My Little Universe: coziest family game, ever

I promise you that when I sat down with one of my best friends this past Friday to play a game I had just been given, I didn't think it'd take over my family's entire weekend.

Before we knew it, my friend and I had been playing the game for two hours when my daughters got home, and the four of us kept playing, switching around since we only had two controllers, until my partner arrived from work with two extra PlayStation 5 controllers so all of us could play this game.

My Little Universe is the type of game that you can play while chatting, while eating snacks, while trying to just relax and unwind. It's such a simple game - you mine, chop wood, and fight baddies while exploring new planets, terraforming them as you gather materials and craft a cozy little hexagon-filled environment complete with deadly shark attacks. There are plenty of materials to mine and look for, and they craft everything from new paths on your planet to upgrades to your weapon, pick axe, axe, and armor.

Let's talk about the yay and nay parts of this game, shall we?

My Little Universe review

The Good

This is the kind of co-op game that a family should sit and play together. You get to explore little planets together, find adorable costumes you can change your little character into as you go (the Dinosaurs were a huge hit here), and it's a fun team exercise. To enter and leave planets, dungeons and encounters, every single party member has to be together. Encounters and dungeons require some scavenge hunting for items like stars, keys, and shields, which are required to move forward in the game.

Though the game is filled with repetitive tasks, it's visually stimulating and pleasing, the music borders the masterpiece that is the original Minecraft soundtrack, and it has subtle enough differences to keep the game interesting, even if you've been playing the game for hours in one sitting. The planets are also different and have different little themes to them, which helps keep things fresh. It's simple enough for kids to play - my two eight-year-olds were able to pick up the controller and figure out in a few seconds that: you switch between three items only, you can swing said items normally or press and hold down to charge for an AOE blow, you press down to level up and pick a quirk, you lose a random quirk when you die, and none of your items break.

This game is infuriatingly simply yet absolutely layered. I freaking love it. And so did my family.

But... it's not all sunshine and rainbows.

The Not-So-Good

For a game that isn't nearly as graphic-intensive as others, My Little Universe has a severe lagging problem once a few conditions are met, and this is just based on observation. Two players works flawlessly, until you enter a planet that has a lot of different islands and requires constant loading as it is an open world with spawn points for NPCs and items. The lag isn't absolutely horrendous, but it does happen every once in a while.

However, we did notice that the game lags almost immediately and pretty consistently as my children, my partner, and I attempted to play the game together for a little while. We found it to be the same case - in open-world settings, the game suffers from a lot of lagging. But, in encounter zones and dungeons, the lagging was at a minimum - even for 4 players. I don't get it.

This is how consistent the lag was:

My family's own playthrough of My Little Universe

That's quite literally the only major hangup I found with the game.

My Little Universe is very, very entertaining, it's adorable, and it definitely has replay value, with 9 different systems with planets ready to explore ready for you. If you're a fan of crafting and dungeoning games, this is the perfect little game for you and your family.

Official Pixigonal Rating: A+

Pixigonal was given a free copy of My Little Universe in exchange for an honest review.