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Jan 24, 2024
Princess Peach: Showtime! is a cute entry in Nintendo’s Mario franchise. This time, you take on the role of Princess Peach as she embarks on her very own adventure full of mystery and abilities. One day, Princess Peach and some Toads attend a show at the Sparkle Theater, but before they can enjoy the performance, The wicked Grape and the Sour Bunch show up to cause chaos. Now it’s your job as Peach, accompanied by the theater’s guardian Stella, to save the play from the villains!
Use the power of Stella’s ribbon to go up against the Sour Bunch in order to reclaim the stage. Stella’s ribbon isn’t enough, though, and you’ll need to employ some other abilities to help. Princess Peach: Showtime! will have you transforming into Swordfighter Peach, Detective Peach, Pâtissière Peach, Kung Fu Peach, and many other transformations to save the day. Each transformation brings unique abilities that will help you dispatch the Sour Bunch, as well as overcome obstacles, and return the show to its rightful stage!
You won’t have long to wait for Princess Peach: Showtime! This adorable entry in the Mario franchise comes out March 22nd on Switch.
If you haven’t, take a look at Paper Mario: The Origami King and my personal favorite, Super Mario Odyssey!
Dec 21, 2023
Ready for another list? This time it’s a list of games released this year that are perfect for console users. Whether they’re receiving a new one for Christmas or you’re just searching for some cozy games to get your console owner, this list is a good place to turn! Many of these games are on more than just Xbox and PlayStation, but sometimes it’s hard to weed out what is or isn’t. At any rate, these are all cozy games that should meet some needs. Relaxing farming sim, cute survival craft, cozy exploration, spell-slinging dungeon exploration, intriguing conversations, and potion making are all here.
So here are 6 cozy games for the console!
Lego Fortnite is a brand new mode in the popular game where you play as a Lego figure. Play solo, or with up to seven other people and explore a fun new world. It’s a survival crafting game, so you’ll need to collect resources for crafting. Build weapons, homes, and many more useful items. Recruit villager NPCs as you expand your base of operations. They’ll be able to collect resources and battle enemies with you!
Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos is the most recent entry in the franchise. Ten years ago, a great calamity. A volcano erupted and the Harvest Goddess and Harvest Sprites used the last of their power to keep the inhabitants safe, but it isolated the villages from each other. Some people were even trapped outside their villages. Ten years after the eruption, you find a message in a bottle containing an SOS message, and with the help of your inventor friend and others, you’re on a mission to revive the Harvest Goddess and Harvest Sprites and a mission to reconnect the villages. Farm in different biomes, raise a variety of animals, take part in different festivals and contests, so much more!
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly is the second episode in the Coffee Talk series. In it, you play as the proprietor of a cozy little coffee shop that’s only open at night. Set in an alternate present-day Seattle, join a cast of fantasy characters and serve up some delicious hot drinks as you explore the world by listening to their stories. Even use your phone to follow their lives outside of the coffee shop via social media, and return lost items to further influence the story.
In Mail Time, you’re a newly minted Mail Scout in the cozy forest of Grumblewood Grove. It’s your first day on the job, and you’re full of unbridled enthusiasm for your new adventure. With your cute little mushroom hat, over 46,000 character design combinations, and a bag full of mail, it’s up to you to deliver all of the letters to the inhabitants of Grumblewood Grove. You shouldn’t dally, but Mail Time is a relaxing adventure. Run through the forest, jump over obstacles, and even use letters to glide your way around the forest to reach your destinations. Explore 8 different colorful areas and meet 15 unique characters with their own stories and charms.
Spells & Secrets is a captivating rogue-lite adventure where you use different spells to fight your way through dungeon levels. You’re a first-year student at the esteemed wizard Academy of Greifenstein, eager to learn together with your fellow magic users. However, something odd has happened to the school on your very first day there. It’s now over-run by magical creatures, and of course it’s up to you to defeat those creatures, save your classmates, and save the school.
Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator takes inspiration from medieval manuscripts and medical books. Play as an alchemist who runs their own shop. Grow your own ingredients or haggle with traveling merchants to buy them. Use your various tools to brew potions using those ingredients. Even experiment to concoct new types of potions, then sell your wares in your shop!
Looking for more ideas? Check out this list of the 15 Best 3DS Games of All Time. You can also find a list 5 Games Perfect for Your New Steam Deck, and 5 Farming Games for Your New Switch.
Nov 30, 2023
Fae Farm is a beautiful farming sim where you cultivate crops, craft items to decorate your home with or sell, and care for adorable farm animals. Befriend a varying cast of townspeople, and even romance some of them. Plus, you even get to venture into the faerie realm, where you’ll see faeries and fantastical creatures not seen in the human realm. Even delve deep into the mines to collect resources, fight enemies, and uncover mysteries!
The art in Fae Farm is absolutely gorgeous. It’s easy to fall in love with the game based on that alone. The scenery is varied. The NPCs all look different. Even your clothing options are lovely. Then, the furniture and decorating choices are great. You’re sure to find something that suits your style, whatever it may be. Adventuring into the fae realm is probably my favorite part. It’s so whimsical and magical. Even the dungeon is dreamy, though chock full of enemies. The art is absolutely what drew me to the game to begin with!
What I also really like about Fae Farm is that tools switch automatically for you. Walk up to a tree to chop, and you’ll immediately have your axe in hand. Then, go to a rock and poof! There’s your pickaxe! It’s a super handy mechanic that I would love to see in all farming sims. It saves time and lets me switch between activities much faster. Besides that, fast travel unlocks early game. There are several points across the map called Wayshrines that act as fast travel spots. You need to craft a seal from cave resources in order to activate the Wayshrine, but you can accomplish that easily early on. Having fast travel early in the game makes it genuinely useful and not just an afterthought. Plus, the mines have waypoints where you can place seals you’ve crafted in order to get to different levels without going through the whole mine. Think Stardew Valley’s mine elevator, but with more magic and teleporting!
Unfortunately, Fae Farm has more aspects that I dislike than I like. In order to play multiplayer, or even just name your character, you need to create a Phoenix Labs account. Otherwise, your character’s name defaults to the account name that’s on the system you’re playing on. So, my character’s name is a string of random letters I used for my Steam name. It kind of ruins any romance when my husband calls me by name.
I once wasted a precious Fae Farm day sitting in the crafting menu or almanac menu thinking the game was paused. It certainly was not. The nice thing is that you aren’t negatively affected for passing out after bedtime, so all I truly lost was a day of play time. It didn’t decay friendship points with my critters, and it didn’t ruin any quests. Then there’s the sales tables. The limited sales table spots really get in the way of me mass selling a hoard of items I’ve held onto for too long. It doesn’t inhibit money-making, just clearing out that stack of 600 fibers I probably don’t need so many of.
The exuberant laughing at everything is obnoxious, though. When I accomplish something, I laugh. When talking to an NPC, they laugh instead of speak. None of it is funny! I’d prefer if they muttered some nonsense like Sims do. Unfortunately, the laughing just lends itself to the overall soul-less feel the game has. The NPCs have no deep backgrounds, and their dialogue is repetitive and shallow. There’s not even a point to befriending anyone unless you’re trying to marry them. And there’s only a handful of marriage candidates. Even the festivals feel lifeless. They’re not exciting and engaging. Everything feels very surface level.
Don’t get me wrong, Fae Farm is somewhat fun. I’ve put some hours into it, but I’d hoped for a lot more polish for that AAA price tag. A better story with more meaningful characters would have made this game an absolute gem. I’d also like for everyone to have a nose, please! Everything feels so shallow and surface level. I don’t need some deep, dark secrets to go into it, just a little more substance that makes me want to talk to people or do things. And when you add up several minor gripes, things feel lackluster, and that’s what we have here.
Overall, I’d give it:
You can find Fae Farm on Steam and Switch now!
Check out another of my reviews on a magical game: Witchy Life Story!
Oct 26, 2023
Ready for another game that’s perfect for Halloween? Well, here’s Witch It, a fun video game rendition of hide and seek!
Enter a vibrant and magical world in Witch It, where you can explore humble villages and exotic islands. However, the goal of the game is hide and seek! Play as a hunter, whose job is to fearlessly seek out those pesky witches hidden throughout the map. Use a variety of skills and tools to detect, trap, and slow down witches. Or play as a mischievous witch, hiding from the hunters! Use your skills to mimic items on the map, fly away, disorientate, or distract the hunters as you run from them. Interact with props that use dynamic, physics-based movement to help you easily traverse the maps and find hiding spots.
Personalize your characters with fun shirts, hats, and accessories. Unlock these items simply by playing Witch It and leveling up! In fact, you can gain levels by playing one of several game modes. Hide and Seek is the classic, standard game mode, but there’s also Mobification, Hunt a Hag, and Fill a Pot. In Mobification, you play the standard Hide and Seek, but witches who are caught join the hunters in seeking out the rest of the witches. Hunt a Hag is a one way game of tag where all skills and projectiles are disabled. Then there’s Fill a Pot, a 2v2 competitive experience where witches must fill cauldrons with specific props before the timer, or their lives, run out! There’s even a Creative mode that allows you to build your own maps to play on.
Play with friends, or load up public servers to play with strangers across the internet!
Witch It is available now on Steam!
Oct 18, 2023
We currently have Palia, the cozy MMO with zero combat and a focus on some pretty neat world lore. This was released in open beta in August of this year. Then there’s Loftia, a cute solarpunk cozy MMO whose early access isn’t coming until 2025! Now, there’s another possible cozy MMO to keep an eye on.
WorldShards is a sandbox MMORPG set in a fantasy world. What was once a prosperous world inhabited by cat creatures called meowkle, a terrible catastrophe shattered the land. Then, evil wargs attacked. Now the world is made up of numerous flying islands, and you’ll have to explore these fragments, fight the wargs, and restore the meowkles to their former glory!
You’ll receive the use of your very own flying island to turn into your home base. There, you’ll be able to build a house to suit all of your WorldShards needs. Process resources you gather, access crafting stations to make equipment and weapons, and more. Even recruit a friendly meowkle friend to help you out around the house or in your adventures.
Otherwise, take time to explore a beautiful fantasy world full of stunning vistas. Discover the mysteries and secrets WorldShards has hidden in its islands. Set up a useful teleportation system to generate islands that will be useful to you and your play style. Even solve puzzles and complete quests. Gather various resources during your adventures that can be used in crafting or trading. Also go toe to toe with the evil wargs and their ruthless king to help save the world. Engage in stealth missions or defeat them in dynamic battles that depend on your play style.
WorldShards is currently being developed, but you can find the roadmap on their website. Early Access is intended for Q3 of this year, with a full release slated for Q3 of 2024! You can find it on Steam and Epic Games to add it to your Wishlist now!
Oct 18, 2023
Here’s another slightly spooky game perfect for this Halloween season! With its whimsical, cartoonish art style and light combat encounters, this game rides the line between spooky and goofy. Originally released on the Atari 2600 in 1982, the Steam version of Haunted House is an updated, re-imagined retelling of the original. You can even pre-order a special edition of the original game here if you’re interested!
In this modern Haunted House, you play as Lyn Graves, beloved niece of famous treasure hunter Zachary Graves. Lyn visits her uncle’s home with her closest friends, only to find the house overrun with ghouls and monsters. Those creatures quickly grab her friend and spirit them away, leaving Lyn alone to free her uncle, friends, and contain the monsters! To do this, she needs to find all of the pieces to a shattered magic urn and put it back together.
As you sneak through Haunted House, you’ll encounter procedurally generated rooms, walls that shift and move, and unique encounters. Each room you encounter will be a brand new experience. If you’re knocked out, you’ll restart at the foyer and face a totally new floor layout and enemy placement. You need to sneak, creep, and dash through the hordes of monsters and ectoplasm to find your friends and uncle. Think on your feet to complete challenges as you face them. As you find your friends, they become playable characters with their own set of stats. These different skills can come in handy as you delve deeper into the haunted mansion. So, who you adventure with will come with its own new experiences!
Haunted House is available now everywhere! You can find it on Steam, Epic Games, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation.
Here’s a list of more slightly spooky games to try out!
Oct 12, 2023
I love fall, and especially love Halloween. I eagerly await it every year. I’m always in search of cozy games to play that get me in the right mood for the time of year, so I’m excited to share games I think fit that mood. And next up on my list of games to get you into the spirit of Halloween is Almatetra! This adorable little game is another perfectly cozy, yet spooky game to add to your to-be-played list. Overall, it’s a short little action-adventure game with some combat and mystery!
Embark on a journey that will have you questioning your reality. You play as a girl living in a world ruined by mysterious cosmic forces. You’re also haunted by a ghost named Mary, and on a mission to find your missing friend. The rest of your friends join you in your search and a very unlikely companion joins you too.
Will you find your missing friend? And exactly what happened to your friend?
You can find Almatetra on Itchi.io now!
If you haven’t played DREDGE yet, you really should!
Aug 31, 2023
Lost Nova is the perfect cozy game for those of you looking for something without time limits or enemies. You play as the adorable Mia. She lost her way during a vacation and crash landed in some mysterious place. Take your time exploring the world and repairing your ship, plus more!
Discover hints of a bigger mystery in Lost Nova as you wander the world. Why is everyone ending up in this world, and why is it so hard to leave? Make friends with the locals and help them find their way. Teach a ghost how to be spooky, help a single parent with his children, and help a robot work through his artistic burnout. Create a hub for your friends to gather, and watch as the world and people change based on the actions you take.
In Lost Nova, you’re equipped with your trusty salvaging laser which you can use to gather all the resources you could need. Earn money by mining, farming, fishing, and resource gathering. Use that wealth to revitalize the local pet store, where you can buy useful items for your spectral cat pet. Whatever you choose to spend your days doing, do it at your own pace!
You can find Lost Nova on Steam now!
Also check out Songs of Glimmerwick and Lushfoil Photography Sim for more fun adventure games!
