Unpacking the Trend of Cozy Gaming

Earlier this year, on April 14th, YouTube featured a special logo (also known as a Yoodle) to celebrate the ‘cozy gaming community’.

I’ve never been much of a gamer, but I accidentally clicked on the Yoodle, and it led me to a series of videos reviewing so-called ‘cozy games.’ One of them, called Unpacking, caught my attention so much that I bought it right away and started playing. The game is simple: each level is set in a house or apartment, and your only task is to unpack moving boxes. You get to decide where everything goes, and the level is complete once every item is unpacked and placed in the correct room.

The same day, I downloaded another game: Townscaper. In this game, even less is going on than in Unpacking. Townscaper allows you to build your own city, but the only there are only two things you can do:

• Click somewhere on the empty map that you start with, which creates a house (or adds more stories to an existing one);
• And change the color of your buildings.

That’s it. There’s no quests to complete, no enemies to defeat. It reminds me of when I used to play Minecraft in creative mode, because I found survival mode too stressful.

So maybe when I say “I was never into gaming”, what I really mean is I was never into stressful gaming. My favorite game when I was little was Papa´s Freezeria, where you own an ice cream shop.

Papa’s Freezeria fits one of the criteria for a cozy game that this blog mentions: managing a restaurant. Other elements that often define cozy games, according to the writer, include:

• The game involves gardening, farming, or anything else with plants;
• The color scheme is pastel;
• Its protagonist is a cat or a bunny or any other cute animal;
• The gameplay is slow-paced and doesn’t demand reflexes;
• You’re managing a cafe or pretty much any other kind of shop.

Chances are, you can think of a game that ticks one of these boxes. But why is cozy gaming so popular right now? Why are so many of these games being released? People on r/IndieGaming seem to have found the answer. In 2020, when the pandemic hit, Animal Crossing exploded in popularity. People were spending more time at home, and in such a stressful time, the need for comforting games became much greater. However, game development takes time. When developers saw the success of Animal Crossing, they began working on similar projects, most of which are only now being released.

Personally, I think the rise of cozy gaming is a positive shift. It has made gaming more accessible and appealing to a broader, more diverse audience, and it has a positive impact on mental well-being. As mental health becomes more of a priority for many people, I believe cozy gaming will only continue to grow in popularity.