Mazey Village Early Access Review – Cartography Comes To Life

Being a cartographer likely isn’t on many people’s career goals. Creating maps is a difficult task and the rewards aren’t amazing. Mazey Village, a cozy puzzle exploration game currently in Early Access, seeks to change that perception. Developed and published by Slappy Inc., watch as your cartography literally puts locations on the map. Rebuild towns and interact with lovely villagers by solving their problems. Your help is essential to restoring locations ravaged by disaster.

The story of Mazey Village starts as you arrive at a region that hasn’t had a cartographer for a while. There haven’t been any requests for a new cartographer, indicating everything is either okay or something terrible has happened. It turns out to be the latter as you arrive at a town devastated by a powerful storm. Your job is to map every location out while helping the town recover from the damage.

The lack of a cartographer means that the area is completely unknown. You are responsible for recording everything about the locations you discover because all previous information is outdated. Thanks to local disasters, people’s lives have also been ruined. While it’s not part of the job description, your cartography abilities help uncover belongings or new areas that help others.

The main gameplay is split into two parts: exploring and puzzle solving. Exploration involves moving to different areas. As you progress, regions literally snap into place as if a 2D diorama was expanding. This unlocks new areas to explore but also provides new characters to talk to. You sometimes come across objects that people have lost or new individuals. This not only brings more purpose to your exploration, but it also allows you to unlock new decorative options.

Puzzles are not complex activities but they do take a little brainpower. They often involve moving objects or placing items in the proper position. You are never explicitly told what the goal is, leaving you to figure out how everything works. Fortunately, there are no external complexities to the puzzles, you always have everything you need to solve them. Spending some time experimenting and figuring things out leads to the solution quickly.

Everything comes together to provide a cozy game that rewards you for exploring. I enjoyed seeing new sections appear as I slowly made my way around. It felt like I was an explorer charting new territory and my results were appearing before my eyes. Wandering around wasn’t just something I did for fun, it actually had tangible benefits. New areas meant new characters and puzzles, along with interesting conversations and wildlife.

One of my favorite aspects was getting wildlife to follow you around, I particularly enjoyed having a penguin or polar bear follow me in the beginning. There are also puzzles that you can solve by bringing certain animals with you, meaning this isn’t just a cute addition. Even if it was, Mazey Village is much better when your favorite animal is walking along with you.

Puzzle-solving also rewards creativity as there can be more than one solution. While you likely have solutions in mind, it helps to know you aren’t limited to one correct answer. This rewards creativity and lets you feel good about coming up with a workable solution. I don’t think I found every conceivable solution during my time with Mazey Village, but there were some that stood out. Whenever I was stumped, I could try different solutions and be rewarded.

One big issue I noted was the inability to jump. This doesn’t seem like a big deal and you can make small upward steps. However, it also means that even a small jump off a ledge leads to backtracking. While exploring the world is important, it seems that faster routes are blocked off to make you walk back to the start. That you can’t just climb back up a ledge is inconvenient.

Mazey Village rewards your curiosity by incentivizing exploration with new discoveries. The joy of seeing new locations plop in front of you is genuinely exciting. Solving simple puzzles and petting adorable animals adds to the game’s charm. There’s a lot of backtracking that feels inconvenient without the ability to jump, but every step of this game oozes coziness and what’s on offer now in its Early Access build is great for anyone looking for an adorable game.

Victor reviewed Mazey Village in Early Access on PC with a provided preview code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing.