Summary
Many gamers love fast-paced, action-packed, and quite frankly stressful games, while others prefer those with relaxing elements.Cozy gameshave been one of the most popular gaming genres since 2020, when most gamers wanted an escape from the horrors of real life and delve into relaxing experiences like those offered in games likeAnimal Crossing.
The definition of a cozy game is broad, as each one can feature a number of elements. However, they normally include but are not limited tosimulations or farming. While sci-fi and cozy games don’t sound like they’d make a good pairing, they do, and there are many games out there to prove it.
Steam Reviews: Very Positive
Lost Nova
Lost during a vacation gone wrong, help Mia gather what she needs to fix her ship and get home. Use your trusty salvaging laser to harvest resources and earn currency for buying upgrades and unlocking new activities. Meet new friends and help each other get yourselves unlost.A COZY ADVENTURE: There’s no rush! With no time limits or enemies to worry about, you can take your time collecting resources, making friends with the locals, or spending a relaxing day fishing in the nearby lava pools.A CHANGING WORLD: See how the peoples and places of this world change based on your actions. Create a hub for your friends to gather. Rediscover old characters in new locations. Earn your wealth through farming, mining, fishing, or exploration. Use that wealth to revitalize the local pet store and buy a cat tree for your spectral cat. Your time here makes a difference.Explore at your own pace. Take your time finding what’s around every corner and behind every boulder. Craft the resources you gather into helpful upgrades for your equipment or exchange them for currency and buy items that will aid in your exploration.
Mia is lost during a vacation gone wrong and needs to gather resources to fix her ship and get home. Players can use her trusty salvaging laser to get the resources and earn currency for buying upgrades and unlocking activities.
Players can explore at their own pace inLost Nova. With no time limits or enemies to keep an eye out for, this game is as casual as it gets, permitting players to wind down by fishing in lava pools and make friends with the locals.
Using pottery, bartending, and impersonating people on the phone, players find themselves on a mission to take down a corporate conspiracy.The Red Strings Clubplays as a cyberpunk narrative experience and focuses on fate and happiness.
The narrative revolves around uncovering a mysterious corporate program that promises a blissful experience while debating what the meaning of happiness is and what lengths are permissible to get it. To gather the correct information and progress one’s agenda, players must read the customer’s moods and mix the perfect cocktail, thus manipulating their emotions.
Loddlenautisn’t just any old ocean clean-up game; it’s an immersive experience where players can find themselves recycling materials, befriending local creatures (otherwise known as Loddles), and exploring sunken corporate ruins.
The adorable Loddles are what make this game so cozy. Players must protect them from the polluted waters and feed them aquatic fruits while trying to make their planet habitable again. Depending on their diet, they will grow in different ways and develop unique traits.
Sableis an adventure RPG game where players guide Sable through her Gliding: a rite of passage that takes her across vast deserts and beautiful landscapes that have been capped by the remains of spaceships and ancient wonders.
Throughout the casual yet incredible gameplay, players won’t feel stressed by the danger of battle or survival, making this perfect for those who’d rather enjoy the art of cozy gaming. The journey is a captivating one that follows players as they complete tasks and explore the duneson a hoverbike.
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action
VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Actionis a booze em' up about waifus, technology, and post-dystopia life.In this world, corporations reign supreme, all human life is infected with nanomachines designed to oppress them, and the terrifying White Knights ensure that everyone obeys the laws.But, this is not about those people.You are a bartender at VA-11 HALL-A, affectionately nicknamed “Valhalla.” Although it is just a small bar downtown, it attracts the most fascinating people this side of dystopia. Keep your clients lubricated and you will be made privy to the most interesting stories.Learn about daily life in the cyberpunk dystopia of Glitch City. The game features a branching storyline where your decisions do not depend on traditional choices, but through the drinks you prepare. Visuals are inspired by old Japanese adventure games for the PC-98, with a modern touch for an otherworldly experience. Get to know your clients, their tastes, and prepare the drink that will change their lives.
Nothing screams coziness more than a visual novel.VA-11 Hall-Ais set in a world where human life is infected with nanomachines that are designed to oppress them. However, the player doesn’t need to worry about them. Instead, they play as a bartender in a small bar in downtown Glitch City that offers an entrancing storyline where the future does not depend on the decisions made but on the drinks served.
Not only is the game hard to put down, but the visuals are inspired by old Japanese adventure games for the PC-98, making for a truly unique gaming experience.
For those who lovecozy games likeHarvest Moon,Verdant Skiesallows gamers to lose themselves in the hand-painted world of Viridis Primus. Players must keep a close eye on the colony and ensure its success by making friends and pursuing romances with a diverse group of NPCs.
With the farming system, the goal is to create the perfect crop hybrid using the genetic slicing machine. Alternatively, days can be spent making pottery or painting. Players can gather resources, customize homes, and befriend colonists, which makes for a truly cozy experience.
Developed by Northway Games and published by Finji,I Was a Teenage Exocolonisttakes the player through life starting from ten years old and going through events that affect the colony until the age of twenty.
With adorable graphics and detailed storylines, players explore the wilderness, study, fall in love, discover creatures, and deal with the consequences of any actions they might make. Any choices made will directly affect the lives of the player, friends, and the fate of the colony. There might besome pressure in the gameplay, butI Was a Teenage Exocoloniststill falls into the cozy category of gaming.
While this is a game where dying from loss of oxygen is possible, there’s no fighting, and the consequences of most actions are minimal and casual. InThe Planet Crafter, players visit a hostileplanet and modify itso that it can become habitable for humans. Players can build bases and machines in order to keep the planet warm and create an atmosphere with enough oxygen to keep the inhabitants alive.
For fans looking for a more casual version ofSubnautica, this is definitely one to add to the cozy wishlist.
Slime Rancherfollows in the footsteps of Beatrix LeBeau, who is a young rancher setting off on a trip a thousand light years away from Earth on the ‘Far, Far Range.’
With new challenges every day, there’s always something new to uncoverwhile slime ranching. Players can collect colorful slimes, harvest resources, explore the untamed wilds, and grow crops. While it might not come across as a cozy game on the surface, players are sure to feel relaxed while farming (catching slime) and feeding fruit and veg to them.
Metascore: 80
Autonauts
Travel the universe colonising uninhabited planets with the sole goal of setting worlds in motion through the power of automation.Fresh from your spaceship you must harvest stick and stone and begin your colonisation efforts. Create rudimentary crafting items from blueprints and slowly build a number of workerbots to aid in your efforts. Teach and shape their artificial intelligence with a visual programming language, then instruct them to begin the formation of your colony. Marvel as a planet you’ve shaped becomes home to a civilisation of workerbots, happy to do your bidding!Expand further with the creation of colonists; beings that require your assistance to survive. Push your workerbots further by introducing fishing, cooking, housing, and tailoring and help the colonists into a state of transcendence.Key Features:Playful Programming:Teach your workerbots requisite steps to complete tasks by asking them to repeat actions utilising a visual programming language. Designed to be easy to learn but with added complexity there are numerous possibilities.Automated Automation:Build an army of bots to automate just about everything in your colony, teach them what to do and expand both their brains and task possibilities with numerous upgrades and options.Various Ventures:From gathering to building, cooking, fishing, tailoring, farming, animal husbandry and more - the world of Autonauts is vast with limitless opportunities to automate and colonise.Charming Creativity:The world of Autonauts pops to life with a low-poly art-style married with a consistent and bright colour palette adding depth and scale, creating a relaxing and attractive play space.Autonauts combines the very best of agriculture, simulation, crafting, building, production-line and resource management titles to create a brand new experience unlike any other. Create the automated world of your dreams! The future is now!
Autonautsis an automation game where the aim is to travel the universe and create settlements on uninhabited planets with the goal of setting worlds in motion through the power of automation. In it, players can build helpful worker bots and program them to do useful tasks like making tools and gathering resources.
As there are no time limits, no enemies, and no pressure, this is the perfect cozy game with coding twists that allow players to automate their own world in any way they want.
