Why do cozy games suck?

You better watch the whole video before commenting 👿

i am also so tired of every cozy game having farming… like can we please have something else to do besides farm lol

On the topic of giving pikachu a bath, it's honestly astounding to me that the pokemon franchise doesn't have a line of cozy games centered around non-battling components of being a person in the pokemon world. Imagine a game where you're a pokemon professor's assistant and your job is a mix of helping feed, groom, and otherwise care for the hundreds of pokemon that the professor manages. The logistics of the nutritional requirements for a diverse range of pokemon would be a job all on it's own, though the anime just goes, "yea, all pokemon just eat berries and premade pokemon food, and they can eat human food just fine, too." as if none of them are carnivorous. Then there's grooming. Good luck figuring out how to "groom" the living trash and sludge pokemon, anything poisonous, or anything made of mostly fire or ice.

I’m really hoping that when Concerned Ape releases Haunted Chocolatier it can be another revolutionary semi-cozy game, this time without farming. A game where you can simply college things and make new chocolates for ghosts, while also going out and fighting if you want

I think "A Short Hike" should be the new standard for cozy games :) It's not tedious, it's charming, it's got risk (missing a jump and losing progress up the mountain) without being stressful. Games like Little Gator Game really scratch my itch for neo-Zelda gameplay without massive empty desert areas and generic mob battles. Just chill collectathon vibes in a condensed, focussed map.

As a person who tried getting their grandma to play animal crossing, it’s not as easy as I thought it would be, she gave up within 5 minutes and I had to remove her tent

Another thing I’ve noticed is that in most cozy games, they tend to be very interesting and full of life at the start, and then once you get better, it gets really dried out and more of a grind instead of staying fun

This all reminds me of when my friends and I were playing modded Minecraft. I was in charge of the farms and the food, and with the installed mods, there was a LOT of different food. Since varied food was important, and eating more types of food gave you benefits, my task was quite important. Despite this, I found it all really relaxing, without getting boring. I would explore to get new seeds I didn't have yet, expand and revise farming areas and experiment with ingredients. I had also set up an energy system that worked on burning excess food. My journey of just wanting to cook for my friends was very expansive, and allowed me to do so much more. And I still count this as a "cozy" experience, since there was nothing to stress me out, yet there still was a certain challenge in figuring everything out.

turnip boy commits tax evasion is one of my all time favorites! it’s short and sweet, with a main plot, and when you complete the game there’s a fun, endless thing you can do (i won’t spoil it).

I think the real problem with cozy games is that what one person finds cozy, another will find boring or bad, or even annoying. You can't really set out to make a "cozy" game because there are people out there who outright find the least cozy games as cozy (like the atmosphere of the first night hiding in a hole in Minecraft), or they enjoy the cozy aspects of non-cozy games (like base building in 7 Days to Die or something). I think sometimes you need something decidedly not-cozy to emphasize the cozy parts.

I think the biggest issue is most of these "cozy" games seem to confuse relaxing and calming with understimulating. These games tend to make you wait incredibly long periods of time and force you to play at the game's pace, not yours. They typically lack a large variety of activities to do to keep you engaged and usually lack expansive mechanics and typically rely on super basic gameplay loops that are nothing short of mind-numbing and downright stressful. From what I know, games like Stardew Valley avoid this by providing wide varieties of simple, but enjoyable activities and minorly puzzling elements that make you feel like you accomplished something without distracting from the relaxing elements the game is based around.

Thank you for talking about this!! My biggest gripe with "cozy games" is the toxic positivity surrounding them. You're never allowed to criticize a cozy game without facing a ton of backlash, no matter how justified your criticisms are. Now I will say, I think Palia absolutely sucks. For context, I played Palia for one week (ended the week today). It started out as a mildly interesting beta for a cozy-game-to-be, then swiftly turned into an anxiety-inducing, angering grind fest with little rewards and few things to do. The community aspect of the game (as it is an MMO) is, by far, the worst aspect of it. You are FORCED to play this game with strangers; the devs claim you can "play solo", but unless you want to get mass-reported by sweats after you mined a rock they wanted, you really cannot play by yourself. Resources are so limited it's almost impossible to play solo unless you want to waste HOURS farming resources, only to make minimal progress. Not only that, but the developers are not being transparent about their roadmap for the game's future, and they let their community run rampant, spreading nothing but toxic positivity (aka pure hatred). The Discord and Reddit for Palia are a toxic mess (not that I blame the devs for social media). When that toxicity crosses over into the game itself, then I have a problem. I seriously think this game would be better as a single-player game. I'm thinking of uninstalling it after this one week of playing it, which is a shame because I do like some of the NPCs; though, as some people have started to point out, the NPCs reinforce some really... iffy stereotypes. I think the coziest games let players just... play the game. I consider many Mario games to be "cozy" just because they're cute and fun and I can play at my own pace. I don't need to wait 3 days to harvest a super star in Super Mario Galaxy 2; I can just hop on and play at my pace. If I want to grind in a game, then I should be allowed to grind--that's what makes ACNH so fun (yay time-traveling!). Even Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom are "cozy" to me because I can do whatever I effing want to do at any time I want to do it!! I don't care if I have to sneak around monsters because I LIKE the challenge, but I can also just walk around and absorb the scenery and I can cook a bunch of stuff if I want to! Hell, even Skyrim is cozy to me. Basically, what I've taken from this video (and what I've taken from my own personal experience), is that when a game prioritizes "coziness" over the game itself, it simply will not work out. I love cozy games; I fell in love with ACNL and Tale of Two Towns back in the day, and even now I look back on those memories with fondness. But those games were truly cozy because they were enjoyable. Coziness should simply be an inherent trait of the game itself--NOT the priority.

I loved Unpacking. It was very different, only telling you about your character’s life through the things they have, showing the nonexistent comparability with the coffee guy since you can barely fit your own things in his flat etc. It’s cosy and not too long, and tells a very different story to the typical farming sim

My favorite Cozy Game is sleeping under a big blanket

For me the lack of interesting characters or character development in so many "cosy" games is a big enjoyment killer. After getting mad with Story of Seasons villagers for only ever saying one of two things, I played Hades (not a cosy game perhaps but definitely a masterpiece) for the first time this year and was blown away by just how much well written dialogue there is. After that it was hard to go back to SoS with the same character interactions day after day after day. I'm now having a wonderfully cosy experience playing Divinity Original Sin II on Switch, probably not a cosy game in the traditional sense but the story and the characters and your interactions with them are so very good, and I find the turn based combat to be quite mentally stimulating without being stressful!

One of my favorite cozy games was Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar and I’ve been chasing that experience ever since. It didn’t have a super interesting story (i dont remember if it did have a story at all), but the farming had a REASON. You farmed crops so you could make products to sell at the weekly bazaar, you raised money to upgrade your machinery, you upgraded your machinery to make better products, you sold products to upgrade your stand to attract more customers…. UGH IT WAS SO SATISFYING. Ringing the little bell to have people come over and having conversations with the customers to persuade them to buy your stuff or just gain a better reputation. Chef’s kiss. I also love the cooking aspect of harvest moon, where you gradually discover recipes and the more you cook something the better you get at it, plus better quality ingredients. Having cooking competitions every once in a while gave you a reason to find some recipe to get really frickin’ good at. And I loved when you could find recipes by rummaging around people’s houses. It’s a shame that Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons isn’t really as good anymore. (ALSO i loved some of the rune factory games as well, cuz it had the cozy aspects of harvest moon but plus fantasy and combat. Being able to tame monsters and bring them to your farm was everything I’ve ever wanted. A rune factory game with a shop mechanic like Grand Bazaar would be my dream.)

I hadn't heard of the term "cozy game" before, but I like it. I wish more big games emphasized these sorts of mechanics. Take Skyrim for example; I love the epic adventure in a fantastic world, but the thing that really keeps me coming back to the game is the feeling of traversing the beautiful wilderness to my next destination, where I can warm up next to the fire at a tavern. A few small cozy mechanics here and there would go a long way toward making the world feel more alive.

The only thing that puts me off of new horizons is how tedious everything is, and the low quality of life. When I was very first starting, this was not an issue, but as I continued, even crafting was so unbearable I no longer wanted to play. I love the creative aspect, but the incredibly slow pace actually stressed me out more than being relaxing.

"A short hike" is a great 1-2 hour cozy game where climbing to the top of a mountain gives you a good sense of accomplishment

I've been looking forward to the "Little witch in the woods" game for a good while now, and I'm very excited for the full release. Love the art style and cozy vibes <3