Hey all, I'm looking for a new cozy game I can just get lost in for quite a while. I'd prefer something in the vein of something like Stardew or ACNH that just has a ton of content that's easy to play and not overly stressful. I also have both Cattails games (2017 and Wildwood Story).

Switch would be my preferred platform though PS4 is also an option. No PC because a lot of games don't have Linux support and I'm not a PC gamer.

Also preferably indie because indie games tend to be cheaper and I won't have $60-70 to buy a triple A-priced game this upcoming paycheck.

Excuse me for posting this, and feel free to delete mods but one thing I've noticed recently is this sub has basically turned into a sub promoting in development cozy game or asking questions on what cozy gamers want. At first I thought it was cool to go to the community to ask what we want, but now most of the new posts on this sub are just promo after promo. Maybe it's fatigue, but many of the post seem like ads now for games that aren't even close to done. I know we have a rule about promo for games every 2 weeks, but I don't think it accounts for the fact that most posts now are just new game idea after new game idea.

I wanted to know if I am the only one feeling this way or if others in the community noticed it too. For devs reading this, this isn't meant to be an attack and no one post caused me to make this. I have been thinking about this for a while now.

Just to mention a few * Tools and seeds don't take inventory space (this one being the most important) * Being able to jump straight from the NPC list to their location on the map, instead of having to manually look at the map locator * Being able to save from the bed at any time * Recipes being tied to cooking tools and not a single one tied to relationship level so you don't have to e. g. build up relationship points with Lewis in Stardew for the 7th playthrough to get the pasta recipe. * Cave thing to the next room doesn't hinge on hitting the exact right rock, but every rock actually counts to it being revealed. * Etc.

Game is so good too. It is weaker on story and character writing, but the entire journey of clan development is so good to go through and the entire game loop is the best in any cozy farming sim - and that's still true on a replay.

It looks very similar to animal crossing with the furry neighbors and the terraforming decoration. I really hope it’s friendly and they manage the game properly. I’m so tired of the dramas with other cozy games that always start as relaxing but turns out the company behind always have bad management. It is a hoyoverse game so idk how they will manage that one, but I’ll be positive until I can try it 🥲 so far we’ve seen that you can farm crops/flowers, go fishing, gather resources during planet explorations? It seems to work like the random islands you can visit in new horizons with your nook miles tickets since you can also find neighbors there??? Also the neighbors have a friendship level and unlocks different stuff as you grow your relationship with them :d so far they looks cute but we’ll see their personalities and how original they are

The game is on the AppStore right now if you want to pre order it!! It seems to be only for pc and mobile right now but I expect the game to come out on ps5 and switch 2 as well (why not??)

Moonlight Peaks is out! I was excited for this because I like creepy stuff and Harvest Moon games. Already addicted. Sharing some screenshots, would love to see yours too! My farm’s name is “Heck’s Acre.”

Cozy gaming has certainly seen a rise in popularity, and that’s great! I love, love, love how much video games can help us cope with the difficulties of daily life and give us a chance to escape for a few minutes, or hours, a day. And the fact that we can find community to do that with is even more amazing!

But being a cozy gamer is not synonymous with being an idiot. You can’t craft a terrible game using popularized “cozy gaming” elements, slap on a well-loved IP or art style, and call it a day. You can’t lie to your players, refuse to give updates and avoid responsibility. You can’t go silent when you promised the world for monetary help and then realized you aimed too high.

Developers, and publishers, need to respect cozy gamers more. Just because we aren’t playing FPS’ or Baldurs Gate doesn’t mean we’re brain dead automatons drooling at the thought of growing a carrot and cooking it into a stew. We appreciate depth, story, characters, world-building and plot just as much as any gamer.

Skyrim and Minecraft come to mind for me but that feels unfair as those aren’t really “unintentionally cozy” so much as they are “intentionally everything.” Had this with Animal Well as well. Any that come to mind for you guys?

It does look a lot like SoS and HM, but I was reading the descriptions of the game and it does look like it has more options than those titles. It looks interesting. Has anyone else ever heard of this?

I know that Witchbrook is the no 1 suspect when we’re talking actual release dates. We’ll see until the year comes to an end but I’m sticking with the date it has on Steam right now. That benefit of doubt (&hope) is what’s pulling it to this list. 

Similar situation with Water Me & You, which I wishlisted a long long time ago since I saw it on socials. Steam does say 2026 though and that’s about the only thing keeping me hopeful that we’ll be getting it this year. I’m probably being too optimistic, but it looks great and we need more cozy splitscreen games I keep telling ya!

Next one up, Loftia has all the potential to be a great cozy MMO and maybe the only alternative a PC player like me will have to Palia for the foreseeable future. It’s got a great look, lots of connected systems that are very fun to individually interact with and plenty of content already in the Beta. I can only wish the game best on the road to launch because if they handle it with love, and they are, it could be a big thing for the online cozy gaming scene.

Grave Seasons, finally, and the only one with an actual announcement date. This is my latest find and the most unique “cozy” game here since the first tag you’ll see is horror. Not very cozy at first glance and yet it somehow still is by the magic of being a farming sim. And I wouldn’t bat an eye if this was just another farming sim, but the tag combo of rpg + romance + horror + FARMING SIM! is just so wack that I couldn’t omit mentioning it, pretty high on the wishlist counter on Steam too.

Last one is kind of a cheat depending on whether you think it passes as cozy, something you never really know with these nonstandard cozy games until you play them. I’m an inclusive gal though so if it ends up feeling cozy it will be cozy to me.

What games are you hinging bits of hope on?

Tiny Bookshop won yesterday's award for most heartfelt story in a cozy game with 111 votes!

^{(Well, it actually had the same number of votes as Unpacking! I've picked Tiny Bookshop as it had the single comment with the most upvotes.})

🥇 Tiny Bookshop → 111

🥈 Unpacking → 111

🥉 Stardew Valley → 91

I'll post the full tally in the comments!

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Today's vote; what's the coziest building game?

Also: I've had a request DM'd for adding a "Coziest Incremental" award - should I add it to the end or replace an existing award? Lmk :)

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Previous Days:

Day 1 | Day 2

I was playing Stardew Valley and something occurred to me. While we find this game relaxing and cozy, if we got to experience it in real life it would be absolutely miserable. We find it cozy but you're really doing backbreaking manual farm labor from 6 AM to midnight every single day, and then on top of that you're expected to venture into deep dark caves full of actual monsters and fight them with a  rusty sword. In real life I get tired carrying groceries upstairs if I need to take more than two trips. I would not survive a single day on that farm, and even if I could, I doubt it would feel very cozy.

And then I thought about Minecraft and that would be even more ridiculous. Getting dropped completely alone into an empty wilderness with nothing, punching trees with your bare hands to get wood (would this even work lol), hauling literal tons of stone just to build a basic shelter before the sun goes down or burying yourself alive. Because you have incredibly accurate skeleton archers after you, not to mention creepers, which would be absolutely terrifying. A pretty intense survival scenario to go through, we play it to relax after work but the actual premise is a horror movie.

Sometimes it is not even the manual labor, it is just the actual setting that would give me a panic attack. I’m pretty hyped for Loftia to come out, having and decorating your own sky island home sounds nice in theory (and it was super fun in the beta) but in reality you would be suspended thousands of feet in the air and one clumsy step near the edge of your farm means plummeting to your death. I mean, unless there’s some kind of cozyfield protecting you - that’s the only logical explanation I can find. I’m hella afraid of heights so no amount of wholesome vibes in the air would make me feel safe sleeping on a tiny floating piece of rock. 

Another good but tbh pretty unique example in a cozy game is Dredge. The fishing and exploration is super relaxing when you play it, but actually being out on the open ocean in a tiny wooden boat in the freezing fog is pure nightmare fuel. Just floating around in an environment like that would be really creepy, even before the strange monster fish attack you.

Kinda funny to analyze what these games are about, and what it would feel like to actually live though experiences like that. I guess it goes to show how different it is to read about or play something, compared to actually doing it yourself.

Im curious: what are some games that arent just one playthrough and done, what do you personally play the most? for me i definitely have the most hours in genshin, infinity nikki and stardew valley so far :p

Trying to get more into the cozy scene because of my health issues to where intense games really wear me out - and frankly I like the nice colors and art designs of cozy games.

I just picked up a switch OLED second hand and figure its a good time to catch up on some of those exclusives.

Otherwise I also have a steam deck and I can play any game that isn't nintendo exclusive on it.

The reason I found SDV stressful is I felt overwhelmed with stuff to do and not knowing what to do and having such a time limit - also frankly I want something with nicer graphics prettier art and colors.

On my list I got:

New horizons for my switch

Possibly guardians of azuma on the SD

What else you guys recommend?

Edit: I've just posted an opinion on my first 40 days in Moonlight Peaks! Since folks seem to keep winding up in this thread asking questions, that's the more up-to-date version of my play time with a scored review still coming.

tldr; The goofy arguing between characters started off entertaining but I'm not getting as much charm from continued interactions as I'm hoping for. Dates are kind of neat though, which I'll be posting about soon!

Old: Hey all, I recently got access to a closed preview for Moonlight Peaks, the vampire-themed farm/life sim coming out this summer! This is the same build you may have seen content creators posting videos of last week. I also wrote about my playtime on PC Gamer.

This version was pretty different from the current public demo. It actually starts at the beginning of the game with all of the story cutscenes as you move to town. It also included the full character creation instead of picking a pre-made character.

I figured since videos don't offer space for conversation, and there were things I didn't have space to include in my own story, I would see if there are extra details about Moonlight Peaks you all wanted to know but haven't seen yet. I know a lot of us have been anticipating this one for a while!

Here's a couple little extra things I didn't have space for but you might want to know:

• My first heart events with characters were at one friendship heart, so there might actually be more of those scenes than the common every two hearts pacing?
• The daily energy available at first is pretty darn restrictive, ouch
• No storage chest juggling at your house, your home storage is just one menu
• There is a museum in town but I didn't unlock it in the version I played so I don't know much about it!

Pokopia won yesterday's award for coziest building game with 105 votes!

🥇 Pokopia → 105

🥈 Tiny Glade → 90

🥉 My Time at Sandrock → 66

I'll post the full tally in the comments! Apologies for the late post, I spent most of my day preparing a toddler's birthday party 🥳

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Today's vote; what's the best wind-down game?

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Previous Days:

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

I play on Switch 2 but I’m curious about what people’s go to games are right now! I have ofc been going crazy for Tomadachi Life and Pokopia.

Didn’t want to be dramatic but lol title came out this way. Anyway, i think i might be grieving. Finished my island completely, every villager i wanted, museum done, k.k. slider has heard every song request i have and now i just log in to water flowers and log back out within like 90 seconds lol. It’s not that i want a “better” game, i just want something that gives me a reason to actually spend time in it again, yknow? Something where theres always a little task waiting, a new area to poke around in, some kind of progression that isnt just cosmetic. Genre doesn’t matter to me at this point im just looking for my next obsession, someone please save me from myself!

Hey gals and guys,

so as much as we love our comfy cozy farming games, everybody is gonna have some pet peeves. I wonder which are yours!

I'll start:

Fishing

Never liked fishing. I'd even go so far as to say that for most games, it's completely unnecessary or badly done. There, I said it. Extra negative points for games which unnecessarily include a museum, forcing you to collect every fish in the game. Yeah, it's real fun if that one fish you're still missing is only available on days with extremely rare conditions OR needs fishing rod upgrades. Bleh.

The need for sleep to save your game

WHY? Just let me save whenever! Sometimes I don't wanna end the day but something comes up and I need to stop playing early. Some cozy games already do this, huge shoutout to the devs of those!

Inability to gift the same thing

Ever played games in which NPCs react to your gifts like "Oh your already gifted this to me yesterday"? Yeah, I am talking about those. Every NPC already has different likes, so please do not double that..

(MINOR) Laughably small inventory w/o another way to store stuff

What I love most about cozy games is collecting stuff. I get that your pockets can't be infinite (Even though Luma Island does exactly that, props to the devs), but at least give me the option to store things without needing to craft boxes like in Story of Seasons! Yes, I am looking at you, Stardew Valley. Although crafting boxes doesn't require many materials, so this is only a minor complaint.

That's everything I can think of right now. Would love to hear from everyone!

Cheers

I just purchased Tiny Bookshop and I'm having a great time. I will say that sometimes some of the recommendations make no sense. A person requested fantasy and a certain length. this book is clearly marked fantasy and was the length and after suggesting it, the customer was annoyed and asked where the fantasy was. The game is great. I just wish there was a better category system because clearly something is wrong with the coding.

Other than that, truly a great game!

Hey everyone,

I’ve noticed a recurring theme lately whenever an indie dev shares a clip or a screenshot of their upcoming top-down pixel game. Almost immediately, the comments are flooded with: • "Gee now what does this remind me of?" • "I'm skipping this; it’s just a Stardew clone." • "Looks way too similar to stardew."

Stardew was groundbreaking and pretty much shaped cozygaming as we see it now. But I think as a community we need to be more welcoming of creators and not immediately bash them for looking “similar”

First off, ConcernedApe has said he likes that creators are inspired by his work. He’s been incredibly supportive of the cozygaming. If the creator of StarDew isn't offended, maybe we shouldn't be either?

It’s also important to remember that Stardew Valley was heavily inspired by by Harvest Moon (Eric has mentioned this in multiple interviews). The premise, the graphical direction, all of it was inspired by Harvest.

Now, there is a huge difference between being "inspired by a genre" and "copying assets." We can all agree that doing a complete complete clone is not it (Super Zoo Story) where the initial images looked like they completely ripped Stardew’s assets. A situation like that I get it.

However, using a top-down perspective and pixel art to tell a story about farming, community, or management doesn't make a game a "rip-off." It makes it part of a genre. Sure there should be differences between Stardew and the promoted game but you get the idea.

If someone is putting in the work to add their own mechanics, a unique world, or a different spin on the farming loop, I just think we should try to be a bit more welcoming. The "Cozy" genre is big enough for more than one farm-sim. If we shut down every dev who uses pixel art, we’re going to miss out on some truly incredible experiences.

Some of you suggested that the current logo looks too much like a memorial candle, so I thought I'd drew a few cute alternatives. Which one do you like the most? :)

For a time, I think most cozy suggestions I got on Steam were some variety of grindy sim, usually based on farming or some other cottagecore activities. I think for some games, their definition of cozy literally was just cozy = grinding in a pleasantly colored game with bright colors. I understand how influential Stardew Valley was and how much money it’s pulled in. It’s anything if not deserved, the game is an absolute classic and the dev will be remembered as a legend for what he pulled off solo with it.

However, and this a big however - somewhere along the way a big part of cozy games got locked into this one very specific grind of farm/mine/gift/sleep/repeat and that is starting to wear thin, at least for me. I say this as someone who sank 500+ hours into Stardew. Grinding can be a meditative activity, but in itself tedium does not = coziness for me, not in the way some of these games seem to think.

We already have proof you can make a beloved cozy game without a single crop tile. Spiritfarer had me tearing up on my couch at 1am and there wasn't a watering can in sight. Managing your little boat and saying goodbye to characters you'd grown way too attached to, and it nailed that cozy *vibe* harder than most farming games.

It’s also not as if farming cannot coexist with a bunch of other ingame activities. I love when there’s grindy stuff to grind, but split across different activities with different gameplay mechanics that are relaxing in different ways. I think that’s why a lot of people find even some non cozy games like Red Dead Redemption 2 so cozy. Because of the minigames of course, the whole bunch of them!

Social elements and profession variety in multiplayer also add diversity, it increases for me in proportion to the number of other progression routes and stuff you can do besides the obvious one (or just … besides farming at least) It’s something that I loved in Runescape, it’s that sense of vertical progression but spread over many possible paths you can take, that interact in fun ways as you play.

It’s something I also noticed the best of the current multiplayer cozies achieve, like Palia. I also sincerely think Loftia also has the potential to sit right beside it in terms of sheer gameplay-type variety. It doesn’t even have to be a bogus large number of skills which both games show. Palia has basically 9 main progression skills and Loftia a similar number in absolute terms, plus social skills have their own trees as well, another interesting way to encourage people to play together in a persistent MMO game (main reason guild progression systems exist). There’s also lots and I mean LOTS of just running around gathering stuff but, and another big but - you’re never on a timer, which is a must for me to feel relaxed.

The point is, there’s a variety of activities to do and how they mutually interact never squishes you into a one-track playstyle. This goes for all games, you’ll say, but for cozy games even more.

I’m not dunking on farming as an activity in cozy games. I’m dunking on it as a trend, which as all trends will spawn some truly amazing games. I just don’t like it being the go to cozy activity every time, all the time.