About the Game
The town of Critter Cove used to attract visitors from all over the world. Now it’s mostly known for dirty streets and trash-strewn beaches. Can you help us turn things around?
Critter Cove is a life sim and town builder game with a beautiful, handcrafted open world to explore.
Spend your doubloons to upgrade buildings and explore the world to discover new blueprints and gather resources to grow your town. More upgrades will improve Critter Cove’s tourist rating.
The greater your tourist rating, the more new tourists will visit. The more new tourists, the more money in your pockets to upgrade the town!
Venture out into the mysterious tropical archipelago peppered with the ruins of a long-destroyed civilization. Dive beneath the waves to salvage the treasures of the old world. Rescue shipwrecked critters. Unearth exotic ingredients. It’s a wondrous world of mysterious ruins, shipwrecks and ancient technology waiting to be discovered.
As you explore, you’ll find resources to craft hundreds of different items, discover new construction blueprints and bring home unique plants to grow on your farm. Turn mundane salvage into something new and unique, and improve your tourism rating by offering your freshly grown food to visitors.
Use tourist money and salvaged items to restore rundown buildings and open up entirely new stores and venues for tourists and townsfolk. Craft decorations and interactive objects that will improve the town and make it uniquely yours. You can even decorate your very own home with hand-crafted (or hand-looted) furniture!
You’ll need help to restore the town, and luckily the world of Critter Cove is filled with many colorful characters. Some are easy-going and friendly… others might need some convincing! Rescue Critters across the world, assist them in building a home and help them find the perfect job in your community. Their happiness is the key to your success.
Embark on quests to find hidden treasures or ancient relics scattered throughout the world. Donate these artifacts to the Museum of Mystery to uncover the secrets of the long, long ago - and then charge tourists a small fee to the museum so they can absorb some local culture!
Create your perfect island persona with our robust customization system. Human or animal? Mammal or reptile? The head of a parrot and the tail of a monkey? It’s entirely up to you! Mix and match your physical attributes to your heart's content and discover that perfect tropical drip with hundreds of outfit combinations to craft and discover.
Discover abandoned attractions and rebuild them in your town
Explore weird and wonderful locations such as a sunken city, and a wild botanical garden
Catch some post-apocalyptic fish and discover the best and most unique fishing spots around the world
Dismantle items in the open-world to discover new crafting recipes
Watch tourists launch themselves into the ocean for entertainment
Assign townsfolk careers they’ll love (or hate) depending on their personalities
Watch Critters use gifts or wear clothes you make for them
Hunt for new residents shipwrecked after storms
Cook powerful food items that affect your stamina and exploration prowess
Run advertising campaigns to attract more tourists to your island
Wishlist us to stay up-to-date, and head over to our Discord to be the first to hear about giveaways, and the latest Critter Cove news and gossip!
Screenshots
14 images
Version Information
Steam Patch Notes
Official update history
Update 412 — Bug fixes
This update fixes several errors players ran into since the last update. Thank you to everyone whose game sent us an error report.
Saves
- Closing the game window no longer loses your latest progress. If you quit with the X button or Alt+F4 instead of the menu, the game now finishes saving before it closes, just like Save & Exit. This usually takes about a second.
- Continue skips a save that was made before the opening boat ride finished. A few players who closed an older version of the game during character creation still had a save from that moment, and continuing it left them without a character ie a corrupted save. Continue now picks your most recent good save instead (or offers New Game if that was your only one). That save is no longer listed under Load, but nothing is deleted.
- If the game's error box is on screen, closing the window now quits without saving, so a game that has just hit an error never writes over your last good save.
Fixes
- Visitors and villagers can no longer shove you into the furniture. A tourist walking up behind you in a shop could push your character into the shelves and leave you stuck. Other characters now pass by you instead, and you still bump to a stop when you walk into them.
- Fixed an error when a visitor or villager left the island, which could show the error box and make you quit without saving.
- Fixed an error when left-clicking an item that had run out in your inventory while a shop window was open. Nothing is bought or sold by accident.
- Fixed an error when a character holding a tool or item was cleared away, for example while the game was closing.
- Fixed an error when using Save & Exit or Quit while villagers were out walking. Your save was always safe; the exit is now clean.
- Fixed the hotbar put-away button (X on a controller, C on the keyboard) causing an error if pressed right after a save loaded.
The Fast Travel Update
Fast Travel: Repair the docks at major locations, then ring any bell to sail straight to any dock you've fixed. Your home bell works too, so you can sail home from anywhere.
5 New Critters: Bessie, Coral, Cynthia, Eclipse and Grumble are ready to wash up as castaways or turn up as tourists.
The Bakery Fixed: Customers now queue at the counter, sit down on a real chair and eat food. Tourists pay once they're served.
Less Confusing Graphics Options: On first start the game picks Low, Medium or High for your machine. We've made massive improvements to how the game looks on lower end machines but also some really nice improvements to all levels. The graphics options changed so much that your graphics settings reset once to the recommended level for your PC. Your sound, controls, language and saves aren't touched.
Faster Loading: Continuing a game gets you onto the game much faster now.
Render Scale with FSR: A new option that draws the island at a lower resolution and sharpens it back up, helpful for lower end machines or people who just want a little more FPS.
Smoother Edges: We've continued our work on the shimmer that has been reported in the forums. Let us know how it looks, as this can be tricky to replicate.
Sold Out Badges: Shop icons grey out once you've bought the last one, so you can see what's left at a glance.
🛠 Quality of Life
Rescued critters now board your boat wherever it's moored and ride with you all the way home.
Villagers who can't reach somewhere now find something else to do instead of popping across the island.
Villagers and tourists step past anyone blocking them instead of freezing (and wait politely if you're in the way).
When a shop worker has a new request, it goes straight onto the bulletin board and the shop stays open.
Shops covered by a backup worker now count as open and earn from tourists.
Tourists always arrive by boat, and late-night tourists that do miss the boat get removed by morning.
Sick villagers now get well on time instead of staying ill for days.
The bedtime save waits until everyone is home, and naps no longer pull villagers away from what they're doing.
Villagers who move out can come back later as new visitors you can befriend again.
Former villagers stranded by a storm can be rescued again.
Lantern hats now give light from your hat slot, even with another hat in your vanity slot.
Your tool is put away before crafting starts, with no added wait.
The character creator now shows your critter in a plain shirt and trousers while you design them.
All of the mushroom farmer's goods can now be bought with tickets at the farmers market.
Lost the Lost Ark treasure map? A replacement now arrives by letter.
🎮 Camera & Controls
When something blocks the view, the camera now slides in smoothly instead of jumping.
The camera no longer ends up on the far side of your critter when you're against a wall.
Chests, crops, crafting stations, statues and street lights no longer push the camera in.
Smoother swimming stops, steadier footing on rocking decks, and no more jolts over stairs and kerbs.
Boats steer more gently on controller: the rudder follows how far you push the stick.
VSync is now on by default on PC and Steam Deck and stays the way you set it.
The Motion Sickness Helper now widens your view, turns on VSync and keeps your boat level on the waves.
"Press to use" prompts no longer jump around in first person.
The camera keeps your angle after conversations and upgrade screens.
Your critter fades out when the camera gets very close.
⚡ Performance
New Game gets you to the character creator sooner.
Medium and the sea run lighter on every quality level, with no change to how they look.
Far fewer hitches when villagers change clothes, start jobs or step off the boat. The minimap stutter is gone too.
Textures, icons and portraits use less graphics memory.
Finished effects are cleaned up properly, so long sessions should stay smooth.
Rocks, piers and resources are ready before you reach a new dock.
🐛 Other Fixes & Adjustments
Fixed new outfits vanishing on reload and old clothes duplicating. (Outfits already lost in older saves can't be brought back, sorry!)
Fixed diving gear losing its bonuses after swapping outfit loadouts.
Fixed eye settings, colour changes and the preview quality in the character creator.
Fixed critters you created turning up in worlds where you never made them.
Fixed salon critters both loving and hating gross food.
Fixed shoppers not finishing their animations, and café, salon and clinic visits getting stuck.
Fixed tourists walking back through the café queue.
Fixed a second boatload of tourists arriving when you load a save mid-visit.
Fixed tavern and gym staff restarting their routines every few minutes.
Fixed museum visitors floating in front of the exhibits.
Fixed clinic patients losing their bench seats.
Fixed crabs leaping onto the lighthouse bridge.
Fixed Copperbottom getting stuck inside the forge.
Fixed one of the robots' mouth shapes never appearing.
Fixed visitors ending up inside market carts.
Fixed farmers not being able to reach the north pitcher-plant patch.
Fixed villagers heading off to a donation box that isn't there.
Fixed the opening ship ride and the cruise ship juddering.
Fixed floating salvage jittering on the waves.
Fixed sinking through the ground after leaving a cave, and sea creatures swimming through the air in the Boomerang Bay cave.
Fixed thin lines and missing haze underwater on some older graphics cards.
Fixed missing tropical grass near the port.
Fixed villagers vanishing at the bottom of the screen.
Fixed a thin line showing under the main menu bar and the loading banner.
Fixed saves stuck on "I Smell a Rat".
Fixed the mailbox handing over the wrong Lost Ark map.
Fixed one piece of the world failing to load stopping all loading.
Fixed falling through the ground when it's slow to load.
Fixed a rare crash when a piece of clothing failed to load.
Fixed the game saving mid-conversation, during loading or during the opening boat ride.
Fixed an error that could quit the game when a villager ended up at sea.
Fixed an error when saving in the background on Switch.
Fixed tent quest critters claiming the beaches are full.
Campfires, cooking stations and fabricators now show red and green placement colours.
Save & Exit now shows a proper loading screen.
Fixed tears and dizzy stars following villagers around all day.
Fixed food, crafted items and fish getting stuck in your hand.
Crab snacks no longer look like a treasure chest.
The Suspicious Mission now gives one mystery crate, not two.
Fixed the otter radio duplicating itself.
A second yellow berry now plays its trip again.
Fixed doors freezing open, so the bakery no longer looks open after hours.
Fixed naps ending just after 6 am skipping the start of the day.
Gym gear a villager is using can't be picked up in decorating mode.
Fixed items that share a name showing up as the wrong item.
Rocks and trees now wiggle on every hit.
Fixed shop workers' props blinking in and out.
Fixed villagers' animation props not reaching their hands.
Fixed the bean costume not coming off cleanly.
The old barber pole leftover now tidies itself away.
Distant props now hold their detail better.
Fix for duplication of clothing items when using vanity slots.
Fix for allowing pants or shirt in equipment slots while also having a wetsuit, dress etc.
Fixed a bad CPU performance bug on the new mini-map.
Patch Notes
The Great Mushroom Questline: A new multi-part questline featuring the Great Mushroom himself.
Job Covers: Critters can now be assigned as backup workers who automatically step in when a shop worker is home sick.
Outfit Loadouts: Dress for style without losing your stats! Save full outfits into loadout slots and swap between them right from your inventory.
Critter Loadouts: Change your entire look by swapping out Critter loadouts on a single character via the character screen via mirrors.
Minimap: The compass now doubles as a proper minimap
6 New Critters: Six new faces are ready to move to the Cove
New outfits in the clothing store. Rigg's Outpost will now sell you the oil rig gear once you're trading with him.
Character Creator on Controller: The salon and character creator now fully support controllers, including a rebuilt color picker with hex code entry.
🛠 Quality of Life
Building and repairing houses can now pull materials straight from your storage chests: Hold confirmation on a required item to use everything you've stored.
Harvester Robots got smarter: Digatron now picks up marble, Chop-O-Matic picks up resin, and all robots have a better chance of finding rusty air tanks.
The school now shows a countdown for how long a Critter has left to retrain
The auto-run button now acts as full throttle when you're driving the boat.
Knocking on a critter's door now tells you when they're staying home sick.
Added a confirmation when backing out of critter creation so you don't lose your work.
New accessibility option to turn off lightning flashes.
The journal now opens on your tracked quest each time
🖥 UI & Controls
Switch character creator categories with LB/RB on controller.
You can now enter numbers on the on-screen keyboard when using a controller
Fixed UI layout issues on 16:10 displays
Island names on the map now stay visible for longer while zooming out.
Fixed diagonal walking being slower than straight walking on the controller.
Fixed dialogue text appearing behind critters
Fixed weird mouse scrolling on the menus
🐛 Other Fixes & Adjustments
Fixed a whole batch of Create-A-Critter Issues: wrong portraits and names when editing, created critters missing their photos in town screens, empty homes, matching likes/dislikes, and characters snapping to the bottom of the screen in the editor.
Fixed various places where it wasn’t possible to fully complete the journal due to there not being enough of X item in the world
Fixed some issues where the timing of some buildings being completed would lead to them being unable to be finished
Fixed hats, masks and shoes disappearing (or refusing to leave) when toggling clothes at a mirror or in the creator.
Fixed "Reset Colors" not actually resetting colors in the character creator.
Fixed hair randomly appearing on saved characters.
Italian-language systems will now correctly show English instead of blank text (We don’t have an Italian translation, sorry!)
Fixed the radio quest not completing correctly.
Fixed some of emissions making buildings glow when they shouldn’t
Fixed the school aquarium appearing gray with no fish.
Fixed decorative objects being placeable on the tourist boat
The donut tray can now be delivered in the bakery
No more misleading lock icon on boat upgrades.
Woolington now has proper dialogue for both museum pieces.
Waterfalls now fade in slowly so they don’t stick out as much long distance
Chaos Juice Quest now has the correct requirements
Extra protection against save file corruption.
Sorry for the issue and the delay in fixing this. Big shout out to Dylus on Discord for tracking this one down.
If this has happened to you please update to this patch to fix the issue.
New Features
Create-A-Critter & The Salon: You can now complete the final building in the game, the Salon, and create your own custom critters!
Once created, they will arrive with the next tour boat.
You can continue to edit your critters, but you cannot change their personalities!
You can have up to 10 custom critters, but will NOT get an additional slot if you ask them to leave
Woolington Questline: Help Woolington and the museum with some problems relating to a mysterious lost Ark
Performance Improvements: This is especially noticeable on the Steam Deck, which now gets a 15% performance increase and faster loading times. We've also added brand new visual effects for things like sparkling items, fire, water etc.
Salon Quest: Repeatable shop quest to earn doubloons and build your relationship with the salon shopkeeper.
Competition Critters: 7 new critters will be joining the roster, these are the winners from our latest Critter Creation Contest on Discord. Please welcome Arco the boar, Katnip the plant cat, Quanta the lizard, Cobran the green heron, Ollie the opossum, Shae the ball python & Opalite the unideer.
New Character Creation Options: Two new heads: monkey & pony. Three new tails: monkey, opossum & gator. New nose options (located under the facial hair slot) for humans, cat, pony, monkey, seamonster, dinosaur & robot heads.
New clothing options: Dress of Embers, a black and red variation of the Dress of Darkness & a new headwrap hat, the snake headwrap.
Quality of Life & Other Updates
Sickness Balancing Updates: Critters will now always heal when given medicine instead of having a chance to heal, and will have a chance to visit the clinic when ill. Also added a medicine vending cabinet to the clinic where sick critters can pick up their own prescriptions if you keep it stocked.
New Anti-Aliasing Options: In addition to the existing FXAA, we've implemented stronger - and more system intensive - options including MSAA and TAA.
Auto Save Options: Crafting Tweaks: If making an item would use up an inventory slot, you can now craft that item without "inventory full" messages, and you can now create multiples of slop.
Other Updates
Fixed an issue where crafted items such as bread would show as a red item in the cooking menus
You now must build the cafe before getting other blueprints, fixing a number of issues
Renard is now always visible on the map
You can sell the starting hat now, if you hate cool hats
Certain fish no longer swim out of aquariums
Tourists cooking at the grill now have the proper dialogue
Fixed Woolington incorrectly appearing outside the museum
The Donation box now properly shows up during Museum expansion
Opening treasure maps should no longer show a duplicate you
Fixed an issue with bakery quests where crates would not clear up
Changing texture quality no longer changes the quality of loading screens
Added type icons to the clothing and furniture store items
Did some work on bird spawning so they don't explode in front of the player so much
Drowning sounds no longer persist after you start drowning but put on Scuba
Player can now gain reputation with Woolington by doing quests and turning in treasures
The game will now properly save fullscreen/windowed settings
The "2 Fast 2 Tubious" achievement now only gets granted when you have all upgrades
New icon for game settings that makes more sense
Pressing LB at the end of a menu now wraps around to the start of that menu
You should no longer be locked out of sick critters homes during the day
Fixed some confusing text in the character creator.
Removed duplicate Tool Crates that some players have in their inventory
Shop payout balance pass – increased prices on several of the shops to make them more valuable
Fix bug where sometimes the npcs would move around the world in a sleeping pose.
Fix localization bug on the note in the scooter quest.
Fix for npcs that have been kicked out of town getting sick and posting to the board.
**Clinic Building and Sickness:** Critters and tourists will now get sick and hurt and can go to the clinic to be healed up, plus new repeatable quests.
**School Building and Education**: You can now retrain critters for different jobs using the school.
**Steam Achievements:** We've added loads of achievements, with more to come.
**Sea Scooters and Fins**: We've added two new ways for you to get around easier underwater.
**Updated Tourist Behaviours:** In addition to responding to sickness (now we have somewhere to get healed) tourists also provide more information when leaving the town.
**More Music**: New music in the school, clinic and carnival rides.
**New Customization & Clothing:** We've added pig & boar noses to all heads under the face slot options, two new patterns for bird heads, loads of new ear options for seamonsters, fun new back slot options including pixie wings and a cool new goth dress.
**New FX for air and cold status:** It's now more obvious when you're in trouble.
**6 New Critters and 2 new homes:** Hanzel, Bogo, Nova, Julie, Xolotl, Emberneigh and two new homes to house them in.
🛠 Quality of Life
Wings and general 'back' items have been separated out on the character controller.
We've added customization mirrors to the new shops so you can enjoy the character creator with the new music in the background.
Added a prompt when you are in a position to dock the boat in town to make it much more obvious.
You can now climb most ladders in the game.
🖥 UI & Controls
You can now map quick saving and hiding the UI. These are not mapped by default.
Item tooltips no longer obscure the amount of each item you need within crafting menus
You can now see when sliders are selected using a controller
Fix the body weight slider moving the wrong away on controller
Press "B" in the graphics menu will now close the dropdown, not the whole menu
🐛 Other Fixes & Adjustments
Fixed some long standing animation issues including the player standing up in boat
Fixed a duplicate camera bug relating to treasure maps
Woolington is now included in the relationships screen
The notification icons for spending money are no longer random
You'll no longer get a fertiliser request with no way to make it
Further fixes for item sizes in the furniture store
Fixed some building textures glowing at night
Added some sound effects, and set some others to fade more naturally
Kilns and other items that couldn't be placed in the upper workshop can now be placed
Critters will now use extra seating place in the cafe area
Fixed problem related to battery charging, including two duplication bugs
Fixes bug where sometimes the donation box after a save for upgrading your houses new room(s) would break and show empty or another donations boxes information.
Current Release
Build 26026884
Uploaded Oct 21, 2026
System Requirements
How to Install
Critter Cove.exe to play
Troubleshooting tips
• Run Redist/_CommonRedist installers if game won't start
• Add folder to Windows Defender exclusions
• Run as administrator
Download
Direct link available
Needed when extracting (WinRAR / 7-Zip) — not a site login.
You May Also Like
View All
Download Critter Cove for PC with a direct link or via torrent. Get the full version of Critter Cove for free. Critter Cove is a Adventure released by Gentleman Rat Studios.