Loddlenaut review – Saving the planet has never felt so cozy

Despite its simple appearance in premise and gameplay, Loddlenaut hooked me right away with its promise of serenity and vibes, as you take on the role of an ‘interstellar custodian’ (aka a little guy in a nautical suit) whose mission is to cleanse planets of their pollution. This pretty heroic role has the player blasting goop, sucking up microplastics, and restoring the planet’s ecosystem so its plants and wildlife can flourish, which is a premise that’s not only charming but incredibly relevant too! On this occasion the player has been stationed at GUP-14 to clean up the mess left by big-name company GUPPI (evil corporation strikes again!), thus begins the exploration of the deep blue, wading through its coral reefs and abandoned architecture where you may encounter little friends on the way.

When cleaning GUP-14, you are granted a small arsenal of equipment that you unlock as the game progresses, beginning with a simple bubble gun that zaps goop and the ability to pick up litter in the environment. Litter can be quite easy to spot in the overworld. But if you’re struggling, the game provides you with a scanner to highlight what you’ve missed! How you navigate the world is also simple, as you use two buttons to ascend or descend.

Back at Home Cove, the hub for your adventures, you can deposit the litter you accumulate in recycling bots. In this cove, you can separate your litter into 6 categories, from metals to plastics, unlocking other forms of litter as you enter other areas. The capacity of these bots is represented by a yellow bar, and once it is filled, it produces recycled material that you use to upgrade and build equipment. It is an incredibly satisfying gameplay loop that has you propelling back and forth from areas to the hub to empty your inventory, organize your findings, and improve your character for the next journey.

When venturing out to the 5 main areas of the game, you are equipped with an oxygen meter that depletes over time, forcing the player to either locate an oxygen ring close to the base to refill its gauge or build one using recyclable material that you can place anywhere in the world. These were really easy to make after the first area of the game, so it helped with the slog of having to interrupt a cleaning session to travel across the map to find oxygen.

The map is relatively big, but traversal isn’t too painful due to the inclusion of a few factors, such as a fast travel system once an area is fully clean and a propeller gauge that gives you a speed boost. You can upgrade both your oxygen tank and your propeller a few times to make exploration in farther-out areas easier, which never hinders exploration.

Additionally, despite the map being separated into large areas, they are linked by traversal spaces that have their own pollution to clean up. Making the game feel connected and serving as a guide to the next area. In these areas can also be collectibles—ID badges, to be precise—which are a cute, low-effort item that contains a log of a past employee of the company. These serve as bursts of comedic relief and surface-level lore to enrich the planet you’re exploring.

With such a basic gameplay loop of cleaning designated areas, it was important for developers Moon Lagoon to excel in the look and feel of the game, and to my delight, they excel beyond what I had hoped for. They have achieved the perfect cozy aesthetic, taking inspiration from titles such as A Short Hike that renders the game to a low-resolution texture to create a rough pixelated art style. The developers even provide an option to smooth out the graphics if they aren’t to your taste. The world is vibrant yet conveys the expansive unknown of the sea, culminating to create the perfect backdrop for exploration.

Each area is also quite distinct, with different structures to swim in and out of and unique plants to cultivate and replant, but more on that later. I’ll give a special shout out to the recent update, which added the Goddle Grotto, which was breathtakingly beautiful and kind of made me wish there was a whole DLC dedicated to cleaning caves. The potential for environments in Loddlenaut and this recent addition makes me hopeful that the developers will keep building off the main game or a sequel with completely different biomes!

The recent port to Switch heavily compliments the look and feel of the game, working like magic and feeling right at home as a portable experience; where else would you play this game but curled up in bed with a cup of tea?

The other side of Loddlenaut is its inhabitants, the Loddles themselves, and let me tell you, they are everything to me. Resembling axolotls, Loddles are the planet’s sea creatures that take an instant liking to you when you find them helplessly covered in goop. Despite warnings from your guide, Dave, that they may be dangerous, there was no way I wasn’t taking one home with me.

You can take Loddles back to home base, and here you will rehabilitate them so they can return to the ocean. This involves helping them grow and evolve, which you can bring about by feeding them different foods. In each area, there is a unique food to be found that you can either turn into organic recyclables, replant, give straight to your Loddle, or use in recipes for more elaborate Loddle meals. You can also use food paired with litter to craft toys and leave them with your Loddles to raise their happiness meter. The system is simple and low effort, which is paired well with how your diver spends most of their time outside in the open, but sadly, more often than not, I neglected my Loddles due to wanting to stay out longer to clean up pollution. Thankfully, you aren’t penalized for doing so, as, to my knowledge, Loddles don’t die.

As they grow, they evolve from their jellybean form to a variation of Loddle, which can be logged in your Loddle compendium. These designs were plentiful and never got old in how cool they looked, from the simpler Jumbo Loddle to Butterfly or Angler Loddles. These variations are dependent on what diet you provide for your Loddle, but by the time the credits rolled, the compendium wasn’t full, providing a post-game goal to meet if you want. Once fully grown, they can be led back to any main area in the game, where they will live and repopulate to help your endeavor in restoring the planet back to life.

Additionally, I wanted to note something I appreciated in Loddlenaut despite its lack of importance: its random name generator for the Loddles. Loddles can be renamed to your liking, but due to the high volume of Loddles you will encounter, I didn’t have the patience or desire to think of every name. A lot of games, notably Stardew, have a pretty weird random name generator, often naming your animals’ stuff like Chemu, Pepe, or Rimsy. I doubt this bothers a lot of people, and you can easily name the animals yourself, but I appreciated the on-brand naming for the Loddles, from Cookie, Puff, and Mars. Super cute names for super cute guys that took away a nuisance I could have had with the game.

Finally, I wanted to commend Loddlenaut for its accessibility and the personal effect it had on me, as it seemingly came at the right time for me to play. Video games have always been seen as a form of escapism, away from work, school, or whatever life wants to throw at you. As a longtime sufferer of anxiety, even games can be too much for me to handle with their overcomplex systems or button-mashing combat. However, Loddlenaut provides the right space to combat these issues in its relaxed gameplay, low commitment, and addictive gameplay loop that requires just enough commitment from the player to turn your brain off.

But this doesn’t just apply to me; I can see this game reaching a wide audience, from people with ADHD to all age groups, due to its simplistic yet effective and cute gameplay. I’d recommend it to anyone who just wants to wind down and feel like they’re doing something impactful and good. We live in a bleak world, yet Loddlenaut, the small indie game it is, helps alleviate those worries, even if it’s just for a little while.

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