Town of Zoz

Food for the Souls.

I have a soft spot for games that feature farming and the ability to cook. And add in some bonus points for style and an interesting story. There is something about the coziness that catches my attention. When the Town of Zoz game trailer graced my PC, I was naturally intrigued. It had an interesting, colorful animation style and what looked like a unique story that utilized some of my favorite cozy game mechanics. So, let's talk about the experience and join me in the Town of Zoz!

Our story begins with a young boy named Ito training alongside what looks to be a floating spirit with a singular large eyeball, named Zee. After Zee gives you a few battle tutorial tasks, Ito receives a letter from his father back home. Conki asks for your help with the farm due to a busy festival season approaching, and to pick up his favorite snack from the shop on the way home. And no, neither seems like a gentle suggestion. 

Begrudgingly, Ito puts a hold on his training and heads back home. While on the hunt for his dad's snack, you'll start to notice a tense air from the townsfolk when Ito draws near. Some mutter “the weirdo returns” or “not this one again..” But perhaps the most curious barb spoken is “three soul”, meant as some sort of slur. It turns out that all people in this world contain two spirits. One is their own soul/spirit, and the other is a heritage spirit. Heritage spirits are unseen by others and are considered life companions. Ito, for some reason, contains three. The third of which is Zee. For this, the people are suspicious and distrustful of Ito, considering him trouble or a bad omen. 

Some vendors refuse to sell to him, and others are just downright mean to him. Unfortunately, the environment at home is not much better. His father, Conki, is quite harsh on Ito in all things, and when something bad happens, he never gives his son the benefit of the doubt. Like when his father's snack is stolen from Ito by ambushing monsters, Conki blames Ito for not being vigilant and orders him to get to work. Ito’s mother and grandmother seem to be the only ones who greet him with any kind of warmth and understanding. It's no wonder Ito can never sit still and always wants to rush back to the wilds to explore with Zee. As things often do with stories of this kind, trouble often finds our hero with little to no effort, and this once semi-peaceful tale quickly spirals out of control.

When you are given the reins and can begin your adventure in earnest, you will be introduced to farming. You are given three small fields on your family's property to plant your crops. There are two in the front yard and one in the back. The nice part is that the system is quite simple, with only two of these plots needing tools that you never have to carry around in your inventory. In order to begin, you go to a small shed in front of any field and select it to grab your tools. You till however many spots you need, plant your seeds, and water them. The last part is simple: waiting for your plants to grow. While you do that, you can head to town to get supplies and also focus on whatever quests are available. The crops you grow can be used as ingredients, while the extras can be sold for money. That is really all there is to farming in this game.

Unlike the sparse and simple farming system, cooking seems to take a bigger portion of the spotlight. It is often entwined with the story, and many of the quests involve cooking for someone or even making an offering of a specific meal on an ancestral altar. Sometimes your mother will request ingredients for a dinner she's making at home or at her family's restaurant. The other use for cooking is for healing items to take with you while you're out and about in the wild areas. There is even an often spiritual reverence to how food is involved and created in the story. The final stage in meal prep in Town of Zoz is infusing the food with your soul's intention for it. This is where the ability of the dish you're making comes in. These are things like adding defense, speed, or bolstering your magic.

Cooking is also not a place to fully relax here. Unlike games we've all heard of or played (ex: Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, etc.), it takes more than just having the right ingredients and pressing a button. Here, you have a whole QTE-based mini game where you are racing around a large kitchen with multiple stations that involve mixing, chopping, and cooking the meal you want to make. Each dish requires multiple steps that need to be prepped the right way, and if you want a higher-grade meal with better stats, you will need to be quick. The difficulty ranges from easy three-ingredient snacks to the more difficult eight-ingredient meals. Honestly, the entire cooking aspect of the game was my favorite part because of the soulful way it was woven into the story, and the mini game was a bit of hectic fun.

The combat in Town of Zoz is a pretty basic affair. Oftentimes, this is a good thing when concerning games of this kind that employ multiple genre styles. Here, it tasks you with utilizing single button presses for your machete weapons, a dodge that you'll need to time with oncoming attacks, a special attack that changes depending on which machete you switch to, and when to use the healing items you've stashed in your lunch box. Another aspect of the battle that can change is which friend you have with you during a fight. For example, Zee can possess enemies to slow them down and make them targetable, or they can possess your pot item to become a pot warrior that can fight with their hands and speed. Another companion employs water bombs and strong melee attacks. The nice thing is, you can switch them in and out of the fight by pressing down on the d-pad. This allows you to switch them out when their health is low or utilize their abilities at opportune moments.

Everything about Town of Zoz can draw you in. The art is colorful and oozes with a unique Mesoamerican style that infuses everything with Mayan and Incan culture influence. Everything from the characters' clothes and hair, to the food, architecture, and even the flow of music. It is all done with great care for every detail and how it functions in such a living, breathing world.

Now let's talk about how it functions behind the scenes. This is unfortunately where the magic of the experience seems to slip up a bit. The basic movement (example: walking through a densely populated market, farming, the cooking mini game) is smooth, but tends to shudder during transitional parts. Like when you are going in and out of a shop, or different sections of town, I've noticed a bit of graphical struggle. Boss battles could be a bit of a slog in some moments when they’ve brought in extra monsters, and there were a few times I've seen the textures having trouble keeping up, causing the monster to become momentarily blurry. In a particularly challenging battle with a lot happening, my character even stuttered a bit while I attempted to heal, and I ended up losing the fight. Loading back in quickly after, it was as though all characters on screen went “potato mode” with blurred textures I haven't witnessed since PS1 and PS2. Unfortunately, this bug would not dissipate until I could finish the fight and was able to shut the game down and reload. 

I tend not to dwell too heavily on things like this, but the graphical and performance bugs happened so often that I was forcibly removed from an otherwise magical experience far too often. Being that Town of Zoz is so fresh to the world, there is a good chance that the wonderful developers may patch things up quickly. I'm honestly crossing my fingers and toes as this game has been such an interesting experience and a breath of fresh air.

The Town of Zoz has been a story given magical life. Landscapes and crowded town streets are stuffed to the brim with cultural influence that almost makes you swear you can smell Ito's cooking. Despite its technical flaws, there is a wonderfully unique farming/cooking/adventure game that sets itself far apart from a heavily populated genre. I hope they patch some of these issues and make it even better than it already is.

Developer - Studio Pixanoh.
Publisher - Humble Bundle, Balor Games.
Released - April 9th, 2026
Available On - PC.
Rated - (N/A) - No Descriptors.
Platform Reviewed - Steam.
Review Access - A review code for Town of Zoz was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.