the developers’ choices; it’s just that lo-fi has been done to death through YouTube. Death metal could work, but lo-fi is the safe option.
Another thing you can do is write a diary, but as Cozy Liora isn’t a conventional desktop companion, you have to boot it up manually each time. Perhaps that isn’t as arduous as it sounds, so if that works better for you and writing down your feelings in an Early Access title instead of in a book, on the walls or your arms, hey, that’s your prerogative.
One last thing to do in the bedroom, which is perhaps the key thing for a lot of you: pussy. No, this isn’t an adult game, but a cute little cat you can pet that remains energetic and agreeable enough to be on-demand for your sensory needs and mental health. Give it a stroke, some food, and tell them about the formulas you’ve created in Excel today.
Touch Some Grass
That’s a reasonable amount of activities for an Early Access, but there’s more. For those of you who’ve heard that old saying about touching grass, you can run a staging opportunity for real life and head out into the garden. There’s a handful of things you can do here, as well.
There’s a colouring section with three templates: a bunny, chick and tortoise. With a colour palette of ten, you can make something pretty at your leisure, or erase it and start again.
A couple of features seem to be there as placeholders, and I’m assuming there will be scope to draw your own pictures and share with the community. Though considering the opportunities for dicks and tits doodles, it would be safe to stick with the cute lil’ animals.
Cozy Liora also has a fruit mobile-like game where various sizes of fruit will merge into something bigger for more points. Should this bundle of fruit topple over a designated line, your points are accumulated and distributed across a leaderboard with other players.
Other styling options are on offer, allowing you to drop trees and fountains in the garden, and anything else that takes your fancy. These do drop into an allocated spot, so you can’t have an army of bikes piled up, or develop your own orchid. It’s very pretty, nevertheless.
As RedenelGO has recently released Kickslaught in Early Access, assuming they are a solo developer, I hope they don’t abandon Cozy Liora or leave it unfinished. This isn’t my kind of thing, but I certainly appreciate it and believe there’ll be a great deal of folks interested in this. They just need to know about it first.
