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My biggest issue is that nothing about the story feels urgent. Despite the quakes and construction, everyone seems perfectly happy and pleasant. The NPCs have little personality, and most of your time with them involves picking up another fetch quest. I wanted to feel like I was making a difference in this community, but selling items to help feed other Loftians doesn’t have quite the same impact as making meals and delivering them to people who need help. There’s very little emotional connection to the people you’re supposed to be helping.
Whilst the plot is absolutely present, it’s kept minimalistic so that the focus can be on the characters themselves. The whole premise of the game is that we are inviting our neighbours to join the summer festival, and as we do this, we get to know their unique personalities. There are so many characters in the game, and each one is entirely distinct. It really makes the neighbourhood feel alive, and I found myself immersed in their different stories. A really cool feature is that every neighbour has their own web page in the game, and you get to learn more about them and their interests. At the end of the day, you can even choose one neighbour to highlight on your own page, and even though it’s just a game, it feels like a really important decision. I found myself getting attached to the different NPCs, and wanting to showcase them to the rest of the neighbourhood.
Cozy Game Restoration works wonderfully as a cleaning sim. Its core aspect of game cartridge cleaning is brilliant, with a variety of tools to use and plenty of detail to get lost in. The interactive elements on the desk, like the lamp and radio, make the setting feel real. The lack of pressure is refreshing; knowing I could stop at any point and return to clean another time was lovely. So often, games that require a percentage of completion demand you meet that goal before moving forward. I’m glad Cozy Game Restoration doesn’t follow that trend.
As someone coming into the Warrior Cats franchise for the first time, I went into Clans of the Forest without any prior knowledge of the books. That meant I experienced this adventure without any expectations of how well it would capture the world longtime fans know and love. Instead, I approached it as a newcomer looking for an enjoyable gaming experience. And while there are things I enjoyed, there’s definitely room for improvement. There’s a surprising amount to do, from exploring the world and completing quests to crafting items and battling enemies. Creating your own warrior cat and choosing a clan also gives you a nice sense of ownership over your adventure. The central mystery provides something to work towards, and the variety of activities kept me interested throughout my time playing.
Planet Zoo 2 really focuses on conservation efforts. There is a clear intention to educate the players about animal welfare, and personally I’m all here for it. It really teaches you about the importance of creating balanced ecosystems. It explains how we as humans should be helping the animals, not exploiting them. You face serious repercussions for animal welfare issues, such as protesters coming to your zoo. Not to mention that the many of the species are initially locked, and you need to improve your accreditation before you gain access to them. This motivates players to pay close attention to the wildlife reserves as well as their zoo.
Stupid Never Dies has the makings of a fun, punk-inspired roguelite. Style Bite is a neat idea; the body mods offer some fun ways to build Davy, and the truth behind KOM gives the story a strong emotional payoff. I also loved the opening theme, which brought back my love of pop punk and made me excited to see what the game had in store. Sadly, clunky combat, repetitive dungeon runs, and an overcomplicated skill system keep the action from reaching its full potential. My biggest issue remains the way the game handles Julia. Her introduction and Davy’s behaviour made me uncomfortable, and I don’t think the story needed to go that route.
Moonfrost has a lot to offer fans of farming sims and cozy games. Its familiar gameplay makes it easy to settle into a routine of farming, crafting, cooking and gathering resources. However, its mysterious story gives you another reason to keep playing beyond your daily tasks. There are a few mechanics I’m still undecided about, particularly the crafting mini-games and building system. Limited inventory space can also be frustrating when you’re eager to collect everything you find. Still, the freedom to customise your home and the variety of activities available keep things interesting.
From side quests to class, Songs of Glimmerwick’s narrative is told in pieces. I found it felt natural to learn about the world this way, especially when you play as a witch who’s unfamiliar with the magical world. I ended up invested in the world before I realized it, and that encouraged me to keep completing quests. Even side quests fit nicely into the narrative, increasing your knowledge of the Etchery and the nearby town of Wisk.
Despite the visuals being grounded in a sturdy reality, the dream-like state that introduces the game never fades. Enemy introductions overwhelm your senses with flashing horrors. Walker is forever swamped in a disarray of reality, hallucination, and memory. You start Silver Pines in the middle of nowhere, but as the case opens up, it seems Walker might know more about this town than even he knows.
There are things I would like to see improved in Nivalis Nights. The tutorials need more explanation, the map needs to be more useful, and the quest journal and indicators need some work. The romance system could be clearer, fast travel can be inconvenient, and the metro is a nightmare. There are also some glitches and crashes that need a little more polish. None of these issues stopped me from enjoying Nivalis Nights, but they did make some parts of the game harder to navigate than they needed to be. What I really enjoyed is how much there is to do. You run your business while trying to make money, grow ingredients, complete quests, build relationships, and figure out what is happening around you. There is absolutely no way to turn your brain off, but that is also part of what kept me playing. I came into Nivalis Nights expecting a very particular combination of things that I happen to love, but what I didn't expect was how it would enthral me.
While it’s playable, it does not feel polished enough for a 1.0 release. Right now, it still feels like it’s in beta. The fact that the developers announced a patch just four days after release makes me hopeful they’ll address some of these problems, but I don’t believe one patch will fix all the errors and design issues. There is something here worth building on; I just wish I had found more of it during my time with the game.
Dressmaker is an adorable, true cosy game where you step into the shoes of a dressmaker running a business in what appears to be Regency England, but there's no specific date to the game, even in the newspaper you occasionally get to read. Customers wander into your shop with all sorts of requests, from a young lady possessed by dual spirits to an older gentlewoman who brings three pigeons along as companions. If you do a good enough job on her dress, she may even leave one of those pigeons behind. Naturally, I was sold. It's a warm, relaxing game about making beautiful clothes and getting to know the strange people who walk through your door. The dressmaking itself gives you plenty of room to experiment, while the story adds a lovely layer of gossip and odd little mysteries. It has a few quirks, but it is an easy game to settle into.
The biggest challenge for me was how unintuitive much of the gameplay felt. The game gives you very little direction about what to do next. I often found myself clicking on anything and everything, hoping something would give me a clue. Even when I knew what I needed to accomplish, I didn’t always know how to get there. I could understand the goal but still had no idea which items or actions would lead me to the solution. There were a few occasions where I eventually had to look up guides because I simply couldn’t figure out what the game wanted me to do.
People have called Welcome to Elderfield the spiritual successor to Graveyard Keeper, but I think it deserves the accolade of being called the spiritual dark successor to Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley is considered the gold standard for narrative-driven farming sims, and in my opinion, Welcome to Elderfield has shown that it has what it takes to stand alongside the greats. It also feels perfectly placed for autumn and Halloween. This is the kind of dark cosy game that could easily pull in horror RPG fans, cosy gamers and people who simply want something a little stranger from their farming sim. Given the follower numbers before release and the hype already gathering around it in the cosy community, I would be very surprised if a bunch of streamers and content creators do not flock to this game.
Tiny Eden doesn't throw a huge story at you straight away. Instead, you spend your time growing crops and herbs, fulfilling orders, and slowly opening up more of your apartment and the building around you. You also have an AI drone helping you figure out how to open your own lab, while most of your contact with the outside world comes through email, aside from the few humans who live in the building. The more time I spent in Tiny Eden, though, the more I started to feel like I had read this story before. Around the 10-hour mark, I suddenly realised that this self-contained block of apartments, rooftop garden, almost empty atrium, and strangely lifeless residents reminded me of High-Rise. It has that same idea of a building that has become a kind of self-contained utopia, where people barely leave or choose not to leave at all. Tiny Eden turns that idea into a cosy game about growing plants and selling them to your neighbours, but you literally can't leave the building. I actually wish the game had leaned further into this dystopian feeling, because I think it could have given the plant-growing simulator a bit more of a story behind it.
Servant of the Lake is a strange little puzzle game that sits somewhere between dark, cosy, and quietly unsettling. You play as a newly hired housekeeper at the Vanderboom estate, spending a weekend completing tasks for the man who lives there and his visiting family members. At first, it all sounds rather ordinary. Then the house reveals things a normal housekeeper probably wouldn't expect. Servant of the Lake is weird, creepy, and occasionally downright disgusting, but it has a wonderfully distinctive identity. Its puzzles can be genuinely difficult to crack, and the game loves hiding its clues in places you might never think to look. I found myself frustrated more than once, but I enjoyed the challenge even when I was smacking my head off my keyboard. It's a particularly good fit for players who enjoy dark, atmospheric puzzle games and don't mind getting a little gross along the way. I wouldn't call it my perfect puzzle game, but there's something really compelling about how confidently Servant of the Lake commits to its strange little world.
At first glance, Capy Castaway feels like a gentle exploration game. Its bright colours, cute animals and soft presentation reminded me a lot of Little Kitty, Big City. However, the further I played, the more I realised that Capy Castaway was trying to tackle some surprisingly serious subjects. Grief, anxiety, strained relationships, death and identity all feature in the story, and that contrast became one of my biggest points of uncertainty with the game. Not because I think these themes have no place in a cosy-looking adventure, but because I wasn’t always sure that the game knew how to bring its softer presentation and heavier ideas together. It looks like the perfect cosy adventure about a cute capybara, and there are plenty of lovely ideas here. Some of the heavier moments simply don’t always sit comfortably alongside the game’s bright, child-friendly presentation, while the writing sometimes struggles to connect everything together. I wanted to love this little adventure, but I often found myself wondering who Capy Castaway was really made for.
There are very few games that leave me sitting at my keyboard at 4am, trying to convince my co-op partner that we really should go to bed while secretly hoping they’ll say, “one more puzzle”. Big Walk did exactly that. Four days and around 20 hours later, my friend and I were still finding new places to explore, new items to play with, and new reasons to laugh at each other as we accidentally threw ourselves off mountains or picked each other up instead of interacting with an object. Going into my Big Walk review, I expected something that sat somewhere alongside PEAK. That’s an easy comparison to make given they’re both cooperative exploration games, but after spending so much time with both, I don’t think they’re trying to achieve the same thing at all. PEAK leans heavily into survival exploration. One bad climb can end your run, and every mountain feels like something you have to conquer. That’s not something you have to worry about in Big Walk. There are chairlifts, trains, winding hiking trails, forests, coastlines, and countless places where you can simply stop and appreciate the view. Even within the first couple of hours, I was already thinking this was a solid 9/10. Every session introduced another mechanic, another secret, another item, or another reason to keep wandering. By the time I sat down to write my review, I realised I’d spent four consecutive late nights and early mornings exploring the island...
There is something incredibly satisfying about watching a plant slowly emerge and grow, and then seeing a customer walk in and decide it is exactly what they have been looking for. Leafy Corner takes the simple idea of a plant shop and turns it into a cosy business management sim that is easy to lose hours to. Instead of chasing profits through stress and time limits, it lets you learn about real plants, decorate a beautiful little shop, and enjoy the quiet rhythm of running your own business. Few cosy management games make learning feel this natural. Leafy Corner quietly teaches you about real plants while giving you meaningful choices about what to grow, what to sell, and how to build your shop. It is charming, thoughtful, and surprisingly relaxing, even when a few of the ruder customers decide your recommendation was apparently the worst thing they have ever heard...
When I first sat down to write my High Times review, I wasn’t sure what I’d make of the game. It’s a dating sim, a cooking sim, a visual novel, and a surprisingly thoughtful queer game wrapped up in a neon, psychedelic café where you make mood-altering doughnuts for a living. It sounds ridiculous because it is ridiculous, but somehow it mostly works. High Times is one of the most ambitious indie dating sims around. Beneath its colourful chaos is a genuinely fun cooking system, excellent voice acting, and refreshingly gender-neutral character design. The writing does not reach the emotional highs it could have aimed for, but it’s an enjoyable casual dating sim that took me back to the yaoi/yuri visual novels of the 2010s.