Cozy games are a healing salve when your heart aches. Sometimes they are designed to make your heart ache, but in a way you want. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that cozy games found a mainstream foothold as we started to talk more openly about mental health.
Back when I was playing The Sims 1, Harvest Moon 64, and Animal Crossing, there wasn’t much that tied all three together. “Simulation” games, perhaps. But it was more of a mechanic than a genre.
In grade school, I was depressed. Very, very depressed. I didn’t have a name for it yet. I just knew of it as “a bad mood that came often, one I needed to bite down and get through.” I needed a way to systemically turn off the Bad Mood center of my brain. Calming, relaxing, repetitive, low risk gameplay can do that. It can do that very, very well.
To this day, I have what I called my “Pull in case of emergency” multimedia plan. If the depression is getting too loud, I pull up my favorite farming simulator, pick a mindless podcast, lay in bed, and wait for the hours to pass. The days to pass. The months to pass. Whatever it takes to be okay again.
And the “Be okay” part always comes. But waiting can be hard. Cozy games make it less hard. Some days, they make it deceptively easy.
I can’t play traditional games when the Mood comes. They are too loud when I am feeling too quiet, too competitive when I am feeling too weak, and too fast when I feel like I’m wading through a vat of mud just to check the mail.
But running a farm that can’t really “fail” is manageable. Attending festivals about colored eggs and fireworks and music at the local church is fun. And making friends using strawberries and potatoes as gifts is okay. Charming, even.
I spent my last summer in high school, the last few months of your life you get to really “be a kid,” playing Harvest Moon: Magical Melody. My IRL friends would pop by and watch me play. I started applying to “real jobs” and missing my favorite classes. Meanwhile, my virtual farm thrived. I started overtaking my rival. I got married, got rich. It was so easy on the screen.
Many, many people know what I’m talking about. But now everyone does. The Animal Crossing: New Horizons craze during the COVID-19 pandemic was exactly this, magnified by 11 million people. People were sad. People were scared. People were isolated. And everyone was stuck at home.
Many weird trends came and went (what on Earth did we all see in Tiger King?) and many games came and went, too. Some of them really great. But only Animal Crossing, a franchise that epitomizes what I mean by “cozy games,” had a talk show; helped people hold sobriety meetings together while apart; had people host birthday parties, dates, and even protests; and even had a few celebrities show up and mingle.
Cozy games are about wholesomeness, slow and steady progress, bright colors and characters, melodic soundtracks, friendships and love, nature and the world. Sometimes that’s what you need. Sometimes that need is desperate.
It’s about more than just killing time, though. Because many things kill time. Netflix kills time. Social media kills time. But gaming occupies you, body, mind, and soul. Your hands work the controls, your mind makes decisions, and your soul follows along with the story like it’s humming a song.
You can’t think too hard about a Mood or what’s going on in the world. That door to your brain is closed. You are wholly engulfed in shaking fruit trees or decorating your home or visiting your anthropomorphic friends. You are collecting music notes or helping forest sprites or guiding a ferry full of lost spirits or dating a cool, single dad or talking to monsters over coffee or running a mobile bookstore or exploring the ocean or crafting potions or opening a sticker making business or collecting resources for your clan or…or…or…
Cozy games occupy you with the mundane. The simple. The beautiful. The quiet.
Cozy games are safe when the world is dangerous. They are friendly when your mind is unkind. Even the word “cozy” speaks to being safe, warm, loved. I’m not the only one who talks about cozy games as a meditative retreat from reality. I think there is something here. We can all feel it.
Mental illness is a pit but games are a soft place to land. Even if it’s temporary, it’s good enough, good for now. People talk about games and use words like “addictive,” but do you know how handy that dopamine hit is when you can’t get out of bed? When you’re being crushed by the anxieties whispering behind your eyes?
Cozy games are a haven. I can tuck myself inside and wait for the “real stuff” to kick in. The therapy, the prescriptions, the exercise, the sunlight. Mostly, it’s just time that I need. Time for the darkness to pass. I need to spend time to heal. To follow the ebbs and flows of unfathomable universes of brain chemistry, sparks and sizzles and groans and whimpers.
So I pour the passage of burdensome time into bright plastic controllers and keys. I wait for the dawn to creep back in. In the meantime, you’ll find me farming—virtually.
The fruit, once withered on winter-crushed pixel trees, have flowered and ripened anew. They always do.