Epic's free game this week is the haunted life-sim Cozy Grove

The indie life-simulator Cozy Grove is currently free on the Epic Games Store until March 19, 2026. Anyone with an Epic account can add the game to their library permanently at no cost.

Free is free, and I think this particular freebie is worth a look. Originally released in 2021 by Spry Fox, the game usually goes for around $15. It sits comfortably in the same mechanical neighborhood as Animal Crossing, but with a slightly more melancholic coat of paint.

30 minutes of daily ghost chores

You play as a Spirit Scout camping on a haunted, procedurally generated island. The local residents are ghost bears who need help remembering their pasts and finding peace. As you complete their requests, craft items, and fish, the island physically transforms.

The defining structural quirk of Cozy Grove is its real-time clock. Spry Fox designed the game to be played in short, daily bursts. After about 30 to 60 minutes of completing story quests and gathering resources, the game actively tells you there are no more major tasks for the day. You can stick around to fish or hunt for hidden objects, but the narrative progression is locked behind real-world tomorrow.

Coloring in the island

The visual design reinforces this daily loop. When you first log in each morning, the island is completely devoid of color. It looks like a black and white sketchbook. As you feed spirit logs to your sentient campfire and help the bears with their errands, color radiates outward from the characters and the lamps you place around your camp.

Spry Fox supported the game with several major updates after its initial launch. They added new bears to interact with, expanded the interior decorating mechanics for your tent, and introduced new activities like catching bugs and skipping stones. The developers also spent months optimizing the engine. The dense, overlapping 2D assets notoriously caused frame rate drops on the Nintendo Switch version back in 2021. The PC version available through Epic handles the visual clutter much better.

Spry Fox and the Netflix acquisition

Spry Fox has a long history of making puzzle and strategy games, including Triple Town and Alphabear. Cozy Grove was their biggest swing at a console and PC release. It originally debuted as an Apple Arcade exclusive before making the jump to Steam, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox.

The studio's trajectory shifted in late 2022 when Netflix acquired them to bolster its internal game development roster. However, Netflix later sold Spry Fox back to its founders in December 2025. That acquisition led directly to the sequel, Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit, which launched in 2024 exclusively through the Netflix mobile app. The original game remains available on PC and consoles. This Epic Games Store drop is a good way to try the formula without needing a mobile subscription.