Petit Island (Xbox Series X)
Long ago, a cat named Felix explored a tiny little island with his friends, making precious memories he cherished even into his late years. While it would be easy to call such an experience unforgettable, sadly, old age can cause those cherished moments to fade from memory. His granddaughter Lily is inspired to try and stoke the embers of those joyous memories though, heading to that island herself to walk in his footsteps and find mementos and stories that can help him remember the good times. Petit Island has a fairly sweet set-up for a cozy little adventure and immediately the absolutely adorable animal people might steal your heart, but there is more to making a relaxed experience than good vibes, and it feels like Petit Island isn’t quite sure of how to tap into the type of adventure it wants to provide.
Petit Island begins with Lily arriving on the titular island after you’ve taken a little time to customize her how you like. Having left her phone behind by mistake, Lily finds she’ll need to immerse herself in the little island community to get around, except you do get a map and markers easily tell you where to go for quests. It almost feels like the game wants you to navigate by what people tell you at first, but that idea is abandoned rather quickly in favor of most characters marking your map instead and setting you loose. To help jog Grandpaw Felix’s memory, you’ll lead Lily around the island as she follows the fragments of journals and photos, sometimes reconnecting with Felix’s old friends or seeing what they left behind, be it how they changed the island or the descendants who now carry on their memory. For the most part, everyone is fairly polite and welcoming, although there is eventually a bit of conflict when you run into a bunny girl about Lily’s age named Violet. Selfish and a bit standoffish, Violet develops a small rivalry with Lily that never gets too harsh, but does add a bit of spice to a game world that rarely ever pushes back against you or presents any danger, even jumping into the ocean just teleporting you to the shore nearby.
Exploring Petit Island at first makes the game’s name feel like a misnomer, the main city of the island having a fair few structures and a good sprawl to it when you are witnessing it for the first time. However, you do rather quickly realize the city is smaller than it appears and doesn’t have too much going on in it, and as you traverse the island repeatedly to do the chores that Felix’s old friends give you, you start to realize how sparse the space really is. There are optional activities like collecting fish and bugs, although the same species always appear in the same spots and catching them isn’t hard at all, either just requiring a tepid button mash for fishing or a short slow sneak to catch a bug. A legendary catch can be pulled in repeatedly at the same spot and not many are hidden in interesting ways, so completing the collection is rather bland and it almost serves more as a way to earn some money by selling easy finds. Money is mostly used either for a temple restoration project that isn’t that extravagant or buying furniture for a secret base you get rather late in the adventure, and the only reason really to head to the base at all is to customize it and it’s hidden away so you have to make an effort to even go see it as you traipse around the island.
Main quest objectives aren’t always that much better either. Many of the people you talk to will tell you to go somewhere else and talk to someone or grab an object without much fuss, the game having you even return to the same park to grab the same flowers repeatedly with no real change to the task between visits. Lily is thankfully not too slow and you can get various rides like banana llamas to take around the island, although if you invest some of your money into new mount types you’ll often find they have some drawback like not being able to jump that makes them fairly useless for crossing the hills of Petit Island. On that banana llama you can at least go hither and yon as often as is necessary, and while you might meet some cute characters that might get you to smile or chuckle a little, it still feels like you aren’t engaging with them very much or getting to know anyone that well. Sometimes the game can whip up a bit more of a challenge, a little jumping obstacle course, a game of hide and seek, or a small test of your ability to figure out a clue, but most activities won’t be very interesting on their own and their payoff is usually being sent on a new errand.
You will get new items over time like the fishing rod, bug net, or a shovel, but unfortunately, there is an oddly stiff inventory system involved in their use. You must pause the game, move your indicator over to the right item, and select it from there. You can’t hop onto your mount while you have an item out, you can’t take photos either despite it being used for both necessary quests and just as a way to appreciate the game’s admittedly nice colorful look, and there are no button shortcuts to bring out an inventory item quickly. It can become a bother when you see a little spot to dig, not only because what you dig up is usually a pittance, but you have to do the clunky inventory swap to get your shovel. Even a flowery hat you sometimes wear to interact with a certain character is tied to this system, but it’s hardly the only thing in Petit Island that doesn’t feel like it was built properly. You get an umbrella that can break your falls and let you glide, but its activation after a jump is fiddly and requires you figuring out the right moment where pressing the button will actually deploy it. Character conversations sometimes just restart for some reason, although one admittedly funny case of this happening occurred when a harmless character animation accidentally shoved Lily into the nearby pond. More annoying though was when an optional quest involving a midair obstacle course, despite assuring the player it can be exited by pressing a button, would just reset the course over and over and teleport you back to start if you tried to walk away, something that doesn’t gel well with the fact you can attempt it before you even get the umbrella necessary for beating it.
Petit Island doesn’t feel rickety and a lot of the experience is just running back and forth so there’s not a lot of pressure under which the game can break, but it can’t really establish a relaxing island vibe when it feels like you’re hitting snags trying to do simple things. There are also just too many spaces without much point to them, the player’s curiosity not rewarded and even if there might be a new bug or fish as the reward, it feels hollow since it’s not worth much and the odd food-based designs of regular animals in this world of furry folk is just a cute touch rather than something with greater meaning. If you stick only to the story things do still feel like they get too repetitive since Petit Island can’t cook up many interesting actions or memorable characters, a lot of its sweetness surface level and the adventure too short and lacking in content so it’s not even a space to immerse yourself in for a cozy little virtual getaway.
THE VERDICT: Petit Island is very cute and little animations can make its charming animal people rather appealing, but their activities and the island they live on are not even on the level you’d hope for in a cozy gaming experience. Doing simple tasks is oddly clunky when there aren’t outright bugs in the way of executing them, quests often just have you running around to fetch something or speak to someone, and the people of the island are mostly too generically pleasant and plain to really win you over. A few like your rival Violet prove a bit more memorable, but Petit Island is missing a good reason to want to stay on its island after its very short main adventure and not much of a reason to visit it in the first place.
And so, I give Petit Island for Xbox Series X…
A BAD rating. While a fair few cozy games have simple but admittedly repetitive tasks as part of their DNA, they often at least work up to something or can be done swiftly enough. Petit Island makes idle tasks like bug catching feel empty and even taking out the bug net is just clunky enough it ends up bothersome to do so. The secret base feels like it was meant to provide a place for some of the game’s other rewards to pay off, but it is placed poorly and exists purely for decorating, the small space feeling thrown in carelessly rather than being a part of the island and broader experience. There are still little cute moments that mean Petit Island might at least get you smiling and nothing is truly difficult even if it is a bother to engage with some things, and besides the occasional glitchy interaction you can breeze through the boring parts to see some of the game’s quirkier side. Petit Island unfortunately feels like it looks the part of a cozy game but doesn’t know what makes a cozy game interesting. You have that city area but not much to do in it, many structures just there for decor and people won’t say much. Quests have shallow writing so personalities don’t really stand out save for Violet being one of the few who isn’t upbeat and kindly, and a good deal of activities just involve going to map markers because you can’t really do much else.
Unfortunately, Petit Island is petite because is it is threadbare and missing the kind of things you want to sink your teeth into. A nice acoustic soundtrack, cute animal people, and low pressure activities could be used well in a relaxed adventure, but Petit Island can’t find a hook in what it offers. The story feels like it is written for very young players but the writing lacks charm and even the text appearance noises are a bit annoying, the optional tasks are so basic that there’s no excitement to engaging with them before you consider the hitches in doing so, and the island itself almost resists your curiosity by having space filled with sights that hold no meaning and leave you wishing there was something to interact with to reward the room for exploration. Petit Island feels like its uses coziness as a shield to deflect the idea that it is boring and shallow, but as is usually the case, there are enough games out there that you don’t need to settle for one that doesn’t put in the work to provide a fulfilling experience. Lil’ Gator Game feels like it does everything Petit Island attempts but much better for instance, and rather this being the case of two games that are both enjoyable takes on a similar concept, Lil’ Gator Game more shows that you can properly execute a lot of what Petit Island’s gameplay failed to figure out. Wholesome games are now abundant enough we don’t need to settle for subpar efforts in evoking those warm fuzzy feelings, so sadly Lily’s adventure ends up one not worth taking so you can devote that time to games that actually know how to provide a cozy time beyond just looking the part.