Little Rocket Lab is one of those games that sneaks up on you. If I’m being honest, I pressed play without having any preconceived notions in my head. But I was left with a mixed bag of emotions soon after. Due to that, it made it tough for me to judge this game.
On paper, it’s an automation sim about building machines and eventually launching a rocket. Sounds simple right? But in practice, it is a cozy casual game which blends automation, small-town life sim, and gentle storytelling together. However, the latter part feels like the game’s shortfall too. Let me explain why.
First gameplay and thoughts
You play as Morgan, an engineer returning to the seaside town of St. Ambroise years after her mother’s death, ready to finish your dream of building a rocket. The town, however, is just a shadow of what it was. Once filled with automation, the town has now fallen quiet. You, as Morgan, work on restoring machines and in turn start restoring the community itself.
It’s a familiar setup for cozy games. And I admit, at first, the automation felt like a trick that I could not handle. I had some ups and downs before I figured it out completely. But unlike the automation games that came prior, Little Rocket Lab is far more forgiving for making mistakes. There are no looming threats for mistakes, no timers demanding optimization, and no real punishment for inefficiency.
Instead, the game revels in approachability. Conveyors snap satisfyingly into place, assemblers and furnaces are easy to reconfigure, and experimentation is encouraged. Tearing down an entire production line because it doesn’t quite work feels less like failure and more like part of the fun.
The presentation supports this tone beautifully. The pixel-art world is soft and inviting. There’s genuine satisfaction in ending a day and seeing the town a little brighter, a little more alive, because of the systems you’ve built.
That said, Little Rocket Lab isn’t without limitations. Its biggest weakness lies in its linear structure. Progress is almost always tied to explicit story beats or town requests. This linear progression of a cutscene and then you doing a task became repetitive and predictable for me after a while.
As the hours roll on, new mechanics slow down gameplay. Mid-to-late game becomes more about scaling existing systems than discovering genuinely fresh ideas. But this was the only flaw I could find in this game targeting cozy gamers.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Approachable automation gameplay
- Encourages creativity and tinkering in a forgiving manner
- Cozy, relaxing atmosphere
Cons
- Linear story progression
- Repetitive structure and predictable narrative
Final Verdict
Little Rocket Lab succeeds as a welcoming entry point into automation games. It also succeeds as a thoughtful experiment in merging mechanical depth with human-scale storytelling. It may not satisfy players looking for endless complexity, but for those who want to tinker, rebuild, and unwind, it’s a quietly confident success.
Score: 80/100
(Reviewed on PC)
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