A Little to the Left has quaint, cosy design married with a multitude of gratifying puzzles and a mischievous cat. If you have an eye for organisation and live for the order of the everyday things in life, this’ll tick your boxes.
A delightful refreshing new story for a cosy sim blends with an extremely creative puzzler in Lonesome Village, which features a cute art style and relaxing vibes throughout. With a few patches to address crashing, it could be among the best in the genre. Even with these issues though, the game gets my recommendation with a caveat to save often so you don’t lose your progress.
A solid sequel to compliment a wonderful franchise, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake offers a much more coherent adventure platformer than its predecessor. With each world feeling like it’s own TV episode, and a fun story throughout, there is a lot of fun to be had within this entry.
Chef Life: A Restaurant Simulator captures both the stress, gratification, and realism of the heat in the kitchen. With the opportunity to juggle many different knives at once, such as prepping, managing staff, and cooking, there’s a lot to this game. Players can show individual creativity through plate and restaurant design, or focus simply on the meal. It’s a solid addition to the many different cooking games within the simulation genre.
After Us is an atmospheric platforming adventure that leaves you thinking about the beauty in extinction rather than the horrors. With slick controls, appealing environments to explore and a tranquil nonintrusive soundtrack, fans of titles like Journey will likely enjoy the exploration of a surreal and desolate world of post-human life.
Overboard is a 2D puzzle murder mystery, and is infectiously intriguing with a quirky art style. If you love murder mysteries and choice based games, you will have a lot of fun with this short snapshot version of one suiting it’s release on Switch and IOS/Android. Your patience may run short replaying 35 minute sections from the beginning however.
Pile Up! Box by Box is a 1-4 co op platform game. It can be played solo or with friends with four worlds to explore. This game is a fun entertaining friendly game that I would recommend to anyone who likes co-op or is new to co-op. It has a few quality of life issues, such as a lack of a map, and the jump button not quite being up to par when crucial, but has lots to do for it’s short run time that can still pack a good night in gaming.
Overall, Button City has more depth than I anticipated and the replayability is high if you fall in love with the mini games. Main story can be completed in under 6 hours, but there is more fun to be had after with the mini arcade games, and finishing side quests. The story is touching and has a really emotive meaning behind it. The characters are designed well, and are utterly charming and I can imagine some good merch coming out from their cute faces. The music is a bop, the art style is charismatic but there are a few hitches along the way. Movement speed can slow your game down a lot. There are a few technical bumps, but I would recommend for anyone who wants to free flow through an adventure narrative of Fennel and his Friends.
If you can get through the crashes and technical hitches, Necrobarista: Final Pour suits the Switch well. It is a beautiful appealing visual novel about one last night before death takes you to pass on. You don’t play the game, you watch the story unfold. The characters are individual with clear meaning within the story. The story has an interesting concept that could be taken in any direction.
Curious Expedition 2 is more of an interactive board game of level one D&D. A game that balances roguelike tactics, RPG, and procedural storytelling well. A delightful top down surprise with a great depth to explore, do and encounter, that’s if RNG is on your side! If not, it’s into the lion’s den you go. Although slightly repetitive visually, you will likely not get the same story twice.
Bus Simulator 21 allows you to experience the day in the life of a bus driver managing their own company. Create routes, receive pay days, scold ticket dodgers and be on time. The game comes with a clunky and overwhelming interface and little tutorial, but if you shift past this, Bus Simulator 21 could invite a satisfying ride.
Jackbox’s formula always remains consistent with hits, favourites and some skippable entries. Jackbox Party Pack 8 is no different. Although it’s not the strongest pack of 5 in the collection, this game still brings a wide variety of party games that can cater to almost any gathering.
Beyond A Steel Sky is easy to recommend to anyone who would like a low stress mystery puzzle narrative adventure game. Although a sequel, the game does an excellent job of catching you up on previous events and you won’t feel out of the loop of the storylines. I hope this is a series that continues on. Although sometimes a bit slow in places with minor bugs, it’s an engaging world and story to be a part of, with creative puzzles and fun throughout.
Unreal Life is a charming indie game filled with story, adventure, discovery and a talking traffic light. It’s unique as you’ll be comparing timelines to discover what happened to the protagonist Hal on one fateful night. It’s a game that invokes curiosity and keeps the player intrigued through storytelling and puzzle, presented in a gorgeous pixel art of blue hue. Although feeling like it ended abruptly, there is a lot within Unreal Life to invoke emotion.
A relaxing collect-a-thon adventure game, Submerged: Hidden Depths is visually stunning with graphics that are comparable to those of big budget titles. Although the story lacks depth and the main mission can feel a bit repetitive, if you want a game that is very chill and completely devoid of stress, this is worth picking up.
Cat Café Manager is a cozy, stress-free casual management game for anyone who wants to adopt cute kitties whilst serving coffee. Whilst not changing the genre of management style games in any particular way, this is ideal for those wanting a homely game to play at ease.
A cute coming of age space robot story and a fine addition to the cosy game genre, Growbot is a short and sweet puzzler with an ethereal soundtrack. This is one for those who want a short story, a beautiful art style and relaxing gameplay.
Circus Electrique features a unique take on a blend of genres that are nicely balanced against one another – a fun narrative, slick turn based combat and interesting circus management simulation. The art style (a steampunk take on Victorian London) is easy on the eye and players can customise their game to be as strategic as they like. That said, the gameplay loop can be either too demanding or passively easy if not played on the right difficulty.
Hokko Life fits the bill for a simple, yet charming experience. For seasoned players, be mindful there is a slow burn to start and may be more suited to those who are newer to the genre. Whilst some mechanics are not intuitive for console play, Hokko Life on console still captures the creativity and calmness of the farming sim genre.
Potion Craft is yet another addition to the simulation genre but manages to set itself out from the crowd by blending relaxing vibes with engaging strategy. It’s visually appealing and has the potential to steal an evening without you noticing, but it can get repetitive and frustrating at times.