Cozy Games - For the girls who sit down and play farming games

[mmm semen]

Hello Kitty Island Adventure. I have a 100 hours on it, and still unlocking the main story. Lots of rpg content (and grinding) minus the combat. Crafting, clothes, decorating housing, quests, rebuilding islands, gaining rep with characters to unlock abilities. I honestly like it better than Animal Crossing since the npcs have lots of dialog and do shit, rather than wander aimlessly around with 3 lines of copy paste greetings. I appreciate that the responses your character gives can be smart assed.

Pokopia is the new hotness out, and has lots of good reviews, but I only have an hour into it.

 

[Dr. Arinsu]

Anyone who wants to have fun with Video Games in general by utalizing old gaming Nintendo Systems then here we go:

Cooking Mama
I Love My Baby Girl/Boy (and adjacent spinoffs.)
Pokemon (and spinoffs.)
Sims
MySims Agents, MySims, MySims Kingdom (and the Wii/PC Variants.)
Animal Crossing (The Wii, Gamecube and DS/3DS Variants.)
Tomogatchi (There's a bunch of DS versions.)
Tomodachi Life/Collection

Even more is required.

Disney Dreamlight Valley
Sims 2 (Search for Mr. DJ's Repack.)
My Baby and Me Triology Series (Though this also directly inspired My Universe, My Baby. Since the nigger company that owned My Baby and Me series had went bankrupted.)

 

[PetiteFeet]

A game I will always recommend to everyone is Okami. It's not quite a normal "cozy" game because it's a combat orientated game but it has a lot of mechanics and side content that is outright cozy. You paint stuff into the world to cleanse it of corruption, you can feed animals (and you can see how many percentages of XYZ animals you've fed, encouraging you to 100% it) and the artstyle, inspired by Japanese Sumi-e and okyio-e art, is otherworldly.
Between fights, with a lot of encounters being you classical "random encounters" that can be avoided, you travel the world and meet silly characters.
If you like Japanese culture, mythology and legends, and you like 3D Zelda games I can highly recommend Okami. Hell, I would even recommend Okamiden if you have a Nintendo 3DS or you know how to emulate.
You can play it on PC, Playstation consoles, the wii or the switch.

Plus, the main character is the Japanese sun goddess personified as a wolf, and who doesn't like the idea of playing a wolf.

Another "cozy" game I can recommend is Long Live The Queen. Basically, it's a life sim where you help shape a princess into becoming the best queen she can be, all the while dodging assassination attempts and drama at the court.

 

[Luvora]

A game I will always recommend to everyone is Okami. It's not quite a normal "cozy" game because it's a combat orientated game but it has a lot of mechanics and side content that is outright cozy. You paint stuff into the world to cleanse it of corruption, you can feed animals (and you can see how many percentages of XYZ animals you've fed, encouraging you to 100% it) and the artstyle, inspired by Japanese Sumi-e and okyio-e art, is otherworldly.
Between fights, with a lot of encounters being you classical "random encounters" that can be avoided, you travel the world and meet silly characters.
If you like Japanese culture, mythology and legends, and you like 3D Zelda games I can highly recommend Okami. Hell, I would even recommend Okamiden if you have a Nintendo 3DS or you know how to emulate.
You can play it on PC, Playstation consoles, the wii or the switch.

Plus, the main character is the Japanese sun goddess personified as a wolf, and who doesn't like the idea of playing a wolf.

Another "cozy" game I can recommend is Long Live The Queen. Basically, it's a life sim where you help shape a princess into becoming the best queen she can be, all the while dodging assassination attempts and drama at the court.

Galaxy Princess Zorana is the new game made by the creator of Long Live The Queen, pretty much the same game but with a sci-fi spin to it. Fair warning though the game isn't totally done yet the CGs at the end of the game have yet to be added.

 

[Red flag]

Strange Horticulture


Strange Antiquities

Item identification games where you learn the story of the town, its mysteries and its people by selling plants or items imbued with various curious properties. Paced at your leasure. Very much enjoyed with a cup of tea and biscuits.

And of course you get to pet the cat.

 

[Spooky all year]

Strange Horticulture


Strange Antiquities

Item identification games where you learn the story of the town, its mysteries and its people by selling plants or items imbued with various curious properties. Paced at your leasure. Very much enjoyed with a cup of tea and biscuits.

And of course you get to pet the cat.

I love these. Honestly such good games! Actually got super excited when they went from Strange Horticulture to Strange Antiquities (though I've yet to finish this one).

My Time at Sandrock

Fields of Mistra

Mistria: Yes! It's really enjoyable. Great style. I'm just waiting on them to release 1.0 later this year because time sinking in EA generally sucks lol. Very nice to see this mentioned.

Sandrock: Good game. I was in the Pathea Discord while this was in development. My only gripe with it is that it's Chinese and Pathea basically has SHIT instincts for giving characters story. Some are very over represented (Fang, Logan, even Unsuur). Everybody else kind of gets shafted backstory wise. They have a super Chinese way of dealing with that shit; read: they ask the discord who they like best constantly and flip flop around based on user feedback. They don't have the stories fixed / written out before they develop their shit. They just start with a general idea and adapt character specific shit on the fly. Their newest game is going to be hot garbage because they've also stepped away from the Sandrock style and are trying to copy shit like Love and Deepspace.

Other games I think are cozy and pretty good:
1. Cozy Caravan
2. Kitchen Sync Aloha
3. Little Witch in the Woods
4. The Roottrees are Dead (if you like mystery solving stuff)
5. Garden Trills
6. Pixel Cafe (if you like cooking games)
7. Traveler's Rest (if you like tavern sim games)
8. Botany Manor (Puzzle / Escape game with a botany theme, I loved this one)


Do you ladies consider Visual Novels to be part of cozy gaming? If yes, can recommend a bunch of things.


On Cozy Farming games in general (Stardew as example)

I put about 133 hours into Stardew. It's not an insane amount in the grand scheme of things, but it's enough time for me to be well acquainted with it. When I considered the game again recently I found I completely misremembered the amount of depth the characters had. (It's all pretty surface level).

Do you other Kiwis ever get bothered by the lack of depth in storytelling?

Like I like the mechanics fine. But now that I've gotten older, I've come to find the characters from Stardew (and similar games) horribly flat and kind of boring despite having loved Stardew and other games a lot when I gamed more.

What are your thoughts on this? I'm genuinely interested in discussing this.

 

[Artorias Sneed]

The Witch's Bakery looks like it's going to be such a cosy game. It seems to have been stuck in development for a long time, but apparently it's on its way in a couple more months.

Always had a soft spot for that chill witch aesthetic (Kiki's Delivery Service, the original Sabrina tv series, etc).


From what I saw in the trailers, it's some pretty relaxed crafting and running little errands for townspeople.

 

[thyme]

A game I will always recommend to everyone is Okami. It's not quite a normal "cozy" game because it's a combat orientated game but it has a lot of mechanics and side content that is outright cozy. You paint stuff into the world to cleanse it of corruption, you can feed animals (and you can see how many percentages of XYZ animals you've fed, encouraging you to 100% it) and the artstyle, inspired by Japanese Sumi-e and okyio-e art, is otherworldly.
Between fights, with a lot of encounters being you classical "random encounters" that can be avoided, you travel the world and meet silly characters.
If you like Japanese culture, mythology and legends, and you like 3D Zelda games I can highly recommend Okami. Hell, I would even recommend Okamiden if you have a Nintendo 3DS or you know how to emulate.
You can play it on PC, Playstation consoles, the wii or the switch.

Plus, the main character is the Japanese sun goddess personified as a wolf, and who doesn't like the idea of playing a wolf.

Another "cozy" game I can recommend is Long Live The Queen. Basically, it's a life sim where you help shape a princess into becoming the best queen she can be, all the while dodging assassination attempts and drama at the court.

Fucking love Okami. Had a ton of fun with the motion controls on Wii back in the day but the remaster on PS4/5 is fun as well.
There is going to be an Okami 2! (link to game announcement website)

I recently got Slime Rancher 2 for free on PSN, it's a tad gay but it's not as bad as I expected. You explore a prismatic rainbow land collecting slimes to farm and loot to craft shit, the music is soothing and there's some pretty decent visuals.
The main hazard is falling into the soup (slime sea) the few aggressive slimes are weak and easy to handle.
Youre able to decorate practically anywhere you want and you can parkour your way through everything.
My favorite slime is the yolky slime that prefers to live in your chicken pens. When you pick it up it makes a little trilling sound that reminds me of a cockatiel


ETA forgot to mention, Stardew Valley is getting an update soon that adds Clint the blacksmith and Sandy the desert shopkeep as marriage candidates. Im keeping Krobus as my husbando but Im tempted to start another save for ol Clinty when it comes out

 

[PetiteFeet]

View attachment 8664393
Strange Horticulture

View attachment 8664399
Strange Antiquities

Item identification games where you learn the story of the town, its mysteries and its people by selling plants or items imbued with various curious properties. Paced at your leasure. Very much enjoyed with a cup of tea and biscuits.

And of course you get to pet the cat.
View attachment 8664403

How woke/pozzed are these? I'm not allergic to woke, I just don't want any they/thems in my games.

Do you ladies consider Visual Novels to be part of cozy gaming? If yes, can recommend a bunch of things.

I do and I'm always on the lookout for more VNs. Doesn't have to strictly be otome or romance-flavoured, I still have Science Adventure I need to get through one of these days.

 

[Arbiter]

adds Clint the blacksmith

I am so curious if this will actually make him into a likable character or not

 

[Red flag]

How woke/pozzed are these? I'm not allergic to woke, I just don't want any they/thems in my games.

Not at all, unless you count brown customers showing up in your 1800s shop in northern England as woke. Feels like a pre 2015 experience.


Just finished Chants of Sennaar, a linguistic puzzle game inspired by the tower of Babel. Has very occasional but extremely trivial stealth sections. Cosy and relaxing.

 

[Lil Dinger]

All the katamari games are great!

 

[That Witch]

Pokopia has been an unexpected hit for me. I thought I'd pick it up on a whim and maybe play it off and on and kinda lose interest. NOPE. Koei-Tecmo must've put crack in that game or something.

There's something very relaxing about the gameplay loop, and it's just very charming overall. I've had a lot of fun with it and I think it's definitely worth checking out if you have a Switch 2.

There is only one thing that kinda drives me nuts and it's the constant switching between 'it' and 'they/them' pronouns for the Pokemon. It gets confusing as fuck. All the dex entries, for example, retain the use of "it" to refer to a singular Pokemon. But then all of the dialogue uses they/them. AND THEN, THERE ARE NOTES AND LETTERS THAT REFER TO SPECIFIC POKEMON AS 'HE' OR 'SHE', which, in-game makes some sense because they're letters from the humans about a specific Pokemon.

It's like the localization team had different people on it who weren't really coordinated. I'm surprised TPCI didn't come down harder on them because they have a pretty specific style guide for how to refer to Pokemon and such.

But other than that it's been a blast.

 

[Haramburger]

A Little To The Left, on Steam, consoles and mobile tablets:

The entire game is detangling a mess of household shit one screen at a time. There's a small handful of unintuitive puzzles but every one comes with a hint page where you can erase the scribbles on a fake notepad to see an outline of what to do. Despite the hard ones, there's also some easy ones where you just find the cat sleeping in a box or drawer and pet it once, so those offset it.

This game is obviously styled towards women, but I love it as a guy & have hooked other guys on it. There's zero plot, which also means it isn't pozzed with politics on the sly like that unpacking game or the recent cat sims.

It's twenty bucks I think, and has two small-in-price DLC expansions. The first one, Cupboards & Drawers is kino and a must-buy, it adds alot of the good stuff, Seeing Stars is themed around more of the "There are 3-4 ways to sorts these objects" and less like organic jigsaws, so your mileage may vary. There are knock-off games of this, primarily on mobile platforms but I have no experience with them. This game on Steam is pure ludokino and runs great, with longterm appeal. Even if you blast thru every puzzle, a nice cross-section of them are repeatable in a randomized format as a "Daily Tidy" that's likeable, and I find myself repeating for badges/achievements, and Steams boots & closes lightning-fast to play this for 2 minutes a day before I take on longer games. You can also replay one-shot levels whenever you want with a smooth level select(which I do for Cupboards & Drawers) or a Shuffle play, picking previously beat levels at random, which I also do.

This is a strongly recommended game, especially for mild autists. On Steam sales it's often 10 bux or less and a great value for hours of replayability vs. dollars spent. Scrote-tested, femoid-approved!

 

[Sneaky khajiit]

I'm gonna definitely throw my hat in the arena for Little Witch in the Woods. It's an extremely enjoyable exploration and crafting game that is super low-key (i.e. there are very few hard deadlines). I'm usually kinda meh on crafting games, but this one hits right for some reason. The art is super cute and it has a cat friendship mechanic! It plays very well on the Steam Deck.

Winter Burrow is also a fun crafting/survival game where you play as a mouse in the woods, Toad and Frog-style. The story is a bit sad, but it's not going to ruin your day or anything. This game also has very loose deadlines, so you can enjoy exploring. My only real complaint is that it's prett1y short; I finished all currently-available content minus some of the furniture crafting in 18 hours. Still recommend it, though! I also was able to play this on the Steam Deck without issue, but the fonts and a little small and some details are pretty fine, so be aware.

 

[Xanax and Wine]

Some more cozy than others but it's my selection of things I play when I'm tired or sick and just wanna vibe.

Megaquarium - you build an aquarium, as in a zoo for aquatic animals. Got some good expansions too

Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar - one of the Harvest Moon remakes, imo the absolute best of the bunch. It looks and plays very well and doesn't feel like something they just shat out for a quick buck. If you're into Stardew maybe give it a glance

Two Point Museum - you build a museum

Horticular - you build a garden and animals move in based on the habitats you create

Locomoto - this one's maybe a bit too woke for some, you play as a little animal person (avoiding the word furry here) and drive a train around, doing quests and saving the environment. It feels a bit like train-autistic animal crossing

Prehistoric Kingdom - Planet Zoo but with dinosaurs (still Early Access)

Preserve - puzzle game revolving around building ecosystems

Lightyear Frontier - farming sim but you have a giant mech (still Early Access)

Against the Storm - rogue like city builder for when you need some danger in your cozy

Timberborn - beaver city builder

 

[Dr. Arinsu]

I put about 133 hours into Stardew. It's not an insane amount in the grand scheme of things, but it's enough time for me to be well acquainted with it. When I considered the game again recently I found I completely misremembered the amount of depth the characters had. (It's all pretty surface level).

Try playing with the Expanded Mod lol.

 

[Spooky all year]

I do and I'm always on the lookout for more VNs. Doesn't have to strictly be otome or romance-flavoured, I still have Science Adventure I need to get through one of these days.

I've mainly played Otomes and I bet you've already played some if not all of them, but the ones I particularly enjoyed, in no particular order are:

1. Hatoful Boyfriend
2. Hakuoki Edo Blossoms & Kyoto Winds
3. Cinders
4. Nameless - the one thing you must recall
5. The Men of Yoshiwara (Ohgiya and Kikuya)
6. Mystic Messenger (if you don't mind using your phone, this isn't on Steam)
7. Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons.

Try playing with the Expanded Mod lol.

Thanks for the recommendation, but I'm not looking to sink more hours into Stardew. I liked it for what it was, and I misremembered it as having a deeper story, but the story itself is kind of basic bitch (which is fine). I'm really not looking for more content though.

 

[PetiteFeet]

Cinders
The Men of Yoshiwara
Mystic Destinies: Serendipity of Aeons.

Thanks for the recommendations! Cinders is this one, yes?

 

[fist_of_khonshu]

Tomodachii Life on the 3DS. Something about checking in on it everyday and spending time attending to the needs of my Islanders makes me have some kind of joy.

I also have been building Hobbit Holes and Fairy Houses in Minecraft. I kind of miss the old Disney Fairies Pixie Hollow game from when I was a kid.