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Something I’ve noticed about cozy games is that we love to read. I often see accounts posting about their favorite Animal Crossing villager in one breath, and their favorite high fantasy romance novel in the next.
We also love to track, plan, and note-take. Seriously, it’s in our blood or something.
That’s why I thought my audience would enjoy the “Letterboxd for video games” app, Search To Play.
Search to Play is a video game tracker, list-builder, organization tool, and ranking system. Much like Goodreads, you can go to a game’s profile and tag it as “Playing” or “Finished” (and even “Abandoned”). You can rate games you’ve played out of 5 stars—yes, half-stars are available—and check how long games take to beat. Plus, you can see where to buy games (platform agnostic), what other users are saying about them, and check out screenshots and trailers.
The ways to filter and search for games is crazy detailed in Search to Play.
According to the developer, you can sort games by popularity, HLTB hours, or OpenCritic scores. You can easily find games available on Xbox Game Pass or on PlayStation Plus.
I really like having the started/finished dates accounted for in my notes, because it can be important as a content creator and reviewer to track that stuff. You can also mark if something is a replay, which will very much help me track my current goal of re-playing every Rune Factory game to ever exist.
But more importantly, the tagging and sorting features are better than almost anywhere else I’ve seen. I was specifically looking for co-op multiplayer games within genres that could be considered “cozy” and Search to Play helped me narrow down my choices with ease. You can also add a “year(s)” tag, which is perfect when I’m trying to focus on finding newer games that haven’t been played and covered to death already.
Something cool I’m using the Search to Play app for right now is tracking cozy games in Early Access that I want to keep an eye on! Early access games are tricky to cover, because you have to keep in mind that frequent updates are coming.
Sometimes, I just want to make note of them for future content. Other times, I want to remind myself to go check on games I’ve bought in Early Access to see if there is new content or a full release.
You can check out my Early Access Cozy Games list here.
