Collector’s Cove (PC)
Farming and fishing often go hand in hand for cozy rural games, but usually the balance is tipped in favor of agriculture with the fishing a nice extra on the side. Collector’s Cove evens out the relationship a bit though, mainly because your adventure takes place aboard a sailing vessel pulled along by a large plesiosaur. While there will always be fish waiting to be caught alongside your ship as you explore the seas, the farming is kept in check by the limited space you have on your deck, but the purpose behind growing crops and reeling in aquatic life isn’t for survival or selling. Instead, Collector’s Cove is a game about trying to discover all the various species you can find with both these tasks, with some even being closer to what you might in a fairy tale than a farmer’s market.
Collector’s Cove lets you customize your playable character as you please, but regardless of how they look, they’ll always be setting sail to continue their family legacy. Your father and mother are what are called Named Collectors, the player needing to climb the ranks as a collector to earn the same distinction so they can sail off into the uncharted waters beyond Collector’s Cove in search of the unknown. For now though, you still sail in seas with plenty left to discover, the player needing to gradually fill out their compendium to rank up, gain access to new areas of the ocean, and eventually get permission to head to Collector’s Cove yourself. Besides some mail from your family checking in, the game leaves its story to the side as you get to work, the only consistent interaction you will have with other people being when you talk to your three suspiciously similar uncles who serve as helpful merchants. Other than Uncle Terry, Jerry, and Eugene, it’s you and your customizable Fablefin out on the sea, your Loch Ness Monster inspired companion carrying the ship on its back to wherever you wish to explore.
Your main focus in Collector’s Cove will be on discovering fabled variants of the crops and fish you can collect, and to start uncovering these special species, you must first just get to know them the usual way. Building spaces to grow crops on deck and occasionally dipping your fishing line in the sea near fish shadows will let you gradually get to know the local plants and fish life, the player getting a bit of credit every time they harvest a crop or successfully catch a fish. Neither task is overly difficult, you need to keep the plants watered and reeling in a catch mostly involves making sure you don’t break the line when they fight you, but once you get to know a species well enough, you’ll learn either the fertilizer recipe or bait materials needed to ensure higher quality yields. Once you’ve cultivated some quality crops or caught some quality catches, then you’ll finally know the way to discover a brand new fabled species, and the conditions for making these appear can be quite creative. Some will be a little simple, like watering a plant three times after it’s ready to harvest or fishing during a rainstorm, but over time the conditions can be quite unusual and amusing. You may have to rotate your camera around a crop to turn it into a corkscrew or make sure a crop with a fox face on it doesn’t see you coming before you pluck it, and fishing can start to ask you to dip you line in unusual places like lighting your line on fire or even casting it into a mirror.
The regular plants will consist of things you can expect in real life like onions, blueberries, banana trees, and so on while the fish similarly draw from actual species like pale chubs, barracudas, mahis, and more, but the fabled species can be all sorts of curious imaginary critters and crops as well as some truly silly puns to make discovering them a delightful pay off to your work. The new species aren’t just there to help you increase your collector rank either, as your character’s abilities will periodically level up over time as will your Fablefin when you feed them a fabled species. The Fablefin’s early upgrades will be things like being able to sail your boat to islands without it getting tired so quickly, but later ones can truly be superb payoffs to the investment you put into making brand new species. You can eventually have your Fablefin spray water all across your deck to water your full farm at once rather than having to use the watering can on each plot, the salvage that floats by in the water that you normally grab one by one with a plunger gun can instead be gathered by a school of fish your companion calls upon, and they can even provide blessings to make certain actions more productive or provide special results. Your character unlocks new perks over time as well, such as being able to get more than one crop or fish from harvesting or reeling them in, character growth having a few less exciting steps along the way but definitely providing rewarding perks that help speed things up a little after you’ve gotten into the usual rhythm of things.
You won’t spend all your time on your vessel though. Once your Fablefin reaches an island you can hop off to do a bit of exploration, but the islands you find are fairly small and mostly exist as a means of gathering resources. Chopping down trees for wood and mining rocks for minerals is the main reason you step onto land, but there are other little attractions like freshwater ponds to find new species in and simple little treasure chest puzzles to unlock random goodies. For the most part, Collector’s Cove will fall into a comfortable format of getting some crops growing, grabbing some fish, and dropping in on islands when you reach them for the stuff you need to craft helpful tools and machines or decorations, and should you need new plant seeds or want to do some resource exchanging, you call your uncles on their ship to sell things you’ve grown or caught and then get back to work. The island treasure chests can surprise you a bit though, because on occasion they may contain a recipe or crafting blueprint that lets you bypass purchases and the usual research period. It does add some excitement to the island visiting but not quite enough, the randomized islands repeating layouts and often not even trying to have a strong identity or unique features.
The islands and in fact the ocean itself will change a few times during your quest to become a Named Collector though, because once you’ve reach a certain rank, you can sail into new waters with new themes and a host of yet to be discovered plants and creatures. Rather than going for the easy ideas for what kind of waters you might sail into, Collector’s Cove decides alongside the expected tropical locales it will also have places like an area rich with cherry blossoms for a Japanese feel and a spooky haunted stretch of the sea. While the islands will look a bit different in terms of decoration, the greater variation comes from the new species you’ll be growing and reeling in, later species sometimes having more demanding actions or having bait or fertilizer recipes that use plants and animals from different regions. Managing your resources, properly picking what to sell or store, and keeping up with crafting helpful enhancements will keep you busy on top of the journal filling duties, and while Collector’s Cove is able to be played as a relaxing farming adventure, it can often be pretty easy to keep yourself consistently busy. Some limits will lead to lulls of course, plants only grow in the region that suits them so you might be idling as you wait for your last fruits and veggies to ripen for a bit before you head off to new climes, and fabled conditions like fishing in a rainstorm can be a bit of a drag if it’s the last fish in the region you are trying to upgrade before you go. However, you will eventually need to return to each region later as your ranking up will unlock new finds in that stretch of the sea, so if you do find yourself short on watermelons you need for bait in a later area, you can always try to get that fabled fish on a second time around rather than feeling like you have to go to another area just to cultivate a bit of that fruit.
Beating the game does not require collecting every fabled species but it will require a great deal of them, this again helping if you did slip up a bit and didn’t have the resources needed for later game recipes. With later upgrades allowing you to expand your boat size and add things like butterfly hotels that make crops grow more quickly, you can become increasingly productive and pursue compendium research at a strong pace, but there are also cute little touches like being able to acquire new costume pieces for your Fablefin. Reaching Collector’s Cove will take over 20 hours and they’ll generally be pretty pleasant and relaxed hours spent, there not being too many problems along the way. I never did see crops wither if that’s even possible because a rainstorm would usually blow in eventually for a free dousing of the ship, special bait won’t be spent if you reel in a fish that isn’t of the species you were angling for, and there doesn’t seem to be any materials or collectibles that can be completely missed. Some things might take time to find again, fishing is dependent on the time of day for example and ponds only have so much stock when you drop by an island so you may only get a few chances at catching a species you’re pursuing, but Collector’s Cove is mostly focused on the gradual labor, working your way up to new finds without any distressing disruptions and only a little room for mistakes that are usually easy enough to recover from.
THE VERDICT: Collector’s Cove is a pleasant farming sim that has a special appeal thanks to its focus on discovering fabled species. The process of working up to each new exotic and unusual discovery involves a solid and simple approach of cultivating crops and catching fish, gradually improving your work and unlocking new perks to speed up and expand your options as you sail to new seas to discover brand new batches of plants and animals. The island hopping itself is fairly plain, more a means of gathering resources with only the rare interesting find, but the work aboard your ship of balancing your resources, making the most of your time, and figuring out how to fill out your compendium keeps Collector’s Cove engaging and with less downtime than you might expect of such a stress-free sailing journey.
And so, I give Collector’s Cove for PC…
A GOOD rating. A colorful soft look and a lot of little interactions like dressing up or decorating help with Collector’s Cove presenting itself as a pretty cute and laidback farming adventure even though there can be periods where you feel like there’s so much you could be doing. The clock isn’t worth stressing over though and even if you are a bit short-sighted before realizing fish and fruits will be needed to make fertilizer and bait in later areas, the need to return to previous seas when new species appear will give you that chance to stock up rather than it being a drag to go back and get what’s required. The islands being so basic is perhaps the big disappointment of a game that is otherwise so focused on discovery. Each new fabled condition and the species you discover piques your interest and makes you excited to see the requirements for the next one and what quirky creature or crop might arise, but there’s not so much excitement involved in pulling up to the islands. You’ll get your wood, soil, and rocks like usual, some flowers if you like, but beyond the ponds you often aren’t going to find too much of interest if the treasure chests aren’t feeling generous when they’re even present. Starting new expeditions in differently themed areas of the sea is often more exciting for the seeds your uncle sells you there and which fish you reel in over the side of the ship, the most common activities thankfully made consistently rewarding and not too demanding so they don’t get wearisome as you do them again and again. Considering the whole idea of the game is sailing about with your farm though, it’s a surprise there aren’t more meaningful destinations, but the boat is still an effective space for providing important limits on one hand but also letting you so easily mix farming and fishing on the other. When you aren’t busy with one, you’re doing the other, or maybe crafting items or getting your items in order for when your uncles next pull up with their merchant ship. Some really smart touches like one of the uncles letting you trade resources for others alleviate some potential strain or repetition, the player able to get some of the haunted wood even if they left that region and need it to make something even if the price is higher than just visiting in island if you get it by trade. Collector’s Cove is overall fairly clean in that way, friction not coming from rough systems but from thinking about what needs doing so you can manage things like when to fish for the rarer catches or making sure you can trigger the conditions on fabled species for the more delicate ones.
Your voyage with your Fablefin has a lot of curious discoveries to make and some appreciable growth that really helps the collecting keep its steam even when certain parts like island hopping aren’t evolving. Collector’s Cove is a cozy yet involved experience with the right amount of whimsy and fantasy thrown on to make it more unique and engaging than if it was just a farming game that happens to be aboard a boat.