Morgan: Metal Detective has all the hallmarks of the prototypical cosy game. From its idyllic setting and relaxing soundtrack to the low-stakes narrative and friendly-if-forgettable characters, it’s an excellent candidate for lazy Sunday afternoon gaming, with bonus points if you play on a handheld.
Starting with that setting, Morgan: Metal Detective has Cornwall embedded in its DNA, and it’s a lovely thing to see as it’s a part of England I don’t think I’ve ever seen in a game. It’s an area close to home, as my mum lives down in Cornwall, albeit in a “local pub for local people” type village rather than a postcard-perfect seaside down. It’s great to see the game throw so much love into the setting; the developers know the area and have breathed as much of the Cornish essence into it as possible. As you walk around the harbour area the style of the buildings is immediately recognisable, and seeing signs for an Air BnB style lettings business on some of them makes the world feel more believable.
Similarly with the audio, I didn’t expect every character to be fully voiced, but they are, and all the locals sound like they truly belong. Whether you’re listening to someone explain where they lost their engagement ring or one of your grandfather’s tapes about his theories on the island’s energy source, the Cornish accents really do add a lot to the package and make it feel more complete.
The narrative itself centres on Morgan’s family: her and her mum have travelled to the island to clear out and sell her grandfather’s house after he passed away recently. From there the story spins out into several low-stakes side quests that have you and your newly bequeathed metal detector helping the island’s locals. You might be looking for rental properties that have recently had heat pumps installed so you can check around them for the tools the maintenance person lost, or helping mum find a key that your grandad lost.
There’s even someone on the island conducting archaeological digs and somehow you’re allowed to take your metal detector and trowel in there to help them dig up artefacts. At one point I came across a church and graveyard and half expected to be sent around there digging up graves. Fortunately I wasn’t, and after a quick scan there definitely wasn’t anything to dig up in there anyway.
Using your metal detector is as simple as turning it on and sweeping it back and forth. You’ll hear when it finds something, and a set of meters on the screen shows the bands it’s picking up. The higher the band, or the more of them it detects at once, the better quality the item you’ll find (usually). These are the items linked to quests, however you’ll often find lots of junk while searching for them, such as cans, coins and a huge amount of horseshoes. I don’t know what happened on this island that led to so many horseshoes to be buried but that might have been a fun story to explore in a side quest.
This is 100% a cosy game and the soundtrack reflects that. It’s got gentle, relaxing pop music that you can play in the background, and you tend to earn these tapes after each quest ends. That means at the start you’ve only got one track you can play, which isn’t ideal, but it’s not long before you find more. One weird quirk was that the music stopped playing whenever you spoke to someone or paused, which was slightly annoying when you needed to manually put a cassette back into your tape player to start the track again. Not a big deal, but I came across a few weird quirks like that while playing. The main menu didn’t seem to play nicely with the controller, and at one point I thought I’d broken the game when I’d walked off the map and couldn’t get back on. 5 minutes of persistent walking into the side of the cliff got me back up though.
Morgan: Metal Detective isn’t the gaming equivalent of digging up buried treasure, but equally it’s more enjoyable than digging up horseshoes. If you’ve got two hours and a Steam Deck or handheld PC then curl up on the sofa and enjoy a wander around the Cornish coast with Morgan and her metal detector.