Spry Fox Making Happiness

Hi Scouts! Now that we’ve announced the imminent launch of Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit on June 25th, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about some of the things we hoped to accomplish in this sequel, what this game means to Spry Fox, and what it’s been like developing this within Netflix.

What’s interesting about this sequel?

As I mentioned way back when we first announced the development of a Cozy Grove sequel, the original Cozy Grove was not architected in a way that made it easy to add new locations to the game, or new bears over time. This, for example, made it difficult to add a second island or to add interior spaces aside from the Scout’s tent. In fact, as CG1 players crammed ever more decorations, plants, and animals into their islands (sometimes in ways we didn’t expect), merely maintaining the performance of the game as-is was proving to be very challenging. So Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit has been extensively overhauled, and as a result, loading times are improved, some bears now have their own homes you can visit the inside of, and the main island is not the only island in the game!

It probably goes without saying, but Camp Spirit also features all-new bears and stories, all of which take advantage of the many lessons we as a studio learned from working on the original game. We can’t wait to hear what you think of this new cohort of wonderful and bizarre characters. Camp Spirit has a ton of other new features and improvements as well. The complete list would be quite long, but here are a few of my personal favorites:

• Companion animals who follow you around, send you amusing letters, and even have useful skills that you can activate.
• New activity: powerwashing – cleaning away the grime feels so satisfying.
• New “Quality of Life” improvements that make it easier to find and identify the items you need, when you need them.
• Many design tweaks that make the game more enjoyable (for example, more abundant and affordable backpack storage).
• Bear landmarks that visibly evolve alongside a bear as you help them along their personal journey.
• The ability to add your fellow players as members of your scout troop, and to send/receive gifts from them.
• New “flashback” system, enabling bears to more vividly tell stories about their past lives.

What does this sequel mean to Spry Fox?

The original Cozy Grove holds a special place in all our hearts. We have made many games over the years, some of which ended up being quite popular (I’m thinking especially about Triple Town and Alphabear.) But this is the first game of ours that seems to have really touched players’ hearts. It was incredibly gratifying to us to read all the comments saying how much our bears and their stories meant to our community. And it was equally wonderful to hear from so many people who told us that Cozy Grove was a reliable, relaxing antidote to the difficulties in their lives.

We have always wanted our games to be a positive force in people’s lives. That’s why we decided on the motto “Making Happiness” when we founded the studio back in 2010. I think, or at least I hope, that we’ve made a lot of people happy in the 14 years since we started Spry Fox. But until Cozy Grove, I’m not sure we ever got beyond “I’m having fun playing this game”-style happiness. To be very clear, I think it’s a noble thing to entertain people – “I’m having fun” is more than good enough! But, now we know that we can go farther. We can make people feel seen. We can take them on a journey that they care about. AND yes, we can relax and entertain them, too! And maybe, as we continue to sharpen our focus on real-world in-game friendships, we can bring people closer together.

That’s what Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit means to us. It’s our humble attempt to leave the world a little bit better than we found it. We really hope that you enjoy it. 

What’s it like developing this game within Netflix?

In all honesty, being part of Netflix has been a huge relief for us. As you may or may not be aware, starting sometime around 2022, the video game industry was taking a very serious turn for the worse (economically-speaking). Our industry has been experiencing its most serious downturn in decades. All around us, studios are doing layoffs or, worse, shutting down entirely. To call this “dispiriting” would be a severe understatement… we have been very worried about our friends in the industry.

Meanwhile, Netflix has given Spry Fox more support and encouragement than we’ve ever experienced before. We now have the resources to make the games we want to make, on the timetable we want to make them, with very few compromises. And speaking of “compromises”… we don’t need to put advertisements or in-app purchases in our games! This is wonderful because, over the years, we never stopped struggling with how to ethically monetize our mobile games while also surviving as a studio. It was always a painful, time-consuming process that ate up a shockingly large percentage of our development time and energy. Now, we can put all that energy into simply making our games as good as they can be. If you’ve never made a free-to-play mobile game before, you cannot imagine how wonderful this feels for us.

After we decided that we wanted to make a sequel to Cozy Grove, we pitched the idea to some folks whose financial support we would need in order to get the game made. None were interested in supporting our vision for what we felt this game should be. So I can also say that if it weren’t for Netflix, Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit would probably not exist. We are so grateful that it does!

How do we think about the future of Camp Spirit?

It depends on things I can’t quite predict, like what exactly will people love (and not love) about the game! I can tell you that we’re excited to hear what everyone thinks about Camp Spirit and to spend some time post-launch doing updates that address common feedback from our community. It’s very rewarding to launch a game that many people enjoy, but it’s even more rewarding to know and deliver exactly what people want, because they’re telling you directly. 🙂 Speaking of: if you’re not already a member of our Discord or Reddit communities, please join! 

There’s also no shortage (as there never is) of features and polish ideas we’ve dreamed up but not had time to implement yet, and we’ll be looking for opportunities to tackle some more of that. And last but not least, we have seen a bunch of comments from some of our Cozy Grove fans about wanting Camp Spirit to be available on more platforms. We hear you, we share your desire, and while we don’t have plans beyond mobile to share at this moment, we will keep you updated on this in the future.

What’s next for Spry Fox?

Like I said before, we’re already planning some solid updates for Camp Spirit! Otherwise, we’re just going to keep making new, original games. 🙂  It’s been 14 (!!) years since we started this studio, and I hope that 14 years from now, we’re still talking about our jobs the exact same way… concentrating on making original games that bring you happiness.

Warm regard,

David (aka Chedd), and all the Spry Foxes