Cozy games are there for you at the end of a long day or if you just need something relaxing to take your mind off the real world for a while, when something more demanding just won’t cut it. Stardew Valley’s launch and meteoric rise to popularity opened the gates for a flood of games, indie and otherwise, that prefer a laid-back approach to leisure, all with something unique to offer. Some give you a relaxing life on a farm, others scratch that desperate itch to clean something with power tools, and a few even let you bring color back to a drab world. We’ve picked out some of the best cozy games you can play, most of which are available on every modern platform.
Unpacking
There’s a lot to unpack in Unpacking, and not just literally. This lovely pixel art game seems like a calm puzzler on the surface. You unpack boxes and decide where someone’s belongings go in their house. You’re also unpacking their life in more ways than one. Clothes come and go, favorite toys and games get left behind, and relationships blossom and fall apart. Environmental details set the scene just as much as the actual homes and apartments. At one point, the golden glow of a summer’s evening in childhood gets replaced by the stark reality of life and a cold brick wall outside the window of your shabby apartment.
Part of what makes Unpacking so memorable is its hands-off approach to the story. The woman’s belongings and surroundings tell a tale of their own, but you subconsciously end up filling in the gaps with your own experiences and interpretations, putting a bit of your own life story into the game as you go.
You can get Unpacking on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Series X|S, and PC via Windows and Steam.
Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley is almost synonymous with cozy farm games now, and its unexpected success played a key role in launching the cozy movement. After the death of your grandfather, you move to Stardew Valley in the hopes of revitalizing his farm, making friends with the locals and building a new life – or partnering with the local megacorporation and turning the village into a distribution center.
Simple as it seems, adding a measure of choice in how you play a farm game was an important change for the genre, and it went further than just choosing between farmer and corporate servant. You could choose to specialize in crop types or manufacturing, build farms in unlikely places like on the beach, and even choose your own partner from every available candidate, something other farm games were reluctant to let you do until after Stardew.
Stardew Valley is available on all modern platforms, including mobile devices.
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town
Friends of Mineral Town perfected the structure that Stardew Valley and pretty much every modern farm game follows, and the remake from Marvelous and XSEED makes it even better.
You’ll move to the country and revive grandpa’s rundown farm, meet classic friends like Mary the librarian and Bob the builder handyman, and eventually become a fixture of the town with the partner of your choice – and you can actually choose this time, unlike in the original release. Soft reimagined graphics and a relocalized script from talented professionals Liz Bushouse and Derek Heemsbergen make this the definitive version of an all-time classic.
Friends of Mineral Town is available on console and PC. XSEED and Marvelous are also remaking the classic Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, the farm game that ages with you, set for release in summer 2023.
Disney Dreamlight Valley
A Disney life-sim sounds like a dream for followers of the famous mouse, but Disney Dreamlight Valley has more to offer than just saying hi to your favorite characters. You play as a sad adult who’s lost the joy of childhood, and as luck would have it, you wake up from a nap in a magical village with Merlin standing over you. The village suffered as time passed, too, and now your job is restoring it and helping build homes and lives for its residents – Mickey, Goofy, and Donald, but also more modern stars like Frozen’s Elsa, Moana, and, more recently, Mirabel from Encanto.
You spend your days doing the usual life-sim activities – building homes, designing gardens, and supporting the local shop – but a touch of Disney fantasy elevates it from being a simple copy. Talking a walk with WALL-E or cheering Goofy up by cooking his favorite meal, with a recipe you learned from Ratatoiulle’s Remy no less adds a splash of irresistible charm to the mundane activities of daily life.
You can play Dreamlight Valley on console and PC.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Any Animal Crossing will do if you have access to the hardware or other means of playing retro games, but New Horizons is the one that finally unleashed the series and gave you more control than ever over how you live your fictional life.
This time, you decide to follow Tom Nook to an island getaway and build your home and, eventually, a charming town. Your neighbors are a varied bunch of lighthearted dogs, sporty chickens, grumpy monkeys, and snobby crocodiles just waiting for the right person to come along and brighten their day (that’s you).
When you’re not socializing, you’re free to do whatever you want. Dig up fossils and donate them to the local owl-run museum. Fish for fun and profit. Help a pigeon open a coffee shop, design your dream home, and eventually, get the tools to remake the island’s land and waterways in your image. New Horizons also has DLC that significantly expands your home design options and lets you run a small interior design boutique.
New Horizons is a Nintendo Switch exclusive.
Spiritfarer
Developer ThunderLotus billed Spiritfarer as a cozy game long before it launched in 2020, but it’s not your usual “build a new life” simulator. It’s about dying and coming to terms with loss. You play as Stella, a guide for the dead who welcomes them aboard her ship, makes them comfortable by building their ideal homes and making their favorite meals, and eventually helps them reach the point where they’re ready to leave this world behind.
There’s no deadline, no pressure, and no rush to do anything, so if you just want to spend a few days fishing with your magical cat, that’s no problem. It is, as you’d expect, an emotional game with loss at its center, so bear that in mind before deciding to give it a try.
Spiritfarer is available on console and PC.
Sky: Children of the Light
Cozy typically doesn’t come to mind if someone mentions “online multiplayer game,” but Sky: Children of the Light from thatgame company and Journey creator Jenova Chen isn’t your typical online game. Instead of joining guilds, racking up elimination counts, or saving the world, you spend your time traveling through seven kingdoms of a magical realm, uncovering the mysteries of its beautiful world and learning to treat everything with compassion.
Since kindness is at Sky’s core, communication options are limited to emotion icons and a few other modes of speaking, so you don’t have to worry about someone else ruining your fun.
You can play Sky on PC, Switch, mobile devices, and PS5.
Chicory: A Colorful Tale
Like many indies and cozy games, Chicory: A Colorful Tale has something to say, but unlike most, it builds that message into every aspect of its story and world design. You’re the apprentice to a famous artist who accidentally gets hold of a magic paintbrush just in time to bring life and confidence back to the world.
Chicory puts a lighthearted spin on Zelda-style adventuring and uses color and creativity to solve every puzzle. The world is literally a blank slate for you to paint and style as you see fit, and at the end of the day, Chicory, the apprentice, and you learn that everyone has a creative side, even if they can’t see it themselves.
Chicory is available on Switch, PC, and PS4 and PS5.
New Pokemon Snap
New Pokemon Snap puts you in a small pod, sends you into the wilderness, and asks you to take pictures of Pokemon. That’s it. You don’t even have to move the pod, and while a rather chatty professor will reward you for taking exceptionally good pictures, you’re free to snap whatever you want. New Pokemon Snap’s environments are lavishly detailed, much more so than in the series’ mainline games, and the development team at Bandai Namco packed in countless unique interactions between Pokemon and their environment for you to uncover.
You might see clusters of Morelull glowing at night, watch a group of water Pokemon splash about and play with each other under a nearby waterfall, or almost forget to snap a shot when a friendly Pikachu waves at you.
New Pokemon Snap is another Switch exclusive.
Cozy Grove
You might think a haunted island is the ideal setting for a horror game, not a peaceful one, but in Spry Fox’s Cozy Grove, even the ghosts are warm and fuzzy. You’re a Spirit Scout visiting Cozy Grove, but the island and its inhabitants have lost most of their vigor. That’s where you come in.
Spend a half hour or so each day uncovering the island’s secrets and bringing peace to its ghostly residents, and then you’re free to do whatever you want – fish, decorate, or just have a good wander around the island.
Spry Fox said in the game’s Steam description that Animal Crossing inspired Cozy Grove’s design, and it’s even synched to real time, just like Nintendo’s cozy life-sim. The main story is designed to unfold at a natural pace over several months, balancing scripted quests with open-ended exploration intended to immerse you into the island and its (after)life.
Cozy Grove is playable on console and PC.
PowerWash Simulator
Maybe you know people who say cleaning is therapeutic, and PowerWash Simulator is here to prove it’s true. You run a small cleaning agency whose clients are a motley bunch, including your average businesspeople, owners of a UFO, and Heidegger from Final Fantasy 7. You have one goal: Clean up this town.
Scrub down flying saucers, storefronts, Lara Croft’s mansion, and anything that looks like it needs a good shine. PowerWash developed a passionate speedrunning community, but at its heart, it’s just about chilling out and scrubbing some dirt with a giant hose.
You can get PowerWash Simulator on consoles and PC.
Bear and Breakfast
Bear and Breakfast asks the important question “what if you were an impossibly cute bear running an inn in the woods?” and then lets you find out for yourself. Hank and his woodland pals are determined to restore their forest to its former glory, and to do that, they need money, and to get money, they need tourists.
They decide a comely shack in the woods would make a perfect bed and breakfast, so Hank sets to work building and renovating. You’re free to design the inn as you see fit, with lavish bathrooms, comfy beds, and whatever else you’d love to have in your own woodland retreat, but there’s a life outside the inn as well. Hank can help the local wildlife solve their problems, make friends, and even uncover a secret about their forest home
Bear and Breakfast is available on Switch and PC via Steam.
The Sims 4
The Sims is a more realistic take on cozy games than most of these, but the series’ low-pressure style and open-ended approach to letting you do almost anything makes it just as relaxing as any other. EA and Maxis let you start from scratch and create almost any scenario you can imagine, or you can pick from pre-defined stories if you need a helping hand.
Whether you want to be a nefarious superspy with a soft spot for fine dining or a hard-working botanist who loves video games, every aspect of life and relationships is under your control – even more so if you use mods. You can also just leave life behind and build your dream home thanks to The Sims’ extensively detailed building mode.
The Sims 4 is free-to-play on Xbox, PlayStation, and PC, though its expansions, such as Seasons and Cats and Dogs, are paid. EA frequently runs sales on these, so check your preferred digital storefront on occasion to see what deals you can get.
Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator
Potion Craft might just have perfected the item crafting subgenre, with an impeccable blend of features and tactile interaction. You run a potion shop, and in addition to dealing with customers, you gather ingredients, invent new recipes by trying any and every combination you can think of, and blend them by hand using a range of tools.
Every problem has multiple solutions, and you’re free to choose whatever path you want to take – even if it’s not exactly a nice one. Potion Craft is a low-key medieval sandbox, and developer Niceplay Games even used medieval manuscripts, margin art, and other pieces of art as inspiration for Potion Craft’s visual style and mixing methods.
Potion Craft is available on consoles and PC.
Katamari Damacy Reroll
What do you do when the stars leave their home in the night sky? You roll pencils, garbage scraps, the cat, and the old lady next door into a ball and launch it into space – at least, that’s what you do in Katamari Damacy Reroll. This quirky, unorthodox puzzle game puts you in the shoes of the Prince of the Cosmos, come down to Earth to fix the night sky problem by making Katamari, makeshift stars comprised of whatever you can bundle up into your ball.
The bigger your star gets, the more things you can absorb into it. You might roll through a downtown area and grab up nearby buildings for one star, or roll around collecting eggs to make a swan constellation while a jazzy song about the sky plays in the background. It’s strangely relaxing and sometimes just strange, and you can even team up with a friend and make stars together.
Katamari Damacy Reroll is available on consoles and PC.
Written by Josh Broadwell on behalf of GLHF
