Lou's Lagoon
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Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Lou's Lagoon
Lou's Lagoon is a crafting platformer adventure set in a colorful archipelago that's just starting to recover from a tempest caused by bickering gods.
Lou's Lagoon is a cosy game and it can feel chill just flying around, collecting resources, and carrying out the requests of the people you meet. The story is fine and the world has a nice and colourful layout to it, but the general platforming needs improvement to avoid getting stuck in the environment so much, and a bug that appeared after completing the story put a stop to me playing much further.
All in all, Lou's Lagoon is a fun excursion that brings together many elements from early PS2 platformers into one engaging craftathon. With that said, the focus on crafting comes with its own limitations, particularly inventory management and lack of explanation. If you know about some of the nuances ahead of time, Lou's Lagoon is a fabulous little romp.
Lou’s Lagoon delivers a wonderfully comforting mix of lighthearted aviation, easygoing resource collection, and engaging mystery.
Lou's Lagoon borrows plenty from other games, but works because it lets you chill out and fly a seaplane.
There is a genuinely good game underneath Lou's Lagoon's rougher edges. The world is colorful, the characters are memorable, the crafting systems have a clear purpose, and flying around the archipelago can be a lot of fun. When all of the different systems click together, you can settle into a nice rhythm of exploring, collecting, crafting, helping people, upgrading your gadgets, and heading back out to discover something new. That loop is where the game's cozy qualities become most apparent. The problem is that getting into that rhythm can take some patience. Expensive upgrades, limited inventory space, crafting timers, resource gathering, loading screens, unclear moments during exploration, awkward platforming, and technical bugs all have a way of interrupting the flow. None of these problems completely destroy what Lou's Lagoon is trying to accomplish, but together they make the game feel less polished than it should.
It is a game about traveling that has unsatisfying travel. The Switch 2 version comes with far more compromise than it should, especially in handheld mode. If you can put up with uneven gameplay and a lot of loading, there is plenty to enjoy here, but it will take a bit of work to find it.
With a lot of enjoyable tasks to accomplish and a gorgeous world to explore as you do, Lou's Lagoon is spot-on for a relaxing good time. 🛩️
