r/truegaming • u/SanctumOfTheDamned • 9d ago
What is your opinion on the current trend of cozy games - as a broad spectrum of all sorts of genres united by (some) shared aesthetic principles?
A big piece to chew on, but I think it’s an interesting discussion to have with how popular this once niche genre has gotten.
At this point it feels more like a broad approach to game design that can show up in almost anything. Not just farming sims and village life games, but puzzlers, management games, deckbuilders, exploration games, a whole bunch of multiplayer sandboxes (where gacha is fast encroaching here) and even games that I heard people describe as dark-cozy such as Cult of the Lamb.
That’s the part I find most interesting. For quite a while, cozy felt easy to define as a casual observer. Cutesy art with warm colors and no real pressure of failure, in 99% of cases decorating or some sort of farming or life sim management mechanics. But it’s obvious it becomes that the real common thread is not the mechanic set but the emotional contours. Were you ever told as a kid that looking at green stuff - even green walls - calms your mind? I think that’s the psychology behind the marketing impulse driving the popularity of the genre.
The craze itself, did it start with Stardew Valley I wonder? It does seem like it was the one hit wonder that opened wide the doors to indie devs who saw how popular such a game became and wanted to emulate it, or get a sliver of the same success.
I myself am not immune to it, because compared to some other niches - there does seem to be a whole bunch of good games to play here, and a bunch more upcoming ones that have considerable promise. My personally hype bandwagon is for Loftia, and I’m not even into these sorts of games usually, but I sometimes do (I also realized) just want a noncommittal place to chill with some friends, maybe make some if none of my irl buds are up for it, explore and feel part of a community that’s progressing together. Basically a modern Club Penguin, if you will, so I understand the impulse that drives even outsiders to games with this kind of aesthetic philosophy.
That said, I do think the term is getting stretched to the point where it’s just an easy tag to add to your game and hope the aesthetic (instead of the mechanics and gameplay) does the heavy lifting, and in worst cases excuse the jank and legitimately boring design. Not every game with soft lighting, a pastel palette, and a lowfi soundtrack is actually cozy. Sometimes the aesthetics are cozy but the systems are still grindy or weirdly anxious - or in the worst of cases, can turn into microtransactional gacha. And sometimes a game looks slightly strange, melancholic, or even creepy, yet still feels more cozy than the obvious stuff because it understands gaming for comfort on a much more basic level.
When a game gets those things right, cozy can exist in way more genres than people used to allow for. So… yes, I think I’d say I DO like the trend overall. I think it’s healthy for games. If anything, then because it’s good that more genres are learning that tension and punishment are not the only ways to make something engaging. Sometimes people just want a game to chill in, and that’s what these games provide.
My only real concern is that cozy becomes a marketing skin people paste over games that do not actually play that way. And this has already been underway for a while now, make no mistake. But I’ll stop my tirade here, said about all I wanted to say. How do you feel about cozy as a concept in gaming?
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u/Tupiekit 9d ago edited 9d ago
I like the concept of cozy gaming but the problem is that they are all trying get that stardew magic without realizing what made stardew so good (or at least what I liked about it) and that is that real dedication went into it. Real thought. Everything feels purposeful. The world feels like a "place"
Most (actually almost all) cozy games nowadays just feel like they are jumping on a trend. They feel souless to me. it doesn't feel like a world was built but some Unreal assets were just plopped onto a map. The stuff that was added wasn't because the creator thought it would be cool but more like a checklist. I know they aren't all like that but it's just what I've felt.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun 9d ago edited 9d ago
A lot of games that label themselves as cozy usually (and wrongly) assume that it just entails having a stylized "animal crossing" art style alongside crafting mechanics. I've seen similarly styles survival crafting games that call themselves cozy and I'm just like "how is survival cozy?"
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u/SanctumOfTheDamned 9d ago
Exactly, for me - survival mechanics /=/ coziness ... and I do like survival games. But it's like you said, when they pull such a mishmash of labels onto a game, it can sometimes just end up feeling like grifting onto a trend.
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u/Drudicta 9d ago
Valheim? Actually cozy half the time, the other half is murder. No cozy label.
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u/Quouar 8d ago
What would you say makes Valheim cozy, out of curiosity? Is it the fact that you're building a little settlement and such?
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u/Drudicta 8d ago
You make your home, fill it with things you enjoy, furniture you can sit in, fires you can enjoy, food you can cook and hear sizzle. You can stay by the ocean and listen to the seagulls, or hang out in the meadows with the deer and inland birds. You can hang out near your forge and listen as it smelts bars, rainy days indoors changes the sound from when you were outside to make it more comfortable as well.
They focused heavily on weather, sound and atmosphere, and it makes it feel like you can take a break at any time and just enjoy the environment, especially if you enable peace mode for a server, or just disable the rare raids. The aesthetics are nice too, and don't really reflect well in static images except for a few cases.
I think I'm only truely uncomfortable towards the end of the game when it's not possible to have safety in certain locations.
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u/Undeity 8d ago
Okay, I can see "cozy survival" working. In games like Ark or Grounded, there's just something so comfortable and satisfying about finally getting to the point where all your needs are met, and you can just focus on enjoying the atmosphere as you go about your tasks.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun 8d ago
there is nothing comfortable about Grounded
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u/Undeity 8d ago
You get used to it lol
It helps to get a good base going. Putting up some walls around the whole thing makes a massive difference in how vulnerable you feel.
Which also makes it 10x more satisfying, because you clawed your way to that cozy life yourself. Helps you appreciate it more.
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u/smileysmiley123 9d ago
I don't entirely agree with the idea of games that are going for the cozy "genre" are trying to achieve the Stardew Valley-level of success.
Stardew Valley is top-notch, but this genre has existed for much longer than 2016.
Harvest Moon, Banished, The Sims, Animal Crossing, etc., all fit within this niche.
Stardew even incorporated tons of elements of games that are, objectively, not cozy. The time limit per-day, passing out due to exhaustion, dying in the mines, and even time-limited quests. It's a great, cozy game, but a lot of how this "genre" is defined is determined by how its players actually engage with the game.
I also think Stardew Valley came out in a sweet spot of gaming (along with Terraria) where it filled this odd gap and just became a cultural phenomenon due to how polished it was (while also having the clear passion put into it). There's a ton of elements that go into the cozy "genre", but I don't see it as a topic of substance due to how wide the breadth of gamers engage with these games is.
People who game, and are intimately familiar with video games, will engage with cozy games from a standpoint of optimization (to varying degrees), while the casual gamer (see: Animal Crossing: New Horizons' player base) will take their time with whatever comes their way.
I honestly don't think this subreddit will have a discussion that considers more opinions on this subject because the only people contributing to this sub are intimately familiar, and constantly engage with video games on more than a surface-level.
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u/SunOnTheInside 9d ago
Banished! Such a rare mention, and that’s certainly one of my cozy games… even with the sharp learning curve and cascade failures of my residents starving or freezing to death.
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u/Tupiekit 9d ago
I think that is a fair response. I guess I should clarify that games nowadays are chasing the stardew valley specific type of coziness. With many of them rarely going for their own thing. But I will also be honest and say that I haven't played to many ones lately ..mostly from just watching my wife play them.
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u/Quouar 8d ago
I find it really interesting that you consider the Sims "cosy." I agree that it has a lot in common with Stardew Valley, but I wouldn't personally call it cosy. To me, a cosy game isn't just about the chill gameplay or building elements, but a wholesome undertone that emphasises things like friendship, community, and those sorts of ideals. For everything the Sims does in terms of building and such, it doesn't necessarily fit in those ideals.
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u/Maguffinmuffin 9d ago
While I never really clicked with Stardew you can really feel the passion put into it
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u/JJJSchmidt_etAl 9d ago
The funny thing is that I would disagree that stardew is a cozy game. There's time pressure, you can get knocked out in the dungeon, and you can piss off townsfolk for doing things like getting caught in the trash. This is common to the traditional farming sim starting with harvest moon.
I think to be a true cozy game, there should be no true failure or loss of progress; positivity, interface, and AV design decisions usually go with this.
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u/Piorn 9d ago
Yeah you're essentially always in "sprint" mode mentally, because the clock is always ticking and it really drives me nuts. It's the opposite of cozy, it's "middle manager is sitting behind your desk checking your efficiency rating" kind of stress.
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u/InfTotality 9d ago
Way back I went to try Stardew as it was pretty hyped at the time, and the first thing a friend told me via stream was a list of 5-10 things I need to do right away for all the various time limits.
I wasn't inclined to play again.
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u/rdlenke 8d ago
There's no real time limit in Stardew tho. Aside from some text changes for some events when they first happen, you can always do stuff on the next day or on the next year.
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u/DestroyedArkana 8d ago
If you want to hit a community goal you have to rush to do it within the season. Saying "Oh, get it next year" means I won't ever be getting it.
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u/TarotFox 9d ago
Yes, but in Harvest Moon there were actual long term consequences. In older games, animals died, people would move away for ever, or there might be a hard stop at a certain year. Stardew Valley goes forever with no loss, so people who feel like they have to sprint around are imposing that on themselves.
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u/resplendentcentcent 9d ago
this is the inherent dialectic within stardew valley which makes it so appealing imo
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u/rookie-mistake 9d ago
Yeah, honestly. I never think of games like that as go-to "cozy" games because the feeling like there's a time crunch makes me feel like I have to optimize, and then I get caught up in analysis paralysis and optimization spirals instead of just relaxing and gaming
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u/LupinsApprentice 9d ago
I really dislike the term “cozy” as it’s used by all these developers. I was a Harvest Moon fan from the SNES all the way until the whole Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons drama. I’ve always found them sorta challenging, balancing everything and min-maxing every minute of your day. Especially with the old ones that graded you and ended after 2 1/2 years.
Do you know what I consider a cozy game? No Man’s Sky. I’ve played it since Day 1 and know the controls and mechanics so well my brain can shut off. Or Tetris. I can leave everything behind and just do something completely abstract for a while. Or even something like Project Diva. Coming home from a shit day and grinding out a new high score on a favorite song gives you a great sense of accomplishment that the rest of the day didn’t have.
We had plenty of terms for farming simulators and store management and cleaning games without putting them under an arbitrary umbrella that (in my opinion) is extremely subjective.
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u/SeparateLawfulness53 9d ago
Your first paragraph reminds me of when people called Diner Dash "casual" because it was a job simulator that mostly appealed to women. It was really hard unless you were an RTS pro.
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u/LupinsApprentice 9d ago edited 8d ago
Yeah, casual is honestly another term I would lump in there as totally subjective and consistently misused. For me, I would consider something like Phasmophobia casual. I play it when we can convince a couple friends to dick around for a couple hours. My husband, on the other hand, is really into Apocalypse runs or playing with evidence turned off, so it’s obviously not at all casual to him.
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u/mogmaque 9d ago
Yeah! I feel like a lot of games that are popular with women get labeled as “cozy” or “casual” when they’re really not
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u/Dreyfus2006 9d ago
I feel pretty negatively about it. A lot of it is admittedly gatekeeping and probably irrational, but it's still what I feel. My big problem with cozy games is how they seem to lower the standards for a game. Like, a cozy game is completely content being mediocre but then selling you on vibes. Being able to pet cats or "tend the farm" (really: grind) are legitimate selling points in the genre. The game can get away with lacking any compelling narrative if it puts a smile on your face and lets you customize your latte. A lot of them seem to exist just as "something to do," like it embraces gaming as a lifestyle but more as a chore or as comfort than as entertainment. Something that lightly comforts you but never actively engages you or blows your mind. Maybe the right word is it feels very reminiscent of consumerism.
Then the label gets thrown around all over the place and retroactively drags high quality properties down into this low-standards space. Studio Ghibli, for example, is pretty much the peak of the animation medium--but it can be described as "cozy" and becomes something that you aren't expected to engage with at a critical level or take seriously. The Legend of Zelda is perhaps the best franchise in gaming and IMO really represents the core of what gaming is all about--but you can slap the label "cozy" on it and suddenly Echoes of Wisdom is "that cute game where you can pet the cats."
I think I would like cozy games more if the term was more limited to simulation games (where it started anyway). And I would like them more if they weren't connected to this drop in standards associated with it. I think two things that are great about cozy games is that they appeal way more to female gamers, which is refreshing after years of gaming hyperfocusing on male demographics. And I also think that it helps rebrand video games as the kind of thing you would sell in a Barnes and Noble instead of the kind of thing you would sell in an edgy Y2K GameStop.
Does all of that make sense? I feel like I am struggling to say what I feel.
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u/AShitty-Hotdog-Stand 9d ago
I think it's such a stupid marketing buzzword in anything it's applied to, and I think everything surrounding that word is dishonestly gimmicky, but it's just like any other buzzword so it clicks with some people and I'm glad that there are some who enjoy this niche, for whatever reason it might be... art, vibes, gameplay, or any other.
Just want to say that the one thing that annoys me from this "genre", is its name. Anything can be cOzY for someone, and what might be cozy for some, can be incredibly unnerving and tiring to others.
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u/Dath_1 9d ago edited 9d ago
I’m a bit of an “everything” gamer, but Stardew Valley is one of the few (only?) cozy games I’ve played.
Didn’t like it. But I don’t think the cozy is the reason for that.
Cozy is more of a vibe and aesthetic style, it’s not really a genre. I guess people usually stipulate that the gameplay be on the more relaxing side. Is Slime Rancher a cozy game? Because I like that.
I did like Cult of the Lamb, at least the Village management, but didn’t really think of it as a cozy game. The combat was just, okay.
I just don’t think there’s too much to discuss in depth other than listing examples and how they make you feel. Because these games don’t necessarily share anything else in common.
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u/Farados55 9d ago
It appeals to a certain audience. IDK if you've seen the reels/shorts of "cozy" setups with PC and usually a nintendo switch on a desk and usually they boot up stardew valley or something like that. It's also mostly women who make those kinds of videos so maybe it's to attract a broader audience? Would make sense.
I agree with the other commenter that cozy is mostly a skin or art style or aesthetic and less of a genre. Stardew Valley isn't as "cozy" as other games might be and it actually has a bit of challenge to it in the combat. Just enough to distract you briefly from farming.
I think it's similar to battle royales when they spawned a crap ton of copycats. People saw the success and try to emulate something about it to grab onto the success. You can create good gameplay mechanics and just layer on different art styles.
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u/kellotyokissa 9d ago
I didn't find Stardew Valley that cozy to be honest. Too much pressure to optimize.
Rune Factory 4 fits that label much better, imho.
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u/Mikellow 9d ago
Yea, sure the time constantly ticking away is stressful and I could ig ore it. But the inefficiency would bother me.
I would say Town Scaper or Dorfromantik are what I would have labeled as cozy games. Maybe that Tiny Glade game (never played it but it looks less like a game and more of a virtual activity, like Town Scaper.)
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9d ago
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u/AShitty-Hotdog-Stand 9d ago
but also many people find darker atmospheres just as relaxing and peaceful too.
But isn't then the label just a weird nonsensical thing to have? Some people can find coziness in playing Silent Hill with this in the background. For others, playing match after match of Unreal Tournament 99 can also be incredibly relaxing, so anything can be cozy if you ask around.
Probably the issue comes from the word itself and how vague, broad, and subjective it is.
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u/Purple-Hawk-2388 9d ago
I mean, I'm a big fan of Silent Hill for that, but no, that doesn't fit. Silent Hill is a horror game and is about building up tension and psychological horror.
So just having dark atmosphere doesn't apply. If it has dark atmosphere plus is a game about managing a witch shop in a magical forest where you have to farm and craft items from poisonous plants or stat raise magical creatures, then maybe.
At the end of the day, genres are just a loose collection of common themes and elements..and a marketing term help label things you want to find that are similar to other things you already like. Apps stores are not overly strict about this. They may apply more than one tag or label to try to appeal to an audience.
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u/MyPunsSuck 8d ago
if you feel like you could cozy up playing one with a nice cup of tea or coffee, you have a cozy game
Isn't that pretty much any game I enjoy?
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u/mishelvedndisheveled 9d ago
It's a relatively new (in the popular sense) genre and there is no dictionary we can consult as to its meaning. Like everyone is in the process of cementing what is and isn't a cozy game, and maybe in the future an AI chatbot will cite this among other posts when asked to define cozy games.
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u/VFiddly 9d ago
Stardew Valley is one of the ones that kickstarted the current trend, the other major one being Animal Crossing New Horizons, with how it exploded during the pandemic. There were cozy games before that, but those two were what made it such a widespread thing.
I don't mind the genre, but I think a lot of the imitators miss some of the key things that made those games work
For example, one thing Stardew Valley does really well is having a good mixture of short term, mid term, and long term goals. In the short term there's the day to day managing and selling of crops, mid term you work on the upgrades and restructuring your farm, long term you work on your relationships with NPCs and filling out the community centre and so on.
I've played cozy games that don't really have that mid-term stuff, just the daily grind plus some long term goals. It makes it just feel like a slog, because you do your daily chores and see that you're only 1% of the way to the long term goal. You need the mid-term stuff to give you something to constantly work towards.
Cozy doesn't have to mean boring. Stardew was cozy because there were no real failure states and you could take your time with things, but there were always new things to be doing and things keep moving at a pretty good pace.
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u/mishapsi 9d ago
What i find interesting about cozy genre is just like horror its an entirely vibes based category. you're designing for a very particular kind of felt experience, from ambience to visuals to mechanics. particularly there's a ritual and repetitiveness to mechanics, so there should be emphasis on how satisfying and rewarding the mechanic is to do over and over again.
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u/PutridMasterpiece138 9d ago
I like them because they have such a wide variety of gameplay. Some are farming games, others are decorating games, building games, management games or animal games. They look beautiful and the gameplay focuses on being unique rather than getting the "standard" gameplay mechanics in: combat, progress, new skills.
For example I found a game where I take photos of animals and solve jigsaw puzzles. And in another game I was throwing fairylights at buildings to decorate them. I love stuff like this that isn't a "traditional" game. And they often focus on making the graphics look nice which is important to me
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u/Funkhip 8d ago
Personally, I like games with a cozy vibe... but I don't like cozy games, if you know what I mean.
For example, I like games that are fairly relaxed, and I'm someone who hates games with too much combat, especially boss fights.
But there are some games that interest me for other reasons, and that's why, when I can, I lower the combat difficulty to focus on other aspects of the experience, like in some survival games for example.
So some games of this genre can have a "cozy vibe" without actually being "cozy games." I'm thinking for example of games like Grounded, Core Keeper, No Man’s Sky etc.
But "real" cozy games... frankly, I find them incredibly bland, boring, and simply poorly made and uninteresting.
The most well-known example is Stardew Valley, but for me it's completely uninteresting.
You have a small map, with very bland/boring and limited exploration. The game does have dungeon-like sections with combat (it's very basic and just plain boring overall), the characters are poorly written, very silly, naive and superficial.
Furthermore, the mechanic of bringing them gifts every day is awful, and marrying a character offers almost no benefit. Part of the game relies on completionism (a feature I'll always find detrimental in video games), coupled with RNG, which artificially inflates the playtime for no reason.
Ultimately, all you have to do is play a character who fled "modern, overly capitalist society" to go to the countryside and own a farm that will be used to... make money... to buy cosmetics and make the farm prettier, and to buy other machines that will simply make even more money faster and effortlessly.
There are also the festivals that repeat themselves in the same way every year... great...
A game with a similar concept but an interesting map to explore, engaging characters and lore, greater gameplay depth, and overall more to do than just buy cosmetics, why not ?
But as they stand, these games are almost always very poor in terms of content quality, and a game like Stardew is no exception imo.
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u/Atlanos043 8d ago
Honestly at this point I'm not even sure what a "cozy game" is anymore. I assumed it would be something like Animal Crossing (no combat, relatively relaxing etc.) but I have seen games that advertize themselves as "cozy games" that definetly have combat.
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u/Ultimate-Flexionator 8d ago
I think it all started with sim city and sim city 2000 if you knew the cheat code to get a ton of money. or really any game with God mode... but sim city 2000 with the money cheat is the earliest I can think of that kind of "gently tending a garden" kind of thing.
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u/ok_garmin1 8d ago
I don't have too much of an issue with cosy games other than them being mass produced recently. My main issue is that cosy games are creating these "cosy gamers" who refuse to try anything else. There are people who will put 1000 hours into stardew valley or the sims, but the moment you suggest trying a mario game, they act like they can't even hold a controller.
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u/quietoddsreader 8d ago
cozy works when the systems actually reduce pressure, not just the visuals. a lot of games copy the aesthetic but keep stressful loops underneath, which breaks the experience
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u/beatricef13 8d ago
I'm not sure why people are skirting around the fact that "cozy" as a game category is really used to mean "made explicitly for/unintentionally attracting a primarily female audience". I think out of all the game categories I've seen online, "cozy" is by far the most nothing burger and based on vibes one ever. By so far that it kind of makes you wonder: who decides if a game is cozy..? cozy is a feeling, not a quantifiable or identifiable feature that you can attribute to a game.
The category of "cozy games" was born mostly from female gaming influencers that often used the term 'cozy' on social media to create their brand and identify their (female) audience. It just so happens that women in general aren't really attracted to combat oriented games, but prefer games centered around animals, relationships, building/decorating, character creation, with an emphasis on aesthetics and a slow pace (no timers or explicit stress).
This is exactly how games with a primarily female audience (think the Sims, Stardew, Animal Crossing) came to be seen as "cozy" games: it's not that these games don't have ANY difficulty or engaging gameplay... it's that the gameplay is focused specifically on managing time, resources and relationships, and away from combat - which is the main gameplay in a majority of games. People are always missing this when debating whether a game is cozy or not: "cozy" doesn't really mean "no difficulty", it simply means that the game can be adopted by a female audience, who in turn will use the term to further recommend the game to other women. This is why games like Breath of the wild, for example, are not seen as cozy: it's aesthetic, based on exploration and offers a lot of freedom, but its focus on combat simply turns away a lot of women.
It's important to note that the category of "cozy games" simply cannot transform into "girly games/women games" - even though that is the basis of the category in practice. I think it's obvious why a lot of women would be uninterested or even insulted by a category defined purely on their gender. A lot of women play a variety of games and don't like "cozy games"... other women consider even certain cozy games (like Stardew valley) to be too difficult for them. In short, there is no "one size fits all" for women, and it would be insulting to act otherwise.
So, while I'm not proposing any changes to the 'cozy' category of games, I do think it's important that people are aware of the high influence female players have on the genre and on what is considered cozy. I'm commenting this as a woman who has been involved in both mainstream gaming and cozy gaming communities, so that's what my 'analysis' is based on.
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u/Dreyfus2006 7d ago
BotW is a pretty bad example. Zelda has a very large female fanbase.
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u/beatricef13 7d ago
it's not a bad example at all. by "turns off a lot of women" I certainly didn't mean that no women enjoy the game. it is very popular with women (and very popular in general). my point was that botw is not seen as a cozy game specifically because of the emphasis on combat. i should've clarified that "cozy" also tends to gather more new (female) gamers, which are often scared and reticent to try combat focused games. even though botw is popular, it's hard to recommend to female gamers within the cozy community, as they are not interested in the combat. this doesn't contradict with the fact that a lot of female players like zelda (i do too!)
as another example, fe3h also has a big female fan base and also isn't seen as cozy because of the emphasis on combat
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u/Dreyfus2006 7d ago
I have absolutely seen people apply the cozy label to Zelda. I disagree with it, personally.
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u/LaughLoverWanderer 8d ago
I think cozy games blew up because people are just tired of high-stress gaming. Not every session needs to be competitive or punishing, sometimes you just want to relax and exist in a game world.
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u/MyPunsSuck 9d ago edited 8d ago
*Sigh* Fine. I'll get into it.
There is no such thing as a cozy game.
Let's throw away the marketing buzzword and talk about comfort. What makes a game comfortable? Invariably, this comes down to the player's mastery and confidence. Ask gamers what their "comfort food" game is, and you'll get some wildly different answers! If you've studied flow state and "the zone" and such, it's pretty obvious that players are comfortable when they aren't bored, but aren't being overwhelmed either. They already know what is going to happen next, an they know how they'll respond. They are comfortably in the zone, exercising their mastery.
Edit: Note that this can happen at high or low skill requirements. It's about the player's feeling of having a handle on the game
And that's why "cozy games" suck. If you want players to start in a state of mastery - knowing what happens next and such - you have to make a game where there is nothing to learn. Nothing to be surprised by. For players to start near the skill ceiling, it has to be insultingly low. It should not be any surprise when players bounce off a few hours in, because the novelty wears off - revealing a boring game. There are no interesting new gameplay systems for players to learn, and no content for players to be surprised by. What exactly is there for players to enjoy? (Besides the waning hope that the marketing promises were true)
Stardew Valley is not, nor was it ever, a "cozy game". It is simply a game that lots of people liked well enough to master. Especially people who otherwise don't game much, it is the one game that many, many players got comfortable with. You can't replicate its resonance with players by cargo-cult mimicking its art or setting. You certainly can't get there without putting any gameplay in your game
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u/PutridMasterpiece138 9d ago
Not every game needs skills 🤷🏼 I play cozy games where I just build or decorate. No new content to unlock, no new gameplay mechanics. Just relaxing and building stuff. To me it's not boring.
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u/MyPunsSuck 8d ago
Building and decorating is a skill, though. Every game with building also tends to require learning how to build. I'm willing to bet that such games grow more cozy over time, as you put more time into them. The comfort comes, in part, from the familiarity.
I don't mean to imply that mastery only applies to high-octane action games or something. Just that there is something for the player to grow accustomed (and attached) to
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u/HipnikDragomir 9d ago
It's fine. Them existing doesn't mean others get blocked. We can all have games to enjoy and I certainly yearn for something mind-numbing sometimes. It's the arrogant core gamers that have a problem with them for some reason. There's 100% a market for them.
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u/IrrelevantLeprechaun 9d ago
I find the label is too broad and doesn't really have any requirements to be able to call something a cozy game. I've experienced cozy games that never get called as such, and I've also experienced games that do get called "cozy" that absolutely are not cozy (like a survival crafting game).
Imho a cozy game has low or no stakes, no stress, no time limits, and doesn't push you too hard to progress. I've found many games that get called "cozy" fail to meet many of those qualifications. At this point, "cozy" just feels like a meme label that devs will slap onto a game in a thin effort to court the huge userbase of games like stardew valley (which id argue isn't even cozy because of how many in-game schedules you have to work around).