Constantly shifting between different objectives as you manage your time and make everything as efficient as possible might not be your definition of “Cozy”, but to me, there’s nothing more comforting.
Getting to see everything run perfectly as my well-oiled machine provides me with as much benefit as possible is one of my favorite things to achieve in any game, and I love when Cozy games capitalize on that.
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An in-depth list of The Top 10 Coziest Games With Satisfying Progression.
I adore any game that encourages me to get the most out of stats, build machines that get work done for me, and schedule things so tightly that playing through a day feels like soaring through every objective with ease.
I’ll be covering eight games that go for the cozy, nostalgic, lovely vibes, while allowing me to do things as efficiently as possible and optimize just about anything I can get my hands on.
8WEBFISHING
Absolutely Reeling
Webfishing
When you boot up WEBFISHING for the first time, it feels like a cutesy game where you don’t do much other than join up with friends and cast your rod into the water, but you’re able to absolutely optimize your setup.
Grinding out fish after fish, selling them, getting upgrades, and finding incredibly tough things to catch that require you to lock the hell in, feels like Animal Crossing’s fishing if it was more than mindless A-pressing.
Ultimately, min-maxing doesn’t give you an excellent reward, as it’s primarily making fishing easieras you keep upgrading thingsand choosing the best bait, but the cosmetics are undeniably silly.
The journey is more important than the destination, and speccing into something like fishing power and seeing the number go down real fast is an intensely satisfying feeling that keeps me coming back.
7Super Auto Pets
Go, My Scarab
Super Auto Pets
I first looked at Super Auto Pets and assumed it would be some sort of cutesy idle game, but it’s actually one of the most strategic battlers I’ve seen, like setting up an army and watching helplessly as they fight.
You get to assemble a team from a random selection, carefully manage your money, and create pairings that feel just as satisfying as the synergies you can develop in most other roguelikes.
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The cherry on top of the bloodshed is the cutesy designs, based on the somewhat simple flat-colored emojis of animals, with way more variety than just a funny little turtle with a smile.
You get to gawk at cute little critters as you set up the horse and cricket combo with a camel to tank the damage and create one of the best attack and defense builds you could imagine, and I love strategizing to maximize my output.
6Cuisineer
Getting Cooked
As someone who grew up loving restaurant management flash games, then eventually learned to love hack-n-slash roguelites, Cuisineer is a crackship combination of both genres that feels particularly appealing to me.
It’s a similar gameplay dichotomy to Persona 5, the more intense side of the action serving to give you ingredients for your restaurant, while the restaurant funds your dungeon delving, essentially two different games feeding into each other.
Despite being rather stressful on both fronts, the cutesy, fluffy, adorable characters you need to feed and buy items from add to the cozy style, and the game allows you to maximizeyour gains every day you play.
You get to strategize upgrades and loadouts for combat while also considering your restaurant’s layout and structure to maximize customer satisfaction and efficiency, and I love going for both sides of the coin.
5Spiritfarer
Spiritfarer
While at its core,Spiritfareris an emotional character-driven game where you’re more or less expected to chill out and do a bit of upkeep here and there, it’s really fun to get everything running at maximum efficiency.
The game doesn’t force you into it, and the main reward for doing it is your satisfaction, yet I can’t help but use allmy resources to manage my boatto the best of my ability as I explore.
Doing my absolute best in the mini-games, slowing the boat to grab resources as they fly past, and building up the boat to care for as many lost souls as I can rotate around in my mind feels great.
Maybe it’s just the incredible art and vibes keeping it together, but despite a lack of reward for doing it, I can’t help myself. I love making everything the best it can be and watching the fruits of my labor bloom beautifully.
4Moonstone Island
Farm Party
Moonstone Island
As a game that’s far too easy to pitch as “Stardew Valleymixed withPokémon, but as a deckbuilder”, Moonstone Island is a rather clear-cut fit for minmaxxers looking for a cozy-as-hell experience.
Just like another game on this list, you can find fully developed play-by-play guides on how to optimize the hell out of everything, with the RPG mechanics adding even more depth than farming alone would allow.
Even as someone who tends to do stuff like this in any game that will allow me to, Moonstone Island can be a bit overwhelming at times, managing a maximum efficiency farm while building an ideal team and filling every quest I can find.
If you feel like balancing what are essentially three different interconnected games that all have a massive skill ceiling only gated by your willingness to execute the best strats, then this is ideal.
3Slime Rancher
Absolute Stonks
Slime Rancher
My first thought upon seeing a cute game where you take care of silly monsters in space wasn’t a stock market capitalism simulation, butSlime Rancherputs me on the grind harder than I am in real life.
It starts simple,just hoarding a few slimes, accidentally unleashing an ecosystem-wiping biohazard, cleaning that up, and feeding your slimes to get a bit of money, but it quickly evolves into much more than that.
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They make you want to snuggle up and lay on the couch for hours.
Roaming around the huge open world is fun, but whenever you get back to your farm, the game becomes a moneymaking simulator where you have to manage chaotic beasts while delving inside to harvest their product.
To top it all off, all the plorts you can collect have prices on the stock market that constantly shift up and down depending on the conditions, and you can genuinely tank a stock by selling a ton at once. I love that.
2Minecraft
Machinations and Mechanisms
I’ve been playingMinecraftfor around 14 years, and as ridiculous as that number is, the game has never lost its charm, and only ever got more interesting and engaging as I’ve learned more about it.
In particular, one of my favorite things about Minecraft is the fact that most resources you desire can be indefinitely farmed through keen game knowledge and exploitation of spawning mechanics and the like.
This makes for iron farms where you watch as golems plummet into a lava pit and leave you with an endless source of steel,or far simpler sugarcane farmsthat provide a nice, passive source of paper.
I don’t think I’ve done a Minecraft playthrough in the last decade without automating at least one part of the game, and that’s what I love: min-maxxing my experience by gaining as many resources as I can without my direct involvement.
1Stardew Valley
Perfect Timing
Stardew Valley
Of course, possibly the definitive cozy game that’s far more stressful than it lets on,Stardew Valleyis still the king in the sea of games that attempt to recreate what it does, and it was a shoo-in for the top spot.
Min-maxing is possibly at its best in this game above any other game I’ve ever played. It’s so immensely satisfying to make the most of your time, constantly make money, and build a hyper-efficient farm.
Whether it’s figuring out the ideal gifts for each of the residents, doing calculations to get the maximum profit from your setup, orrouting out every community center itemin the minimum possible time, it’s always enjoyable.
I see people often dismiss Stardew Valley as a cozy farming game with no substance, and that’s simply because they haven’t played it enough, and that’s a shame. This game absolutely knows how to make min-maxing the best possible experience.
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Cute visuals and all, but I’m panicking over my Strawberry yield.
