Mazey Village – Review – Ophelia Payne

It’s no secret that I love a nice little cozy game. The first one I ever really sank a lot of time into was Animal Crossing during early 2020 when I was stuck at home. It came out at the perfect time, and I, as well as many others, spent a ridiculous number of hours creating our islands. Why am I mentioning this now? Well, I recently played Mazey Village from Slappy Inc., and it has the same cozy vibe I loved from Animal Crossing.

While it may fall into the same cozy vibe, the mechanics are vastly different. Mazey Village focuses primarily on exploration and decoration.

In Mazey Village, you play a young cartographer who finds herself in a village after a powerful tornado passes through. It has scattered the personal belongings of the people living there, and your goal is to locate their prized possessions and bring the town back to life. The relatively simple fetch quests have you travelling through a variety of landscapes, including forests, ruins, and snow-covered zones.

Each item you are trying to locate is hidden in a small maze. These are fairly straightforward and involve some light puzzle mechanics. I am always a fan of puzzles involving mirrors and light, so I am happy they are included here. You will also find lever mechanics, moving stone statues, etc. While the puzzles in the beginning are quite simple, they do increase in complexity and so require you to remember multiple things at a time.

The camera used in Mazey Village is top-down, meaning that it is easy to see the path you need to take. I never felt overwhelmed working my way through the mazes. Each maze also contains a key for a chest that will unlock and provide some cosmetics (like clothes and hairstyles) and other items like gold or tools (like a watering can, fishing rod or butterfly net).

I enjoyed getting these new cosmetic items, as the beginning customization didn’t have a lot of variety, and they gave me the opportunity to personalize my character even more.

While you explore the map and get to the end of the map, the next section will drop from the sky and click into place. I loved this as it made the map feel manageable and helped define the route you need to take at that time. As you work through sections, you will unlock shortcuts that are beneficial when you need to hop around locating items.

Each resident of the town owns a shop filled with themed decorations that you can purchase to decorate your home and outdoor spaces. As you finish fetch quests for them, their inventory will expand, giving you even more choices for customization.

Talking to each of the residents adds to the stories and makes the town feel alive. Besides the decorating, you can also take in some relaxing moments by fishing or collecting animals. I spent a lot of time changing my cute outfits and then wandering the map, petting animals so they would follow me around.

The animals aren’t all there just to pet and hang out with; some will be the solutions to quests. I had to befriend a cat to chase some birds at one point and also had to locate a lost penguin to reunite them with their adorable family.

The only real disappointment to me was the fixed camera that sometimes made it difficult to look around items or decorate accurately.

Mazey Village is a relaxing and cozy experience where you can play at your own pace. It’s a wholesome game that I think will appeal to a wide variety of ages and skill levels. I couldn’t help but think of the skills it could teach, particularly to younger players. Reading conversations, spatial awareness through building and even empathy while helping others. I loved seeing the town come alive around me, and I felt a sense of accomplishment helping my fellow townspeople. While it’s not a game with deep town-building, it has a lovely sense of completing tasks that I enjoyed.