Netflix’s ‘Cozy Grove 2’ Developers on What Changed for the Mobile-Only Sequel and How Streamer Will Measure Game’s Success

variety.com:

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Gamers can return to the “Cozy Grove” universe this week with the launch of sequel game, “Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit.” The new titled, which launched Tuesday, is a mobile-only game exclusive to Netflix, which acquired “Cozy Grove” developer Spry Fox as an in-house studio in October 2022, differentiating it from its predecessor, which was released on Apple Arcade, Nintendo Switch (arguably the most-chosen platform for the game’s players), Xbox, PlayStation and PC in 2021.

But Spry Fox co-founder and studio director David Edery tells Variety that making the game for Netflix didn’t affect the title as much as fans of other platforms would first assume. “Obviously, we’re not on Switch at the present time — but the we still had to make the game compatible with controllers, it’s not like we could just forget that part,” Edery said. “So it didn’t change the scope of the game as much as you might think.

One thing I can say transparently is because I knew literally 100% of people were gonna be playing the game on a mobile device, we cared even more about mobile than we would have before.

Not to say we didn’t care about it before, because it was an Apple Arcade game before. But we made even more of an effort to make sure it was a pleasure to play on any screen, no matter what the size is, whether it’s a big iPad or a small phone.” An example of an added feature for “Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit” is its new zoom in and zoom out button, which is “a thing that I would like to think we would have put in regardless,” Edery said, “but given that the game is 100% mobile now, we’re going to put in.” “Otherwise it didn’t change stuff as much as you might think,” he added. “And our ambition is still at some point.