As my son’s obsession with all things space and planets continues to grow, I keep my eye open for games that might allow him to explore what he loves even deeper. Astronook caught my attention because it’s a so-called “cozy” experience, which definitely sounds perfect for a three-year-old.

I’ll tell you what’s not cozy: trying to solve way-too-intense connect-the-dot puzzles with a three-year-old asking why we haven’t moved on yet.

COZINESS AMONG THE STARS

Astronook is a very simple game on the surface. Look into the telescope to find constellations and planets. For constellations, players need to connect the dots in order to create the image shown. For planets, it’s a matter of taking the perfect picture to add to the scrap book. Naturally, as the game progresses, both of these become more difficult.

The constellation puzzles are the meat of the game, and there sure are a lot of them. These function similar to those puzzles where the pencil is supposed to stay on the paper the entire time and end up with an image. Astronook does a good job of keeping things varied by adding different kinds of stars which have their own rules, but by the end of the game, I ended up just blasting the hint system in order to finish them without even thinking. There are some stars that allow you to “pick up the pencil” as it were, and others that allow for more unique rule-breaking scenarios, and by the end it was hard to keep track of what special stars allowed for which special rules.

The later puzzles are quite long, and it’s possible to be a dozen or so moves in before realizing that it’s not going to work; puzzles seem to only have one real solution. What starts out as simple and cute creeps more and more into unwieldy and frustrating. It’s kind of not what I was here for; I (and my son) just wanted to explore the stars with our telescope and see the cool planets. And again, this shit gets hard! Far from a cozy experience anymore.

Also, decidedly not-cozy is the control scheme. I played with a controller and there was never a time in all of my 6.5 hours that I knew which button did what when I needed it to. The buttons for backing out feel as if they are constantly swapping on me. What complicates things is that there is a button for zooming out of a specific planet and a different button for leaving the telescope entirely. Which button is which? The world may never know…

VIDEO GAME NIGHT

The planet photos rely on timing a button press as a horizontal bar moves back and forth across the screen. The closest thing I can think of is the power bar in sports games, like when kicking a field goal or picking the power of a golf swing. It gets further complicated by things happening, like solar flares (or lens flares?), meteor showers, or other things getting in the way. It’s whatever. Though, I must say, this was my son’s favorite element of the game.

And that’s exactly why I bought into Astronook. Also why I got 100% of the achievements, I suppose; my son had a great time, other than when I was struggling my way through some constellations. It was awesome hearing him name the planets, freak out when a meteor shower interrupted our view of said planets, and I even used the in-game star map to have him give me directions to find planets (go down from the bubble tea, then go left!). He very frequently requests “new planet game” when we have video game night.

FAMILIAL NONETHELESS

It’s a bit fitting, then, that the story is familial. A bit tired and predictable, but familial nonetheless. I wouldn’t say it necessarily pulled at my heartstrings, but as the main character starts to realize how to better enjoy things and people while they are still around, I couldn’t help but hope that message one day resonates with my own son. Too bad he can’t read. Oh, well.

Without my son, I wouldn’t have ever bought Astronook, and I certainly would not have powered through the last handful of puzzles. The game is cute, for sure, but the puzzle difficulty and clunky controller controls begin to betray the coziness at times. My son probably gives this game a 10/10, and we have revisited it many times since beating it. I love it because I love seeing him happy, but I am mostly hoping that we move on to something new soon.

6/10

This review was conducted using a digital Switch version of the game. It was paid for by the author.