I love playing cosy games as a genre but I don't actually like very many of them (and actively dislike a lot of the big name games in the genre). Many of them leave me cold, on graphics, on music, or on mechanics. Luma Island really is a stand-out. Visually beautiful and very chill to play, it has some really thoughtful design features. The "choose your profession" mechanic is especially well considered - you can zoom in exclusively on mining, or fishing, or farming, or scavenging, if that's your preference, but you can also add further professions to extend out the gameplay or just mix it up if you like, as well. If you want to mix it up without significantly increasing the amount of grind, you can in many cases choose two professions with complementary game loops, as well (for instance, cook and brewer, or fisher and treasure hunter). The biomes have enough similarity of structure for you to use pattern recognition to intuit your way through the universe, but they aren't just re-textured copies of one another. You can have as much or as little interaction with NPCs as you like, with absolutely required quest-related check-ins being kept to a minimum. I am not a real fan of combat and appreciate that most enemies are just causes of strong inconvenience (and you can make that the case for all enemies with arachnophobia mode turned on). I love that sleep isn't forced so you can enjoy the biomes at night for a different experience. I would have liked slightly longer sound loops and more of them - the music is very pleasant, but it does get to be a bit of an earworm when you play for, uh, a dozen hours straight. But I've no complaints about atmospheric quality overall. As a TV/couch player, I found game play pretty seamless. There are some quantities of required items that are a bit too small to read, but it's really only an issue on the Upgrade Tool screen.

No game is absolutely perfect, but I struggle to think of anything much to really criticise. Perhaps that the logo and splash images really don't do the world justice, and perhaps that there isn't a way (that I have found yet, anyway) to change your character's look and feel after commencement - I would have paid much more attention at the beginning if I'd realised that. But the defaults are inoffensive. I also would like a little bit wider available camera angles, especially in the caves. I suppose the story isn't super deep (well, I haven't aced the archaeologist profession yet, so that may not be the case in the end) but it's paced well, it doesn't expect you to invest deeply in the town from the outset, it lets your affection grow over time. I'm honestly stretching my mind to find even those criticisms. They're minor in context of the extensive enjoyment I've gotten from the game.