Cosy Cleanup: Spilled!

Who knew cleaning up oil spills can be so relaxing?

Jul 10, 2024

‣ Spilled!
From: Lente
Platforms: PC
Release: 2024
Steam Page • Demo Video • Developer Site

You get to make an inviting world even more inviting. That’s why this game is satisfying.

Why are cosy games so satisfying? Is it the constant reward despite little effort? Maybe it’s the comfortably basic gameplay that you can pick up immediately, or the lack of consequences—just play at your own pace and have fun.

Whatever the reason, I enjoyed Spilled!’s demo, riding around in loops as I scooped oil off the water’s surface, gradually turning the murky water into a blue lagoon paradise.

Spilled! is a cosy arcade game where you pilot a small boat, trawling around polluted waters to remove black globs of oil, then recycling them and receive coins for upgrades. Clean enough pollution and a new area enters for your services.

The game progresses casually, with money coming easily. You don't have to grind much to upgrade your ship (though upgrade prices double with each purchase). Use the coins to improve equipment: a larger scoop, more storage, and extra solar panels for additional speed.

Early on, the oil puddles are small. But as you enter new sections, they grow denser. Oil also appears on some land areas—use your water gun to rinse these spots. Along the way, scoop up plastic waste for extra coins. Each area is divided into several zones—the demo has one area with three zones, and the final game will have eight distinct areas.

There’s not much else to it. New areas add more oil and new pollution challenges, and there are several unique animals you can rescue. But fundamentally, you move in irregular circles, scooping up oil until your container is full, make cash, upgrade, and scoop more oil.

Yet, Spilled! keeps you engaged because it embraces the cosy game doctrine of casual-paced low effort-high reward, wrapped in a nice place to visit.

You want to spend time in Spilled!’s world. The soundtrack is soothing, and the game world is colourful, stuffed with shrubs and trees, waterfalls, bridges, farms, wind generators, camping sites, and buildings with greenery growing on them. Cleaning up the polluted water adds to this aura, revealing cyan pools with plants, fish, and turtles.

You get to make an inviting world even more inviting. That’s why this game is satisfying.

Spilled! is the creation of a solo developer named Lente, who suitably lives on a houseboat. The game opens with a small bio and a photo of Lente and her floating home. It underscores that this is a real passion project, mixed with experience (Lente’s been developing games since 2015, and made it her primary focus roughly two years ago).

📽 Demo Moment: Starting a new area

That passion and focus adds to Spilled!’s charm. It’s a simple, yet rewarding and satisfying game. The demo is short, taking only about 10 minutes to play and covering one area divided into three sections. But that’s enough to show what Spilled! will deliver when it launches.

Spilled! releases in 2024, on Steam.