u/SanctumOfTheDamned

To help you help me, I'll just give you a quick glimpse into what kind of gamer I am:

I'm the type who, in classic WoW to give the most critical example, used to hoard all the interesting epic raid items and items with interesting procs, names, and stats. A personal dragon-hoard if you will. This was back before transmog, I literally did it for the love of the game, to satisfy that loot goblin in me who wants only the most interesting delicacies even at the peril of having whole tabs in my ban filled with items from even previous expansions (TBC thru WoTLK) just because I like having them.

This is the same thing I found I'm doing again in Last Epoch's newest season since they added the corruption mechanic, that when you push it too far and if you're unlucky - can absolutely just ruin the item. That's actually fine with me because then I just plop it back into my bank, and there's so much stash space that I have 2 tabs full of these mementos of my failures. I think of them as trophies.

(Before you ask, I also do this in other Arpgs, mostly Grim Dawn but Last Epoch is the most egregious example right now)

In other words, it doesn't have to be helpful or feed back into the gameplay although that would also be nice.

It's more that feeling of building up a personal collection of actually usable items regardless of whether you'll use them or not. Not just a trophy wall of achievement but something more tangible in this specific way?

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?