I played 27 new cozy games this year and my top 5 only includes 2 farm sims, I promise

GamesI played 27 new cozy games this year and my top 5 only includes 2 farm sims, I promiseWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: NPC Studio)

Fields of Mistria animated trailer - a blonde girl in anime style wearing a cloak looks to the camera surprised in front of an idyllic meadow and mountain landscape

Jump to:Top 5 cozy games 2024Bonus pick

I’m certainly not closing this year disappointed though. I’ve got at least one new entry on my list of bestgames like Stardew Valleyand a lot of other good cozy contenders for the year.

Played 27 cozy games this yearPlayed 27 cozy games this yearLauren MortonCozy games connoisseurI’ve been a cozy game enjoyer since long before we were calling them that—back in the early Harvest Moon on consoles era. I’m still pretty partial to farm sims but I love building and puzzle games too. This year in particular the live service side of cozy gaming bit me pretty hard.

Played 27 cozy games this yearLauren MortonCozy games connoisseur

Lauren Morton

I’ve been a cozy game enjoyer since long before we were calling them that—back in the early Harvest Moon on consoles era. I’m still pretty partial to farm sims but I love building and puzzle games too. This year in particular the live service side of cozy gaming bit me pretty hard.

Top 5 Cozy games of 2024

Some other cozy games I liked that didn’t quite make top five status:Minami Lane,Reka,Everholm,Neva, andGourdlets.

(Image credit: NPC Studio)

Fields of Mistria - a player holds a chicken overhead on their farm

Fields of Mistria

Mistria’s real success is its fantastic cast and earnest dialogue. I don’t think it’s possible to play without falling in love with the townies' weekly tabletop RPG meetup at the inn or with all of the glorious anime-inspired outfits. Seeing several townies wear jackets draped over their shoulders with the empty arms hanging is pure nostalgia bait.

Even in early access, Fields of Mistria is an obvious new must-play addition to the farm sim canon ofgames like Stardew Valley.

Read more:Oh no, I can’t possibly decide who to date in anime-inspired farm sim Fields of Mistria when I’m already in love with all of them

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(Image credit: Thatgamecompany)

Sky Children of the Light - a player in a blue hat and cape flies away from a temple in the sky

Sky: Children of the Light

Style:Social MMO platformerA social MMO built on the back of 2012’s flying adventure Journey shouldn’t work. On principle, I want developers to stop pivoting beloved games into live service affairs but Sky: Children of the Light is the exception that proves my rule: Itdoeswork. Sky had already been around for nearly five years when it arrived on PC in April and since then I’ve already sunk another 130 hours into it. It’s allegedly (still) in early access but this has been a complete game with seasonal content for years now.

Sky feels small initially: it’s around three hours of a short main campaign in which you fly around meeting spirits who teach you new emotes. You’ll encounter other players running about in a similar anonymized fashion as in Journey but it’s easy to make acquaintances who are just itching to share secret shortcuts with you.

Read more:MMOs still have so much room to grow

Infinity Nikki

(Image credit: Infold Games)

Infinity Nikki - nikki sits on a wicker swing in a photographer outfit

Style:Open world adventureSpeaking of endgame fashion, the Nikki series of dress-up games debuted on PC this year with a huge open world adventure and I’ve been enthralled with it. I knew it would only take the right genre of game for one of these gacha joints to finally get me and Infinity Nikki is the one.

Nikki is nominally a dress up game where your goal is to collect clothes and compete in styling challenges but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s also an open world platforming and collectathon adventure where you’ll play agility minigames, do sidequests, and hunt for hidden treasures. It’s the perfect mix of activities to make my evening hours disappear as I take on just one more styling battle against the Ebony Scissors before running off to climb the top of a tower where another collectible Whimstar is perched.

Infinity Nikki is a gacha game, a very specific style of freemium monetization that until now hadn’t started making inroads to the cozy gaming genre on PC. The various currencies can be daunting to a newbie but it’s still a great open world romp even if you guard your wallet and stick to playing for free.

Read more:Don’t sleep on Infinity Nikki’s stylist battles like I did—they’re secretly one of the coolest parts of the game

(Image credit: Pounce Light)

Tiny Glade - a small street with an inn

Tiny Glade

Style:Building toyTiny Glade is a delight for anyone with a builder’s soul. This is for everyone who plays The Sims entirely in build mode or lays out out their Stardew Valley farms in intricate aesthetic patterns. It gets compared toTownscapera lot, for lack of a better touchstone, because its procedural system reacts to how you combine objects together. Walking paths drawn intersecting with fences will create archways in those fences while windows on a building placed at ground level turn into doors, and so on.

What I enjoy most though its how far this single game pushed forward a micro genre that Townscaper created. There are more procedural building toys incoming now, but Tiny Glade singlehandedly set the bar quite high for what’s possible with the tech.

Read more:Tiny Glade won’t stop delighting me with new discoveries

Rusty’s Retirement snapped to the bottom of my monitor with Steam on a browser behind it.(Image credit: Mister Morris Games)

Rusty’s Retirement - a small farm on top of a steam page

Rusty’s Retirement

Style:Idler farm simRusty’s Retirement should be marked NSFW, not because of any adult material (it’s adorable) but because it can destroy your productivity. It’s an idle game farm sim that snaps to the lower quarter of your monitor and runs while you do normal tasks around it. Instead of wandering about the town like in Stardew, your expanding collection of little robots care for your growing farm while you decide what to play and which upgrades to buy.

Rusty gives just the right amount of control—letting me fiddle with the placements of all my fields and decorations and upgrades so that I have plenty of say in my layout. Be warned though that it does take quite a while to get to the point where your farm is fully automated because the robot who will replant seeds for you is pretty costly. So for a while you’ll be manually replanting whenever bare fields catch the corner of your eye.

I wouldn’t think a glorified desktop pet from the 2000s could be one of the best cozy games I played this year but it genuinely is. Rusty’s Retirement brought something I never would have expected to a genre that’s felt a little at risk of going stale and it did so in the most satisfying fashion.

Read more:Idle farming sim Rusty’s Retirement allows you to pour hours into farmwork whilst still doing other things

Bonus sixth cozy game pick

Played 28 cozy games this year.Played 28 cozy games this year.Kara PhillipsFellow cozy enjoyerAs another long-time cozy game player, Kara dove into an impressive 28 cozy games this year. She’s dropped in to give her own top pick as a bonus number six for the list.

Played 28 cozy games this year.Kara PhillipsFellow cozy enjoyer

Kara Phillips

As another long-time cozy game player, Kara dove into an impressive 28 cozy games this year. She’s dropped in to give her own top pick as a bonus number six for the list.

(Image credit: carrotcake)

The Garden Path

Style:Garden life simThe Garden Path feels like a life simulator stripped from a storybook. In its dappled watercolour world, you’ll meet a cast of whimsical yet slightly unsettling vegetable-headed characters, alongside some friendly animals. All of which are ready to send you out on a foraging quest or ask for your help on re-decorating an abandoned garden. If you want to slowly restore what could be a fairytale garden entirely at your own pace with no pressure, then The Garden Path is waiting for you.

It’s the epitome of a game you can pick up and put down when you fancy which is what I think makes the best kind of cozy game. Time passes slowly in the background but you never feel the pressure of meeting deadlines. Some days I’ve signed in and had a few jobs to do, other days I’ve had nothing to do so I’ve walked around picking up ingredients for tea. It’s as laid back as you want to make it, and you’ll never feel the consequence of stopping to smell the roses everyone once in a while.

Read more:Relaxing gardening simulator The Garden Path is the breath of fresh air I’ve been in desperate need of

PRODUCTSFields of MistriaSky: Children of the LightInfinity NikkiTiny Glade

PRODUCTS

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Top 5 Cozy games of 2024#

Fields of Mistria#

The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals#

Sky: Children of the Light#

Infinity Nikki#

Tiny Glade#

Rusty’s Retirement#

Bonus sixth cozy game pick#

The Garden Path#