Collector's Cove was provided by VoodooDuck for review. Thank you!
Farming games are constantly evolving in the indie gaming market, with big profile releases including Fantasy Life, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma, Starsand Island, and Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. It is a genre I have been increasingly into over the past few years, although I wish more developers explored the potential for creative ideas. My favorite one in recent years is probably Fields of Mistria, which, despite being in Early Access, is one of the few farming sims I feel has the potential to eclipse the giant of modern farming sims: Stardew Valley.
Collector's Cove is a little different from what you might expect. It takes the classic formula we all know (and mostly love), and adapts it into something surprisingly fresh. While the game needs some improvements, I was surprised by how engrossed I got into it. Furthermore, it is playable on the Steam Deck, although it could benefit from better optimization.
The store page and the promotion images are what sold me on the game. I get to explore the ocean with my adorable sea dinosaur pet. Where do I sign? The best way to describe Collector's Cove is if the Orange Islands saga from Pokémon crossed with Stardew Valley, although the game focuses more on fishing than farming.
Deliberately designed to be as wholesome and cozy as possible, it blends the usual mechanics with some lovely quality-of-life features to reduce irritation. The game is about developing a relationship with your pet, a Loch Ness monster, while making a name for yourself. Gathering information, collecting samples across the archipelago, and decking out your houseboat is the core gameplay loop here, and there is a lot to like.
After a short tutorial on the basic controls and using traditional equipment to farm, fish, and the like, the game takes its foot off the pedal and lets you go at your own pace, which I really like. There is a degree of freedom I appreciate, and while there is a narrative about making a name for yourself as a young Collector with support from family, it is all done with no time constraints.
The game saves automatically as you play, and with no stamina mechanic for the player avatar, you can fish and farm to your heart's content without worrying about passing out at midnight, which is a mechanic I always found frustrating. The islands are randomly generated and have resources to gather, while others have treasure chests and small puzzles to solve.
The key feature of Collector's Cove is the animal that pulls your houseboat: a lovely sea dinosaur you can customize and unlock cosmetic items for, like hats. Her squeaks when being petted and fed are adorable. The feeding mechanic is relaxing too, as it only applies when travelling between islands. Not-Nessie gets tired quickly when travelling and requires frequent breaks for sleep, and feeding her is how you keep her strength up.
I love how the core gameplay loops back into looking after your companion. Catching fish and growing crops allows you to sell or trade to the family ship, which provides blueprints and money for more seeds. It is very simple, but the best gameplay loops are. Eventually, you will build up that relationship with Not-Nessie, providing perks that further your goals and traveling to other regions.
The relative lack of NPCs to develop bonds with is a surprising strength of the game, too. It is rare in the genre to ignore this, but focusing on your companion and the relationship there was a great idea. That is not to say there is no other character development. I enjoy the relationships the player avatar has with their family, but it is just another example of keeping things focused on a few core values. Nothing feels bloated, and Collector's Cove feels stronger for it.
Overall, this is an incredibly solid game that feels refreshing in a genre that can feel stale. However, it does lack a couple of things I wish were in the game: no dealbreakers, just little annoyances. Being unable to jump feels like a weird oversight, which led to some frustrating moments when I wanted to get onto a rock that I should be able to reach easily, making me waddle up a ladder. It meant that exploring the little islands was more annoying than it should have been. It might be a petty thing to get irritated about, but I wish we had a jump button.
In terms of technical performance, Collector's Cove has no real complaints apart from the camera, which can get in the way sometimes. Apart from those two minor downsides, there is a lot to like.
Collector's Cove is currently Unknown by both Valve and ProtonDB regarding Steam Deck compatibility, but Deck fans should not be too worried about this one. I had a great overall time with this game on the Steam Deck.
Full controller support is available out of the box, and I had no real complaints about the performance, with text perfectly legible on the Steam Deck OLED. I will say that the game could use more optimization, though.
Collector's Cove comes with a decent selection of settings to tweak, including custom graphic modifiers. However, I was unable to achieve a steady 60 FPS at max settings. While the graphics won't win any prizes at the fidelity awards, they still look nice with some lovely animations from my pet Nessie.
I messed about with TDP settings to see how well it could run to improve battery life, but this is one of those games where you need all the power you can get. Collector's Cove is surprisingly power hungry, but I am chalking this down to it being pre-released, and the optimization is probably still in the works.
The best balance I found for optimal performance was using a Medium graphics preset across the board, and with this, I was able to push the average frame rate to a stable 60 frames per second. For a little extra battery life, I stuck to a 50Hz refresh rate. In terms of power draw, it can fluctuate a lot. I saw between 12 and 17 watts of power being used during normal gameplay and jumping between islands and my houseboat. With this in mind, I’d expect between 3 and 4 hours of battery life on the Steam Deck OLED.
Overall, I have no complaints with performance on the Steam Deck, and even on medium settings, the game looks great.
Collector's Cove is available in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese.
The game comes with a decent number of options, including remappable buttons and key bindings, vibration sensitivity, camera sensitivity on the x and y axes, invert camera, V-sync, and frame rate capping. No colorblind support is currently in the game, and there is no font scaling either. The latter is not a dealbreaker, though, as I found the text fairly easy to read on the Steam Deck.
I have played more wholesome games than someone like me would have expected, especially in the past year. Of them, Collector's Cove is one of the more unique concepts. While simple on the surface, I love the setting and the focus on just vibing with your animal friend while filling out a codex from the world. With its comfortable charms and focus on exploration, there is more than enough in Collector's Cove for fans of the genre who want something a little different.
While I hope they improve performance a little, this is an overall great package that runs well on the Steam Deck.
このレビューはPC版に基づいています。
このレビューをお楽しみいただけたなら、SteamDeckHQ の他のコンテンツもぜひご覧ください！あなたのゲーム体験に役立つゲームレビューやニュースを幅広く取り揃えています。ニュース、ヒントやチュートリアル、ゲーム設定やレビューをお探しの方も、最新のトレンドを知りたい方も、ぜひご利用ください。
Collector's Cove is a charming take on the farming sim genre with a great core gameplay loop and decent Steam Deck performance.
