It’s safe to say that there are a lot of games included as part of Steam’s Next Fest, but I’ve scrolled through all of them (yes, all of them, it took me a very long time) and downloaded all of the coziest games I could find.
Some of these games offer pure cozy vibes, while others may be better described as cozy-adjacent. They’re not all life-sims, but they all offer something unique and provided me with positive vibes while I played. Here’s the ten that came out on top in my playtesting.
Garden Witch Life
For at least 15 years now, I’ve had a hankering for a game which gave me the same satisfaction as Cooking Mama. I didn’t expect to find it in a game about a girl who just lost her job and is looking for her place in life, but Garden Witch Life scratches the Cooking Mama shaped itch in my brain. I mean, you actually get to chop the ingredients for soup!
That, along with the glimpse into the heartwarming story offered in the demo, leave me impatiently waiting for the full release of Garden Witch Life. You get ten in-game days to explore your new home, so make the most of them.
Tiny Glade
It’s no secret by now that I love Tiny Glade, the demo for which technically released before Next Fest by a couple of weeks. However, it is included on the list of games available so you know I had to include it here.
Effortlessly create tiny little towns or medieval ruins, erect a monolithic tower fit for Rapunzel or design a miniature secret garden – Tiny Glade lets you do it all without the worry of having to actually figure out the mechanics, because the game does all of that for you. Where paths intersect a wall, a door or arch is created. Windows are freely movable and flowers pop up at the click of a button. Tiny Glade is set for big things when it releases later this year.
Fields of Mistria
If you took Stardew Valley and said “hey, how come the Wizard is the only magical one here?”, you’d get Fields of Mistria.
I won’t go into too much detail, as you can read my full opinion of the game here, but it’s safe to say that I’m waiting for the full release on July 5 with bated breath. You get three in-game days to play, which isn’t nearly enough to explore and discover everything, but you do have the option to play again when your three days are up.
Amber Isle
Imagine you’re a dinosaur, setting out on the biggest adventure of your life, only to fall out of your hot air balloon and through the roof of a newly renovated shop. That’s the start of Amber Isle, before you meet the incredibly grumpy Mayor of the town and set out to impress him with your crafting and shop-keeping skills.
What cements Amber Isle on this list is the character creation. The options are endless, with a full RGB color selector, which means you can be truly unique. You can change the color and design of everything from your arm tufts to your teeth, so you’re unlikely to look exactly the same as any other dinosaur out there.
Galaxy Burger
I would say that this is the strangest offering on this list, but it isn’t. You’ll see a weirder one later.
Galaxy Burger sees you running a string of burger joints across the galaxy, beginning on Mercury. It starts out easy enough – griddle the patties, try not to burn the cheese and fulfill orders for cats in mech suits. As soon as you progress to Venus, though, you have multiple customers and a hugely expanded cooking station, not to mention you need to memorize multiple different recipes if you want to get top points for cooking time.
I know it doesn’t sound very cozy and, in truth, there was some stress at times. However, there are cats involved and that instantly makes anything cozy… Right? In my defense, I did say that some of these games would be cozy-adjacent.
Love, Ghostie
Love, Ghostie is a game from Janbeh Games where you play as a Ghost who is newly haunting a house of shared occupancy. Without being seen, you need to help the residents of the house couple up, by leaving gifts from one resident to another.
You need to manage your resources and decide which residents would make the best couples before becoming a spectral cupid, shooting arrows to make love happen. The art style is captivating and honestly, Love, Ghostie is just a joy to play all around.
Tavern Talk
I don’t know about you, but I’m so used to being on the adventurer side of RPGs that it would be nice to be on the quest-giving side of things every once in a while, almost like being an NPC. Tavern Talk offers that, and you play as the barkeep in a tavern visited by adventurers from across the realm of Asteria. You gather rumors and use them to create quests, which can then be picked up by any adventurer who enters the Inn.
One visitor, Fable, is an elven girl suffering from cripplingly low confidence and self-esteem issues. She seeks advice, and you give it, but it often feels like you’re giving advice to yourself. Or maybe that’s just me.
Alongside the visual novel aspect to Tavern Talk, you also have to mix drinks to specific recipes. Each ingredient corresponds to a different attribute, which will all be very familiar to anyone who has ever played an RPG before, including Dexterity, Strength, and Charisma.
Cats Around Us: Giant Cat
Now hear me out: I know this is a hidden object game at the most basic level, but there’s more to it than that. Not only do you have to find the 31 hidden cats in the demo, but you can also turn the picture itself into a coloring page and honestly, what’s more calming and cozy than doing some coloring on a rainy day?
Like I said, there are 31 cats to find, including the larger than life Giant Cat from the title, but that’s just one level of what will eventually be the full release of Cats Around Us. There’s also a speedrun mode, so once you’ve pinpointed where all of the cats are, you can race against yourself to beat your best time – but doesn’t that go against all things cozy?
Farlands
Farlands reminds me of Stardew Valley in a huge way, but if some kind of bizarre event happened to turn your farm into a planet in its own right, and a thousand years passed. The mechanics on the planet are essentially the same, but there’s a whole universe to explore with the help of your spaceship.
You can use crops and forageables to create fuel cells and then use the fuel cells to visit every planet in the solar system, meeting new friends and finding new items at every stop. What’s not to love about exploring a galaxy filled with aliens and building questionable relationships with them?
Oddada
Remember when I said that Galaxy Burger wasn’t the strangest offering on this list? Well, let me introduce you to Oddada.
Oddada is a game about creating music using toy-like objects which spark a huge amount of nostalgia for childhood years. It’s like putting wooden blocks together, except those wooden blocks are musical and depending on where you put them, or when you place them down, you get a different song at the end of the game.
Playing the Oddada demo might have been the most bizarre yet most relaxing ten minutes I’ve had in a very long time. It’s so easy to just zone out and simply play with blocks, and while the music I created definitely won’t be topping any charts (and probably shouldn’t ever be heard by anyone outside of myself), it’s quaint and I felt oddly proud of myself for what I’d achieved.
At the end of it all, you get to design a cassette tape to go with your song. And if you don’t know what a cassette tape is, thanks for reminding me just how old I am.
