Most cozy games out theretend to congregate in a rather specific set of genres like life sims and farming games and, appropriately, don’t often step out of that little comfort zone. It’s understandable, really. Have you seen the world outside of comfort zones? Seems hardly worth the effort, to be honest.
But sometimes, you’ll find some oddly cozy games in the most unlikely places. Who says your average Stardew Valley-like should get to have all the chill fun? There are plenty of comfy experiences to be had in nearly every video game genre, provided you know where to look.
What does it take to turn a typicalfast-paced retro shooterinto just an adorably soothing romp? It turns out all you need is a fresh coat of radically low-fi paint. Lovely Planet gives you the speedy movement of Doom with a charming minimalist aesthetic and, most importantly, infinite ammo.
Run, jump, and dodge your way through colorful environments and blocky enemies in this perfect turn-off-your-brain experience. The controls are snappy and responsive, the replayability is top tier, and you’ll never look at pastel colors the same way again.
Let’s be real, the idea of remembering your teen years is often the exact opposite of cozy. Oxenfree, an adventure game inspired by classic teen coming-of-age movies and shows, understands. It’s a thriller, and nothing claws at the nerves quite as viscerally as the memory of that time you asked your crush to prom via freestyle rap.
Oxenfree isn’t about all that. Thankfully, it’s about trying to survive a haunted island. But as decidedly un-cozy as that sounds, the game really brings satisfying vibes with artwork by former Disney animators and a dialog system where your choices affect relationships and potential endings. It can be unnerving, but you’ll enjoy every minute. Just don’t believe anyone who tells you that about high school.
Despite the name,Dungeons of Hinterberg is not a dungeon crawler. It’s more of a dungeon tourist simulator. In a world where magic is real and dangerous monster-filled caverns and ruins are popping up all around, the most realistic outcome would be that a local capitalist would turn the city into a tourist destination for thrill-seekers.
You play Luisa, a disillusioned lawyer looking for a fresh start. In this case, that involves slashing monsters. As you take on the various dungeons around the gorgeous mountain town of Hinterberg, you uncover more and more about what’s going on while also developing relationships with the locals. It’s sort of like Austrian Persona, just without the problematic age gap romances.
Pikmin accomplished at least two impossible tasks. First, it made a strategy game easily playable with a gamepad (on GameCube, no less). Second, it made a strategy game feel downright cozy and adorable, despite all the death. Granted, you can argue whether the Pikmin games count as strategy, which could kind of destroy the entire point here.
But it’s hard to deny that they’re definitely cozy. Controlling your player character and launching your little Pikmin at various enemies and obstacles provides for a truly satisfying puzzle-solving experience that anybody can enjoy. Just try not to think about how many of them just got eaten when you hurled them at that Bulborb.
It’s not often that a game with a title that makes it sound like a joke turns out to be a truly profound and validating experience. This game is called Boyfriend Dungeon. It’s a dungeon crawler where your weapons are all actually shapeshifting people. You canalso date the weapons. Again, the game is not a joke. You date the weapons in their human forms and they’re of many genders, to be clear, not just boyfriends.
You can date all of them or even none of them, simply content to have lots of friends. But between your daily trips to any given ‘dunj’, your interactions with them are the real meat of the game. Along with the deep discussions, the game is also sensitive to your needs, even asking if you’d rather not receive texts from your character’s mom. You know Mario would never be that considerate.
Cult of the Lamb is what happens when you inject concentrated essence of dread into an episode of My Little Pony. Despite the unending atrocities that take place in this roguelike management game, you’ll always fight the urge to hug every character you see, regardless of residual bloodstains. Just look at those character designs. Happy Tree Friends would be so proud.
You play as the cutest little lamb who runs the cutest little cult and regularly sacrifices the cutest little followers. But when you’re not keeping things ship shape in your cult, you go out fighting for resources and power, adorably and bloodily. The gameplay loop is satisfying between the management and combat, and you can even tell yourself you’re being a benevolent leader if it helps you rest your cute little lamb head down at night.
Odds are, when you try to make a stylized stealth game, either you get a super slick assassination title with fancy kills and bloodsprays that could rival a Jackson Pollock painting, or you get Sly Cooper. This video game version of a Saturday morning cartoon oozes charm and awakened a thousand furries to their true selves, a feat that few others but Disney’s Robin Hood can claim.
Sly 2: Band of Thieves is the second game in the series, and arguably the best jumping in point. While the first game is great, it’s more of a platformer and still has some rough edges, but they all got smoothed out here. Thieving around the world as the sneaky raccoon Sly, the tech-savvy turtle (with unfortunate sinuses) Bentley, and the bruiser hippo Murray is just so satisfying from the perfectly smooth gameplay to the Pink Panther-esque soundtrack.
It turns out there actually is one ethical use of capitalism: a video game mechanic. At first glance, Offworld Trading Company bears the look of a typical real-time strategy game, except instead of fighting with armies and nukes, you’re fighting with business, and you’ll probably be concerned with how quickly you take to it.
Make deals, sabotage your rivals, traverse the black market, do whatever you have to in order to come out on top. It’s a shockingly relaxing game with a satisfying groove to get into as you chase the ultimate goal of owning a majority stake in every company and forcing out the competition. It’s almost as if Monopoly was an RTS, just without a newfound fear of your grandma afterward.
Fashion games are long overdue for a little variety in the gameplay department, and Infinity Nikki delivers. An open world game where one of your main goals isfinding and creating new dresses? The only thing wilder would be if it also included a developer who worked on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Oh wait, guess what?
That’s right, Breath of the Wild planning leader Kentaro Tominaga is actually the director here, and while there’s combat, it’s basically just set dressing for all the exploration, platforming, activities, and Stylist Duels (yes, Stylist Duels) you’ll be doing. So if you wanted the vast freedom of those Zelda games without all that pesky sword stuff, here’s your new favorite game. Don’t worry, it’s free.
1One Finger Death Punch
Genre: Beat-Em-Up
Any game that can put you into a zen state while you’re playing is worth praise. That goes double for when there’s nothing zen about the subject matter. One Finger Death Punch has a simple premise: dudes come at you, hit the dudes. It’s a tried and true formula as old as inserting the coin here, but this game perfected it.
Press the left button, you hit the dudes on the left. Press the right button, boy oh boy you’ll never guess. That’s all you need. But the flashy animations (particularly impressive for stick figures) and effects make you feel like an absolute god of combat, and once you get into that groove, the real world is appropriately punched away.
