2025 Shane’s Cozy Game Guide: All the Coziness You’ll Ever Need

One undeniable thing about our community: there is a strong contingent of Meeples and friends of Meeples who are ALL about the cozy games. In fact, our private Discord that is a feature of our Patreon has an entire channel devoted solely to Stardew Valley & Other Cozy Games. While there are plenty of players there whom have over 1,000 hours of play, and several others well on their way in the mid to high hundreds, sometimes you want a different flavor for a while.

Or at the same time.

Thanks to Concerned Ape and Stardew Valley there has been an absolute Renaissance in this style of games, and among the Assorted Meeples’ friends, followers, and own members, there’s no shortage of fans!

So pulling mostly on Shane’s extensive knowledge and thousands of hours of gameplay, and also from the experiences of trusted friends of the group, and sometimes a touch of filler info from Steam reviews and general consensus of other big time cozy game reviewers to bring you all the cozy games you could ever possibly need…though that certainly won’t stop Shane and others from continuing to pick up more in the future.

Stardew Valley

Look, not going to spend a lot of time here because it’s been 10+ years and everyone knows this game (or should). Stardew Valley stands alone because there isn’t going to be another Stardew Valley – it’s in a league of it’s own: ushering in a new era of cozy games, taking farm sims to a level Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons fans couldn’t have dreamed of, and creating one of the most re-playable games ever created.

And that was before so many massive free updates – including the recent stunning 1.6 update that nobody was expecting or saw coming. So Stardew stands alone for the few newcomers who have never been sucked into the endless cycles of deeper play that Stardew offers.

For the legions of Stardew fans looking for more and more coziness in their gaming library, here is my list for what follows based on not hundreds, but many thousands of hours of play.

A quick note: Not every cozy game has an obvious comparable game. I do my best to associate games that are truly similar in some way to other games on this list, or from games played by fellow cozy gamers I trust, to group together more similar games. Think of the Similar To as more of a “may also like” to get my point of view on many of these wonderful, wonderful games – whether truly unique or re-skins of classic tropes in the genre.

The S-Tier Cozy Game Picks

These are the games that are truly the elite of the elite among cozy games, and it’s unlikely you’re going to find a game you haven’t heard here. But I’ll reinforce: these are some of the absolute best cozy games out there and many of them provide literally HUNDREDS of potential hours of gameplay. Even those that are shorter – you’re talking about dozens and dozens of hours of immersive gameplay in each.

This is my Hall of Fame list of cozy games and I would easily recommend any of these to my friends who are obsessed with cozy games…and hoping to find their next obsession in the genre!

Coral Island

• Similar To: Stardew Valley
• 1-Sentence Summary: Clear next step in farm-sim games in the Stardew Valley mold with an incredible mix of Indonesian culture, a stunning number of NPCs, and an underwater world all its own
• Particular Strong Points: Amazing array of NPCs who all have very distinctive personalities, transformative changing seasons, quality of life improvements many other cozy games have copied, super unique underwater story (and world)

An S-Tier game that is as close to a clean clear successor to Stardew Valley as you get. Show up to Tropical Island, inherit a farm, meet a huge array of NPCs (over 80) that include some of the most adorable animals that you will ever want to befriend. Farm, mine, fish, craft, clean up pollution, explore, and uncover the mysteries of this wonderful community while becoming more and more a living part of it.

Coral Island, to me, is as close to a clear successor to Stardew Valley as it gets – keeping a lot of the feel and tone of the classic farm-sim while bringing a new style of graphics, adding outstanding new facets to the game, and giving you a world that is genuinely an absolute joy to explore!

I played the first Kickstarter release of the game and even in that pre-Alpha release, this was already one of the best cozy games out there. That was over two years ago and over 9 updates previous…so in others words a LONG way from the current 1.0 full release which is still seeing updates that are adding even more content throughout the entire game.

Coral Island was worth the hype – and it is a stunning cozy game that will no doubt be one of the best cozy games put out this decade: and I feel confident saying this. It’s clearly a work of passion from developers who understand cozy games, introduce a stunning array of great NPCs, and add wonderful cultural flavor and take on the traditional cozy game while paying homage to the classic options before them.

If there is a clear successor to Stardew Valley, then in my opinion it’s just an A+ game. And that’s even before they added the giants and mermaid kingdom.

Dinkum

Animal Crossing in Australia. It’s fantastic and fantastically addictive. The start is nothing special: there’s a city that is gray and dull without hope, and you’re offered a job by Nana License (as the Meeples love to refer to her) to go to the old homestead. The map is randomly generated – giving a very different island experience every time, and you explore an Outback that is more than happy to kill you if you’re a bit careless – especially when jumping in the water.

This is an incredibly addictive game with a solid multi-player setup that makes things extremely fun when you have a group on the same page. Play like a conventional farm-sim, create race courses for your vehicles, and build out a town that has the look and feel that you personally enjoy. Explore via jet sky, ski chopper, motorcycle, or hang glider – and beware of those aggressive, aggressive emus. They are NOT messing around!

Personally, Animal Crossing wasn’t quite enough for me – it wasn’t quite my style of cozy – but Dinkum is a game I can play for hundreds of hours and when you get rolling in it you get rolling. It has one of the highest replay-ability rates of any of the games on this list…and that’s REALLY saying something.

Fantastic game, VERY unique setting, best vehicles, and while some of the character development is clearly trope-based versus unique, the total package is a game that addicted a couple of Meeples not used to caring about cozy games – and that’s saying something!

Graveyard Keeper

• Similar To: Gleaner Heights, a much MUCH darker version of crafting games like Portia
• 1-Sentence Summary: Dark Ages crafting game full of ridiculously dark humor as you handle bodies to work your way up the farming and crafting tech trees.
• Particular Strong Points: Dark sense of humor, weekly time cycle means least time-based pressure ever (no calendar dates), outstanding crafting, and a really clever bit of story-telling. DLCs are all on point with the extra content.

This is an oldie, but a goodie, and it embraces very dark humor, the enjoyment of repetitive grinding done right that makes up so many sims, and some interesting symbolism as you step into the role unwittingly of a very symbolic figure yourself. Creating a fantastic blend of story, unique dark humor, workshop crafting, and farming, Graveyard Keeper holds up even after nearly a decade of release and is still one of my favorite cozy games out there.

Featuring Gerry a talking skull, a Communist Donkey, and a series of other villagers who seem to fall into an interestingly familiar set of tropes, the constant 7-day system as week goes into week means you can always play at your own pace since there are no season changes, no quests that must be done by an exact date, the longest you ever have to wait to proceed is 6 more days…and there’s always more work at the graveyard, the workshop, or the farm to be done!

Note: It has been noted that for some people this game is a bit too grindy and sometimes the dark humor is also just…dark. Enough so that I understand if it’s not for everyone.

But you are in a Medieval village during plague times as a graveyard keeper while the dead continue to pile up so….? That said, this is a game where although I still rank it as S-Tier as a standalone, the DLCs do a GREAT job of adding more content that fits into the world, manages the grind for those who find it a little much, and create an on-going cozy game experience you 100% control at your own pace.

Roots of Pacha

• Similar To: Stardew Valley
• 1-Sentence Summary: A prehistoric Stardew Valley
• Particular Strong Points: Taming/raising animals, racing, prehistoric setting, presenting a unique cozy gaming experience

Roots of Pacha was one of the first Kickstarters I ever backed and it turned into a remarkable cozy game with a really great and unique spin on the cozy game genre by creating a setting unlike any others but which makes perfect sense for a good game in this genre:

Basically Roots of Pacha is a farming and crafting sim set in the Stone Age. This is one of my favorite games in the genre that lets you do so many of the things you love in farm-sim and cozy games, but with a unique twist while adding its own little events or abilities that set it apart. Race Ostriches (or boars or antelope), raise crops, improve crops, court other cave people, Learn the ways of domesticating wild animals or fishing, donate food and resources to the village to help them not just survive but thrive, carve giant stone owl statues to troll Phil – it’s a really great game with good stuff going on.

You start with an all-purpose tool that doesn’t do anything well, but it does do a bit of everything. That sharpened stone dubbed the all purpose tool allows you to till soil, cut weeds, break wood and stone, do all the things you need to do to forage, clear, plant, and start making those important “idea” discoveries that often come from side quests talking to and inspiring others in the village.

Your tribe has moved and you are guided by friendly spirits, can tame everything from lions to ostriches to wooly mammoths, and work to discover the secrets of tools, agriculture, and more as you guide your tribe of people towards prosperity and safety in a Stone Age version of Stardew Valley that not only works, but works extremely well in carving its own identity out while remaining incredibly fun and addictive.

Make friends with the spirits of the land, meet new tribes, and go through the seasons in the Stone Age while being guided by fun nature spirits helping you to fulfill the Gaia Tree and get the full protection for your village. This all comes together and creates a fantastic cozy game that is truly one of the better and more interesting gems out there.

Easy recommendation for cozy game lovers looking for something familiar – yet yearning for a unique twist that pulls them back into the genre after getting tired of all-too-similar clones of the same equation.

Slime Rancher & Slime Rancher 2

• Similar To: Each Other? Verdant Skies
• 1-Sentence Summary: Sci Fi ranching game focusing on ranching slimes – captivity has never been so adorable and delightful.
• Particular Strong Points: Joy distilled into video game form, incredibly relaxing, world is interesting and feels like another world – not just an Earth clone, beautiful graphics, adorable AF

I’m putting these two together because the original Slime Rancher is definitely an S-Tier game…and is then even eclipsed (IMO) by the sequel. A very good way to describe these games: Pure joy distilled into a video game. If you ever played Bubble Bobble on the original NES, you understand. These games are all about exploring, catching, feeding, and creating new slimes on your ranch while collecting the “gems” they produce to upgrade your ranch.

This game is absolutely delightful and makes exploring the alien world a wild and exciting adventure. You don’t have to play one game to play the next. I’d say if you’re already on Slime Rancher 2, there’s not much reason to go back to the first, but if you have the first, you won’t be mad playing all the way through this delightful game before jumping to the improvements of the sequel.

These are incredible cozy games that just make you smile. I joke that “captivity has never looked so utterly delightful!” but if you’ve ever danced by a just fed slime, it’s hard to disagree.

Fields of Mistria

• Similar To: Stardew Valley, Littlewood, Sun Haven
• 1-Sentence Summary: Cute slightly more mystical Stardew Valley
• Particular Strong Points: Memorable NPCs, foraging actually matters, fun (instead of boring) museum/artifact system, mimics Stardew Valley feel as well as any other pixel cozy game

Fields of Mistria is a fantastic cozy game that caught the cozy gamers in our community by storm, and it had a lot of attention from cozy gaming YouTubers, as well. It took me a while to get this one – I would have been willing to give it an A grade just based on the stunning praise from three of our gamers whose opinions I trust.

Then I jumped in for just an hour or two taste. 12 hours later I’m writing this to convince myself that I got at least one productive thing done today. It is a fantastic game right in that S-Tier/A-Tier border in my opinion, and I’ve enjoyed it immensely. This pixel art game isn’t a Stardew clone – it has a very different art style, but it keeps a lot of the Stardew mechanics.

If a cozy game perfected X number of mechanics…why change them? They add a little magic, a skill tree, and some quality of life improvements that makes things like fishing much easier are added in. The characters are unique and not cheap re-hashes of classic tropes, and this game does something many great games who miss this top tier can’t: it captures that special magic, that extra something that the best games in this genre have.

It pulls you in, gets you exploring, and really gets you building up this town, your skills, and working to discover all the little cool odds and ends that make this game its own unique entry into the cozy game realm. The only potential drawback is that it may be unfinished, depending on when you are reading this. Two more major updates are planned for 2026 before a (presumed) additional update that takes this to 1.0.

That said, even with just what’s available – this is an S-tier game with a devoted team that assures players even after 1.0 there are plans for more, and that is incredibly exciting. You can still easily get 40-50 good hours of play as the game is now.

The A-Tier Cozy Games

Look, it hurts me to have to divide these from the S-Tier because every game here is stunningly good and an easy “No Regrets” buy for me, but not everything can be S-Tier just because the genre is exploding with incredible games. That said, someone who never played an S-Tier game on this list and started with these would still EASILY find hundreds and hundreds of fantastic gaming hours.

Just with Stardew Valley or any of the S-Tier games I’d easily recommend any game in this tier to any cozy gamer.

Sun Haven

• Similar To: Fae Farm, Stardew Valley, Coral Island
• 1-Sentence Summary: Full on fantasy-adventure world cozy game
• Particular Strong Points: Unique interesting biomes, use of magic for farming, varied world

Fantasy Adventure, magic, and combat meets strange characters and farming sim. Great game, definitely worth the pick up, especially on Steam sales. If you want a world of magical high fantasy, or always felt the desire to play as an angelic being, bird being, snake person, or other fantastical farming creature here is your game.

Magic plays a major part in this game and there are really cool ways that increasingly strong magic not only works with combat and adventure but to mass clearing space for fields or creating storm clouds that lazily go across your fields, bringing rain to all crops in their path. There are wonderfully unique characters, a story with some strong RPG vibes, and really beautiful and cool settings that are unlocked through the story to bring a new twist on familiar Sun Haven & farm-sim mechanics every time.

This definitely keeps the player engaged and exploring each new location with interest as new crops, characters, and dragons come into play.

If so much is wonderful, what keeps it from S-Tier?

In our private Discord ($1 per month is all it takes to get in as a Patreon supporter) I had a detailed discussion of this game and Sun Haven was very interesting. We both absolutely loved the game, but in the same way a game can be “greater than the sum of its parts” in our experience playing 100+ combined hours we find the opposite for Sun Haven.

There were so many parts that seemed S-tier in and of themselves, but it didn’t come together quite in a cohesive way. Each individual part was much greater than the entirety of the gaming experience with Sun Haven, which is why there are many S-Tier level pieces, but it doesn’t quite come together for a truly next level game and that disjointedness is what keeps it from being the same level as the games further up this list.

This is a brilliant game, creative, with a lot going on – but as different parts of the world open it can feel like 3 or 4 separate games kind of put in one package versus something cohesive that lets it all work together as one world.

But I still wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this game to someone looking for a bit of magic and RPG with their cozy game experience, and being able to magically call a thunderstorm to water crops – chef’s kiss.

Verdant Skies

• Similar To: Pretty unique, maybe closest to One Lonely Outpost
• 1-Sentence Summary: First of its kind cozy farm & crafting sim in space where the world absolutely shines as a truly alien setting.
• Particular Strong Points: Alien biomes feel alien, gene splicing, multiple commerce routes, best fishing game of any cozy game

Verdant Skies is a game that has managed to really fly under the radar of most cozy gamers, which surprises me because it’s one of my personal favorites and a game that even got a long video from YouTuber Dangerously Funny several years back.

Verdant Skies is a cozy game that is clearly the love project of an indie studio, and where there are areas where the game could improve (level of story, character depth, timing of the main story line, etc) there is so much that is S-Tier about this game and it is one of the most unique and interesting on this list and one of my personal favorites.

You start off with a less than sane start and are suddenly thrust into an alien environment where you gotta pay off a debt, figure out what can be cultivated and ranched, and help develop a new colony.

While the world is relatively small – it FEELS huge. Even more importantly, it does something very few cozy games set in space do: it feels alien. It feels new. The animals, the crops, the development – the world itself actually feels like a unique series of biomes being discovered and not just a cheap clone of Earth.

The mechanics are fitting. You learn how to splice genes, turn wild alien animals into tamed ranch animals, make goods ranging from animal goods and alien crops to paintings and exotically cooked dishes to satellite uplink to your corporate overlords. You get paid enough to upgrade your house, improve the colony, and in doing so and attract new colonists as you expand from one or two buildings into a fully functioning settlement.

This game also has by far and away my FAVORITE all-time fishing mechanic and I am frankly stunned that no other game has copied or replicated it. If you want a truly different and cozy game giving a unique experience I can’t recommend Verdant Skies enough.

Echoes of the Plum Grove

• Similar To: Gleaner Heights (ish?), Grimshire, Graveyard Keeper (in that it has dark themes though much more death in Plum Grove)
• 1-Sentence Summary: Colonial settlement where people are born, people die, the wrong forgeable can kill, and you must prep for hard winters in a charming community against a supernatural backdrop with Paper Mario graphics.
• Particular Strong Points: Unique cute graphics, unique setting, living world, well-done “survival & prep” game mechanics to make winters genuine challenges

Paper Mario graphics meets oddly dark themes in Salem Witch Trial era cozy game where if you don’t prepare for winter, or don’t read what type of mushroom you’re eating…you die. A very different and delightful take on the genre. Echoes of the Plum Grove is one of the hardest games on this list to develop a “Similar To” list for because it is one of the few that brings a distinctive vibe, feeling, and take on the cozy game genre the way few other games do.

While Echoes of Plum Grove isn’t horror genre like Dredge, there are dark themes with death, starvation, disease, ghosts, witches, and potentially a poison pie. Actions have consequences, sometimes fatal, and while the colonial paper art gives a cute unique feel, there are definitely dark themes here and winter itself can actually, truly, be a killer in a game that despite all that still works as a delightfully unique and different slice of the cozy pie.

Even as the town sometimes drops dead of cholera all around you.

Taking a rarely used Paper graphic aesthetic and setting it in colonial times, there’s a lot unique about this game. It makes the feeling of survival real in the game while still having a cozy feeling. 

And actions have consequences. Eat a poison mushroom? You get 30 seconds to live as you turn purple. Bake a poison pie? That person’s funeral is likely in the next day or two.

There’s a really interesting blend of ghostly mystery, survival dynasty, and cozy farming/crafting in this game and it’s really one of the most unique cozy games I’ve seen to date because of a genuine effort to bring some very new aspects to the genre with a game that is trailblazing in several ways.

Littlewood

• Similar To: Sun Haven, Fields of Mistria
• 1-Sentence Summary: Hero with amnesia rebuilding a brand new town after defeating the dark wizard in a cozy pixelated town builder.
• Particular Strong Points: Fun town management, great energy/time system, adorable use of pixel art

You saved the world then lost all memories. Welp, mine as well build a town. Old school pixel art meets one of the best time/energy balances in any game. Time is tied to your energy. It’s not night until you’re down to about 20% energy. That means if you need 40 minutes to perfect a section of town – you have it without getting rushed!

This also makes you utterly unconcerned with distances or traveling between special plains and biomes as the time is only attached to your energy – so you really can do whatever you want in a day or cover multiple chores in multiple locations without worry. Build houses, plant farms, go to dangerous biomes to get special materials, and attract more and more interesting characters to your ever customized town.

A great cozy feel good game that flew way too far under the radar for many considering how fun, relaxing, and amazing a game it is!

Kynseed

• Similar To: My Time at Portia, Echoes of Plum Grove,
• 1-Sentence Summary: Multi-generational cozy game game from original Fable team finally getting the mega updates to really flesh out a strange Alice in Wonderland fairy-tale type world for players.
• Particular Strong Points: Unique pixel art graphics, freedom of choice/action in an open world, can play multiple generations

Stunning beautiful game crossing fairy tale, fantasy, and cozy game as you not only play as you but also the generations that follow in a cozy game that is stunning and in-depth, and somehow often forgotten in the mix of new games – but shouldn’t be! The concept of this game has taken time to take root – and development has been slower than many would like, but this is a game that in its current form I can very much justify giving an A grade to.

You start out as one of two twins who were adopted by a kind farmer and you wake up to learn how to feed livestock, water crops, gather forage, and also learn there is a karma system and you can be helpful or an absolute menace…and there are consequences to choosing route two.

Meet villagers, learn about festivals, find quests, and plot your course. Want to farm and expand? Buy businesses in town to become the ultimate landlord? Try something else entirely? All of these are options. Explore the mysteries of the strange land and continue on with your next generation.

Maybe you’ll build the family reputation…or undue it completely. The options are many and only continue to grow!

Fae Farm

• Similar To: Sun Haven, Dinkum
• 1-Sentence Summary: Washed up on shore after a shipwreck you begin your new life on a local farm in a magical land in desperate need of a hero to provide healing.
• Particular Strong Points: Cute graphics, unique magical biospheres, energy orbs abound late in the day, great tool mechanic

You learn all the classics: farming, raising animals, crafting, mining, bug catching, and combat – and in this game’s case magic. One of the best features you’ll notice immediately is you never need to switch tools – you just need to hit the tool button. Whether pick axe, hoe, watering can, shovel, the right tool is automatically used so you can hack your way through weeds, wood, stone, and hoeing prepared farm land all by pushing the action button, no need to spool through your tools.

As your farm grows and you meet people and explore you find a bit of magic within you, start finding the causes behind many of the magical ailments strangling the nice little town, and work your way through them making new strange friends and fully unlocking the joys of this magical world.

A very good cozy game where the first 15-20 hours are addicting until you settle into a still great routine, taking your time to craft and figure out how to speed up the process of getting what you likely need for the next quest to open up a new section.

While the auto tool switching is amazing – there are some other kinks that keep it out of the S-Tier. There just is too much of a limit on how many items you can sell in a day, and you need to change the settings to put the game on “double day length” to really get time to do what you need. Also some people have reported cut scenes not showing – just hearing sounds and seeing a black screen, which is no bueno when you’re missing out those important transition points.

Still, a very solid A-level cozy game.

B-Tier Cozy Game List

For me, any game with a B grade is still amazing, still offering dozens of hours or more of great addictive gameplay. These are all games I would still highly recommend to any cozy gamer with confidence knowing that the games deliver more than enough to get a passing grade and deliver quality gameplay and entertainment, even if they don’t quite reach that “epic” feeling.

One Lonely Outpost

• Similar To: Verdant Skies, Potion Permit
• 1-Sentence Summary: With a robo-cat as your only companion you fight to terraform an empty planet into a livable colony space.
• Particular Strong Points: Sci-Fi setting, sense of loneliness hits home in early game, resource collection is generally fun

Land on planet with your robot cat (that sound you heard was our favorite cat lady Lexi hitting the buy button), research, plant, and create the basic infrastructure to attract more colonists while exploring to find the secrets of this planet. Unlock and explore more regions, find plants, grow crops, produce oxygen, and open up a world that turns out has more mysteries than your initial little patch of ground hinted at.

The pacing can be a bit slow and the sprinkler range/shape is baffling to me to say the least, but despite a few questionable decisions this is a solid game that gives a good dose of what you’re looking for in the conventional cozy game but with a really solid sci-fi setting wrapped around it.

Potion Permit

• Similar To: One Lonely Outpost
• 1-Sentence Summary: Use your alchemical knowledge to create cures, heal the sick, and create more and better potions as you gather local ingredients and combat a hostile environment
• Particular Strong Points: Creativity with potion creation, cool past story to uncover, a small world that still has depth

Be an alchemist uncovering a mystery, clearing a predecessor’s name, and foraging away for ingredients to cure townspeople, open new areas to explore, create medicines, and figure out what REALLY happened decades before. Solid cozy game with some fun quirks as you are the alchemist/doctor in a town with a stunning array of illnesses.

While enjoyable there are parts of the game that can drag a bit, and that dog can be as infuriating as he is cute, but the game pulled me for over 40 hours and I still intend to go back and finish, which tells me the negatives are far outweighed by the positives and this is a game that earns a solid B grade via recommendation.

Travellers Rest

• Similar To: Chef RPG, One Lonely Outpost, Dave the Diver
• 1-Sentence Summary: Run a Medieval Tavern building it from the ground up including farming, building, crafting, cooking, and resource gathering to build up everything by hand.
• Particular Strong Points: Nail the repetitive fun cycle, intuitive systems within a challenging game, gratifying feeling to watch the growth.

Great inn management game that multiple members of our Patreon are already enjoying. I need to catch back up as I haven’t played in about a year, but I enjoyed the heck out of the game then, I enjoyed it even earlier 3 years ago when it was still filling out, and the recent updates only keep making the game better.

Admittedly this is one that many will find in the A-tier and I can see that. The restaurant management side of things often overwhelms me a bit at higher levels, which knocks it down a touch for me – but that’s not going to be an issue for everyone and if every update continues to add more quality gameplay then it’s going to be hard to argue with moving this game further up the list.

Rune Factory 5

• Similar To: Other Rune Factory Games, My Time at Portia, My Time at Sandrock
• 1-Sentence Summary: Japanese RPG meets Farm Sim – the newest edition!
• Particular Strong Points: Combat feels particularly active/alive, keeps classic tropes/systems alive while improving on them from past games,

Some people love RPGs in their cozy games (I am one of these people) some people see it as a little goes a long way. Rune Factory 5 is (not surprisingly) the 5th iteration in this series and builds off a lot of what the 4th game did well while upgrading graphics, gameplay, and further maturing classic stories and themes well-known to fans of the series.

If you liked the old ones, you’ll like this one, and if you haven’t played them, number 4 or this one are both a great place to jump into the series, especially via Steam.

No Place Like Home

• Similar To: Pretty unique – maybe cleaning simulators or terraforming games like Planet Crafter
• 1-Sentence Summary: Cleaning up the entire world with a super vacuum – which is nothing but a planet wide trash heap upon your return.
• Particular Strong Points: Multi-purpose cleaning tool is very easy to use, extremely refreshing sound, combat simple to figure out

A heavily underrated cozy game that is strangely soothing as you clean up a crazy abandoned Earth that is trashed. They fixed the graphics bug (if you have issues with fuzziness you can fix that in settings) and you clear the way for farming, cooking, and raising robo livestock. Farming allows cooking which can give some incredible bonuses, including one dish that allows you to shoot out kamikaze chickens that rush and explode to clear out all trash within the explosion radius.

And those kamikaze chickens might be later game – but it’s worth the wait. It just doesn’t get old.

Spirit of the Island

• Similar To: Animal Crossing, My Time at Portia,
• 1-Sentence Summary: Animal Crossing meets Stardew Valley with a focus on tourism and some pirates.
• Particular Strong Points: 24 hour days, rewards exploration, I AM THE COCONUT KING!

Animal crossing meets Stardew Valley clone. Cute, basic, but cool how you can transform the island and even visit others in an expanded world (beware the pirates). This is a game that really rewards extra exploration, which I appreciate, and although it’s a bit simple for some hard core grinders who like Graveyard Keeper or the My Time games, I enjoyed this one, and the way the views of the world changed based on what you built, cleared, and changed.

Check out Shane’s “I Am the Coconut King” video on YouTube to see a playthrough (note it was a pre-release version of the game).

The “Weird Ones”

I’m putting these here because this is for games that might be considered a B/C as far as being cozy games, but they are killer as RPGs, horror flicks, survival-based, or might be very cozy game adjacent – but clearly with a different slant to them. Honestly all of the games here I would list as S-Tier or A-Tier as actual games – but maybe not in the conventional cozy game sense which is why they need their own section.

Dredge

• Similar To: None – it’s pretty dang unique
• 1-Sentence Summary: Eldritch horror fishing cozy game.
• Particular Strong Points: Fishing game is fun and relaxing, horror elements are incredibly well done, paranoia abounds, most successful “horror-cozy” game mashup that shows it can be done

If this was rating games purely by how good they are, Dredge is a slam dunk for S-Tier. Since this is cozy game focused – it’s in the weird ones because to many people Eldritch Cosmic Horror, impending death, and cozy gaming don’t go together at all. But Dredge does it fantastically on all counts!

Things are creepy, the fish are great until they’re more like abominations…and things keep getting weirder. Don’t stay out too late or the surprises just get nastier and nastier but sometimes you need a night fish…so what are you going to do? Other than remember those wonderfully sunny days where fishing is fun, challenging, and you are Tetris-ing them in the hold to sell and upgrade your boat to be bigger, faster, and even better at fishing!

Amazing overall game and one of my favorites of the last few years.

Len’s Island

• Similar To: Medieval Dynasty
• 1-Sentence Summary: A world of islands demanding to be explored as you find, forage, and fight back the darkness.
• Particular Strong Points: Island exploring is fun, genuine sense of worry in combat (more than button mashing), exploring caves and underground areas is tense, fun building out massive home mansion

I am a huge fan of Len’s Island and for me personally it is an S-Tier cozy game, but it is so different and odd from many others, that I could see it being considered more survival/crafting than anything else, and it’s unique enough in graphics and gameplay I just feel like “the odd ones” is the right place for it because this is a very different game.

You learn to surf the rapids and the currents, what islands you can find and which you can’t, exploring beaches, islands infested with shadows, and caves that promise secrets…and danger…but also great rewards to those willing to venture into the dangerous dark territory.

This isn’t a game with fully mapped out NPCs like in the conventional sense, or full RPG shops. The towns are almost a bare minimum of things to get to progress your journey “out there.” The graphics, the feel, the style is so unique and delivers a gaming experience that might not be conventional cozy or village builder, but it delivers a unique gaming experience with many of these elements as you go on an adventure that feels like it’s truly your story in a world hiding so much of what has passed.

Medieval Dynasty

• Similar To: Len’s Island,
• 1-Sentence Summary: Challenging & addictive survival sim game where you start as a refugee and aim to build an entire village that brings prosperity and security to your line.
• Particular Strong Points: Multi-generational (if you don’t die too soon), world’s storytelling through showing and investigation not exposition dump, challenging – you earn every victory.

Medieval Dynasty is way more a survival game than a cozy game…and personally I’m okay with that. The way it tackles this though takes a lot of the mechanics and tropes of cozy games and instead puts them in an unforgiving Medieval world where the winters can freeze you, the wolves will try to eat you, and if you hear “Hey” you can turn around to take an arrow to the face and die because damn that bandit archer can make a shot (how my first game ended).

But here you are trying not only to survive, but build your house, create farms, hunt when you have enough weapons, upgrade houses, perhaps build protective walls, have a family, and then when you die – take over as your child to continue the work of taking your line from homeless peasant to prominent family and founders of a thriving village.

This is a game of challenge, of serious foraging, of construction that demands effort, and OH GOD A WILD BOAR….and I died. And my child’s too young to take over. Welp. Don’t build the next town by the wild boars.

If it’s for you, it will really be for you and awesomely addictive. If not, well that’s why it’s here instead of the A tier.

Strange Horticulture

• Similar To: No good comparisons (although some other games by this developer have similar styles)
• 1-Sentence Summary: Play as an alchemist and be good, evil, neutral, as insanity plays on around you when every decision and non-decision matters.
• Particular Strong Points: Every decision matters, great mystery, multiple endings, enthralling writing

Strange Horticulture is a short game – and it is fully possible to complete a full playthrough in less than 10 hours – but that doesn’t mean that you will have uncovered everything there is to find – far from it. There are multiple endings, multiple ways the story can go, and these are shaped by what you find, what you miss, and what decisions you make.

Fun and engrossing game…and I must admit I really regret not poisoning the asshat on my good playthrough. You’ll know when you meet him.

Chef RPG

• Similar To: Travellers Rest, Sun Haven
• 1-Sentence Summary: Show up to a town that’s seen better times and hunt, fish, forage, cook, and help out to build up an incredible restaurant that helps rejuvenate the ailing town
• Particular Strong Points: Very cyberpunk feel, multiple routes to customize your restaurant/skills, fun local world dynamic

The main reason this is here is simple: I’ve played about 5 hours and really enjoy it – but have not had the time/schedule to give it the deep dive it deserves so I don’t know yet how much this game holds up. I’m absolutely in love with the beginning, though worried about how I’ll fare once the larger management sequence comes in. The days seem to fly by, so we’ll see how the balance holds up – but I am curious myself where it will end up in the grading system once I have 20+ hours poured into it.

Rune Factory 4 Special

• Similar To: My Time at Portia, My Time at Sandrock, Story of Seasons, Rune Factory 5
• 1-Sentence Summary: Play as an amnesiac in a fantasy RPG where farming matters a lot
• Particular Strong Points: Good combat, good explanation of farming importance, fun mechanics

This was a solid port to steam and is a great anime-based RPG with some serious farming mechanics. I’ve put in dozens of hours in this game growing the crops, cooking, upgrading weapons, figuring out the systems, and exploring this fantasy world as we moved the story along.

I’ve enjoyed RF4 immensely and it’s a great place to get started into the Rune Factory series, and was recommended as a better entry point than 3 to me by one of our Patrons. This was before 5 came out, and I have no regret pouring dozens of hours into this great and charming game and it still slaps.

Speaking of RPGs crossing with Farm-Sims, a cross-over of genres that I simply adore, here two of my favorite games of recent years:

My Time at Portia

• Similar To: My Time at Sandrock, Rune Factory, Stardew Valley
• 1-Sentence Summary: Open world three dimensional successor to Stardew Valley in post apocalyptic world with crafting/workshop building as the main focus.
• Particular Strong Points: Great NPCs, strong story, vivid world, awesome upscaling of workshop/crafting throughout the game, addictively satisfying mining system

This is a game I’ve gotten hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of, and it’s satisfying on so many levels. You show up to a new land by boat, find your father’s long abandoned workshop, and step into his shoes and more as you craft, build, fulfill contracts, upgrade your home and other machines, mine, explore forbidden territories, and enjoy an incredible game full of NPCs, an awesome world, a great RPG, all in one of the best cozy crafting games out there.

S-Tier game in my estimation – the big question is do you like a cozy game that also has that very RPG focused main story line?

My Time at Sandrock

• Similar To: My Time at Portia, Rune Factory, Stardew Valley
• 1-Sentence Summary: Sequel to My Time at Portia, help a dying desert town return to relevance and glory by building a premier workshop and uncovering and foiling a nefarious plot.
• Particular Strong Points: Several quality of life improvements over Portia, good RPG story, brings desert world to life

Very much like MyTime at Portia, the next game in the My Time series is My Time at Sandrock, which takes place in the same world and although a sequel it stands alone as a great game (though you may miss some of the great throwbacks or jokes about Portia). Here you have a very RPG/story focused game that once again has crafting in lieu of farming (for the most part), but I love the foraging, scavenging, crafting, and building aspects that are taken to another level here in part because cutting down trees – that’s an angry fine.

This is another game I sank almost 200 hours in playing to completion, and to once again create a cozy post apocalypse RPG that makes the world a main character yet still has all the cozy feels – that’s really impressive.

Gleaner Heights

• Similar To: Echoes at Plum Grove
• 1-Sentence Summary: Dark farm sim meets Twin Peaks in pixel art SNES-style throwback
• Particular Strong Points: Unique setting, dark storytelling, choices matter, incredible pixelated graphics considering SNES style

Gleaner Heights – Super interesting game. Not traditional cozy but imagine SNES game where Twin Peaks meets Farming Sim where everyone there has a serious secret meets why is there a cave of killer robots in the woods and you have Gleaner Heights. It is unique. It’s #18 on this old article on the Assorted Meeples Blog (Link: https://assortedmeeples.com/21-best-games-like-stardew-valley) that’s still worth a glance if you want more in-depth information on some of these games.

The sequel has also been released – and I’ve very curious to see what that brings to the table, as well.

Sakuna of Rice and Ruin

• Similar To: You got me on this question
• 1-Sentence Summary: Plant and improve rice to bond, strengthen your heroes, and aid a young goddess who needs to learn valuable lessons to overcome the obstacles ahead
• Particular Strong Points: Unique game combining several game genres, great controller mapping

Look I’m gonna be honest with this one: I don’t know how to describe this game. Arcade fighter, RPG, and cut scenes of anime with cozy game sprinkled over it? It will find it’s audiences – but it isn’t what I would consider conventional cozy game at all. Still – solid choice, entertaining gameplay and if you like a wide variety of games and just want something a touch different – you can find that here.

IMPORTANT: This game requires a controller. It has sections which are very arcade battler – so if you tend to prefer keyboard and Steam games, it’s important to know that before considering a purchase.

Eastward

• Similar To: Green Project?
• 1-Sentence Summary: Cozy game in the Eastward universe – without the miasma and heartbreak.
• Particular Strong Points: Beloved characters (for players of the original game), more in a strange post-apoc world, solid understanding of cozy game mechanics, soundtrack slaps

Eastward is not a cozy game. Except now it has a DLC that takes away the post apocalyptic fighting and beautifully written but heart-breaking elements of the first game and puts that aside to take your favorite characters and put them in a more consistent grow, farm, harvest cycle that doesn’t involve all the world-ending stuff.

The normal game is one of my favorites that I’ve played in years and aside from being an incredible story with great writing that will bring tears to your eyes as it hits you in the feels, and the cozy game DLC version means you can enjoy the world, the killer soundtrack that absolutely slaps, and enjoy it in a more farming cozy sim way that is far more relaxing…and Miasma free.

C Rated Cozy Games

Before proceeding with the rest I do want to say this: I enjoy every game in this level and would recommend any one of them for the right player, at the right price on a sale, or even to anyone who just loves cozy games. They might not compete with the top games in the list – but all of these deliver experiences, moments, and a ton of enjoyment.

A C grade isn’t a damning grade by any extent – these are all very good playable games, but just are missing something (or things) that would otherwise catapult them up.

Monster Harvest

• Similar To: Pokemon, Verdant Skies
• 1-Sentence Summary: Head to see your crazy uncle and use special toxic waste to create mutated veggies, and mutated veggie-based livestock while investigating a shadowy corporation
• Particular Strong Points: The soundtrack is addictively banging, combat is enjoyable, simple but with depth

This is a C+/B- game for me that is right on that border, though the first 10 hours were unique and different enough that it felt like an A game in the beginning. Admittedly for me, it doesn’t keep delivering at that level, but that’s alright. This is a game that is a touch Rick & Morty, a touch Pokémon monster battle and breeding, and some classic farming/ranching cozy sim game all mixed into one interesting take from a solo dev.

It is a smaller world, and for someone who enjoys Pokémon or trained monster battle type games more than I do – there won’t be as much redundancy and the grade is likely higher. That said, despite some obvious limitations and flaws, it’s a fun game and if you catch it on a Steam Sale for $6 or less I’d say that’s a no-brainer for pulling the trigger.

Doraemon Story of Seasons

• Similar To: Story of Seasons Olive Town, Story of Seasons Mineral Town
• 1-Sentence Summary: Story of Seasons game but with Doraemon characters in a very picturesque other world.
• Particular Strong Points: Watercolor painting like graphics, plenty of references for Doraemon fans

I’ll be honest: I’m aware of Doraemon, but it’s not something I follow, it’s not an anime I’m familiar with. Because of that I just straight up won’t get the many many Doraemon references throughout this game, but that doesn’t change the fact that there was a lot here I was still able to very much enjoy – including the stunning graphics which are very unlike other Story of Seasons games.

For me, the art is incredible and the main selling point. It makes you feel like at times you are playing in a water color painting and it has the pluses of past Story of Seasons games with a smoother feeling – the world feels just a touch more. An hour of opening scenes though just to get to tutorial gameplay? Ugh. If you don’t follow Doraemon that was rough.

Really good thing for them the art is THAT gorgeous.

Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

• Similar To: Story of Seasons Mineral Town, Doraemon Story of Seasons
• 1-Sentence Summary: The best Story of Seasons (Harvest Moon) game in recent years, which might unfortunately show how this series has failed to keep up with the cozy game genre
• Particular Strong Points: One seed covering an entire plot is nice, picked up some quality of life improvements from other cozy games while still staying true to classic style

After a rough release, multiple updates with massive amounts of content over the years have helped to fill out the game and take care of many of the original criticisms, but not all of them. Still, among any recent Story of Seasons of games or compared to the original Harvest Moon games without the rose colored nostalgia glasses, the Pioneers of Olive Town entry is the best of the normal Story of Seasons games.

If you want to see the most recent series, it can be worth a look BUT I do believe they have fallen behind when it comes to cozy games and what players expect while keeping premium prices for the games. Considering how many great (superior) cozy games you can get for the price of this game – it’s hard to justify, IMO, which is a shame because I think there’s still potentially a place for them in the under $10 range – but it is time for a major overhaul.

Veil of Dust: A Homesteading Game

• Similar To: None – unique
• 1-Sentence Summary: Orphaned siblings on the frontier taking a long-shot attempt at survival growing the homestead to something special while discovering the magical secrets of the area.
• Particular Strong Points: True challenge especially early game, some interesting story points, two separate story paths

This is a really interesting game because it’s utterly different in many ways from other farm-sim cozy games I’ve played. This takes place on an actual homestead in Pioneer times. The Irish siblings lost their parents and are trying to make things work. Only the brother can go to town because the sister is part Fey – and so can wield and see magic and…well local folks don’t like that.

1/2 hard survival homesteading game (do yourself a favor and in settings lower the speed for when you’re gathering) and 1/2 interesting magic/frontier story, this game is brutal early game. It is extremely hard to be happy, full, and healthy. When you get to the point you can consistently provide food and high spirits, it’s a true accomplishment because as a gamer, few games make you earn it like that anymore.

You feel the pride as if you actually built a homestead from scratch because you have earned it. That said, there are quality of life and balance issues in the game that bug me, and there are times it’s easy to get bottlenecked while having to do one thing over and over to slowly build up to a better place. The worst imbalance that knocks it down?

The sudden resolution.

In my mind about 80% of the game sets you up for expectations of this massive in-depth plot, but it feels like you’re in just the first 10 or 20 percent – set up for a massive larger adventure that never forms. Maybe part of this is because of the choice to have a game route with the brother and one with the sister (a decision I like) however, it makes it feel like an A level build up for a rushed D ending because the budget ran out or something.

It’s abrupt, sudden, and I’m disappointed there isn’t more time – more of a stretch. And that is why a game with such potential falls to a lower C. Still worth a play especially if you can pick up on sale, but understand there’s going to be a very limited number of hours because of that rush to the end. This makes it one of the ultimate “What If’s” on this list, as well.

Harvest Island

• Similar To: Graveyard Keeper, Gleaner Heights, Dredge
• 1-Sentence Summary: It appears cozy on the surface but man there is some dark stuff going on in here!
• Particular Strong Points: Incredible use of RPG Maker, dev’s passion shines through the work, one of the best “cozy” options for people who like darker games

Harvest Island is one of those games that keeps getting updates, keeps on improving, and I’m very excited to see where it goes in the future! This isn’t going to be for the mainstream cozy game crowd but if you like dark themes and think the cozy game-creepy game mashups are fantastic then this is one you will enjoy.

While the RPG Maker engine is obvious, the dev makes good use of it to bring a sense of dread, a sense of urgency, and consequences to actions. A recent update suggests the game is being updated to Godot to allow for even more in the future, which could very well help it continue to climb on this list.

Cozy Grove

• Similar To: Animal Crossing,
• 1-Sentence Summary: Real time cozy game where the past is uncovered through helping ghost bears come to terms with themselves and rejuvenate the island in the process.
• Particular Strong Points: Ample content, cute characters, surprising depth of content for small island

Some people are going to love this game and want it much higher, and I don’t blame them. I’ll be the first to say that the first 10-15 hours or so are great – but then it gets super repetitive and at least for me the luster of bringing back bear spirits really loses its shine in a game designed to force you to come back day after day for months of repetitive tasks.

That’s right – there’s real time and seasons so you can be done with tasks with nothing you can do for another day. It goes between being so overwhelming and cluttered to sitting there twiddling your thumbs and that is not a great back and forth balance, IMO.

I Am Future Cozy Apocalypse Survival

• Similar To: My Time at Portia, My Time in Sandrock, One Lonely Outpost
• 1-Sentence Summary: You wake up alone on top of a skyscraper in an assumed post apocalyptic flooded world with a smart aleck AI that is somewhat helpful?
• Particular Strong Points: Unique setting, some interesting ideas, great background graphics that bring something extra to this world

I was really excited about this game and I want to like this game. There’s no denying it has aspects that are interesting or fascinating, but the early game tutorials are, simply put, a mess. It’s very possible to harvest resources early that lock you out of critical moments later during the tutorial sections of the game and that’s not only a problem, it’s bad game design.

There is some good stuff here, but being forced to pace early on hoping you’re not jumping ahead of tutorials is rather infuriating. If you can be patient and pace yourself through the first few days/nights then it may be worth diving in to explore but it is a rough bit to get through to the good stuff.

Green Project

• Similar To: One Lonely Outpost, No Place Like Home
• 1-Sentence Summary: Coming out of a deep cryogenic sleep you crash land on a planet to only realize it’s your own, deathly polluted, and you have only so much time to get things turning around before your rations run out
• Particular Strong Points: Good use of loneliness, different take on survival/cozy, satisfying game loop, good progression

This is a very niche game, and technically might be more survival than cozy, but if you get off to a good start there is a certain amount of coziness that comes with pushing back the pollution, growing some crops, cooking food, and building a more and more stable base from which to continue survive.

It’s an interesting game and puts a survival spin that I like – what if you’re just the only one…and you are cleaning up a planet for…no one? I have about 26 hours out of it and really enjoyed my time playing this game. There’s something very satisfying about slowly fighting off the sludge pollution.

This is a good game from independent devs and I got my money’s worth, but for many people this would be sort of a C+ level game.

Some Cozy Games to Avoid (In My Opinion)

This is hardly a comprehensive list – in part because there are so many great and amazing cozy games out there so why waste time with the bad ones? I would also argue there are so many good ones that you could even make the argument that you should really pick and choose C and D grades. But even those up there that are lower – they’re still worth the play. These…not so much.

Pixelshire

I’m not going to spend much time on this one, except to say that no matter how hyped you are for a good-looking new release with so much potential, always let some reviews come out first. Just type a search into YouTube, remember how upbeat most cozy game YouTubers are, and notice the dumpster fires.

Blue Oak Bridge

I wanted to love this game so bad, but nah fam. There are pluses: truly beautiful scenery and unique crops with properties like watering other crops around them, and a very magical fey/fairy type feel. But the negatives – including terrible harvest boxes, really annoying “bluh bluh bluh” voiceovers, and minimally responsive mechanics meant I couldn’t. I tried to put in more hours, but the controls in my experience are just so bad that you need to skip.

Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town

I loved the original. Like so many others, it was a Harvest Moon game that introduced me to the entire concept of farm sims in the early 2000s. But there are basically no improvements, games have improved over 20 years and even worse…so many edits to sanitize the re-release make it unplayable in my mind. Racing so you don’t get beat out to marrying your beau of choice? Don’t worry they took that original interesting mechanic out. 3 years to prove yourself? Also gone.

Winery became a bottled juice place, some character art’s redesigns were questionable: they sanitized so much that not even nostalgia can carry it, and you may barely get a nostalgic kick at all. Now it’s just sanitized to a glorified mobile game, and that’s a shame.

Another Farm Roguelike

Cheap cash grab. For 99 cents I found the basic title funny enough to give a shot just to see but nah, it’s priced that for a reason.

And One Weird Exception….

Can there be a low grade cozy game that I probably can’t recommend compared to what’s out there but I love all the same? Yeah, actually, there is one game that absolutely hits this chord and therefore holds a special place in my heart (and gaming library).

World’s Dawn

So World’s Dawn is an RPG Maker game that is clearly a passion project, a game made from love, and it does have some warts you would expect from a first time developer and some of the limitations from an RPG Maker game. It’s a game that is clearly made with passion from a first-time developer who knows and loves the cozy game space.

That said, it is rough and it shows through. Some of the NPCs are great – this is an area where I think the game shines, while a few others are a bit meh. I think sometimes the writing veers a bit too syrupy sweet and sentimental, and it shows in a lot of ways that this is a first attempt.

But all that said, while you might say this is a C- or D game because it is basic RPG Maker and there are a lot of warts – there’s a lot of that special “something” that good cozy games have and many bigger more polished games miss. Personally, I actually enjoyed this game quite a bit and got 40+ hours out of it.

Will I go back for a second run? No – I’ve done all there is to do and this game is what it is: a passion project by a first-timer with plenty of warts, BUT it’s also a game I got hours out of and the dev’s YouTube channel has multiple videos where he plays the game and talks about what he would do differently – which is very fascinating to go through.

Cozy Games on My Radar

I don’t know how you could possibly have room for even more games after this article, yet there are more cozy games I haven’t played (yet) and so there are a few that are actually in my library waiting to be played, or are coming out soon and have me excited.

Just a few of these include:

• Doloc Town
• Vampire Ranchers
• Welcome to Elderfield
• Grimshire
• Luma Island
• Moonstone Island
• Solar Punk
• Tales of Seikyu
• Witchbrook

And I’m sure somehow, some way, there will be even more in the future.

You wanted your ultimate cozy game guide? I’m not sure how it could be much more epic than this one. I hope you have found enough new potential options to cause your wallet to curse my name, and to assure hundreds of cozy gaming hours in your near future.

Shane Dayton

Proud to embrace the locally created moniker of “Corrupt Overlord” from one of the all time great Lords of Waterdeep runs, Shane is one member of the Assorted Meeples crew and will be hard at work creating awesome content for the website. He is a long-time player of board games, one time semi-professional poker player, and tends to run to the quirky or RPG side of things when it comes to playing video games. He loves tabletop roleplaying systems like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Werewolf, Fate, and others, and not only has been a player but has run games as DM for years. You can find his other work in publications like Level Skip or Hobby Lark.