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The start of winter is just around the corner, which means that cozy game season is in full swing. I love myself some cozy games: it’s almost a vice for me, indulging in the cozy lands of make believe.
I’ve played so many of these games that I’ve developed some rather strong opinions on them! Please enjoy this modest, early Christmas-y special. If you enjoy this kind of video, let me know what you think! It’s a great break for me as well, in between the heavier stuff.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Intro
02:22 – What is a Cozy Game?
03:49 – The Criteria
06:03 – Disney Dreamlight Valley
09:19 – Coral Island
12:44 – Harvest Moon (SNES)
14:18 – Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons, Generally
15:33 – Potionomics
17:04 – Sun Haven
19:23 – One Lonely Outpost
20:26 – Cozy Grove
21:55 – Verdent Skies
23:33 – Kynseed
25:03 – Spiritfarer
26:34 – My Time at Portia/Sandrock
28:58 – Rune Factory 4
30:23 – Animal Crossing
32:02 – Stardew Valley
35:25 – Conclusion
36:32 – Credits Gag
source
Go to https://buyraycon.com/moonchannel to get 15% off your Raycon
purchase this holiday season! Brought to you by Raycon.
Just wanted to chime in and correct The New Yorker. Hygge is not at all pronounced hoo-guh
I played Animal Crossing NH absolutely non-stop for just over a year during the pandemic, and then, like somebody who eats their favorite cake until they heave, I quit cold turkey and never looked back.
I still have my favorite villagers and find the sound effects charming and nostalgic. But I can't return. Good bye, island.
The most cozy game according to me is an adventure game Dreamfall, The Longest Journey.
Another fab video keep 'em coming!
Moony got the Raycon!
Very nice concept, I would like to see how the list evolve.
Personnaly, this may be an unusual take, but my version of cosy are merchant games, specially travelling merchant. The game that awoke me to this was Sunless Sea, but it's very proeminent dark story and roguelike mechanick made it built for a VERY different kind of feel.
For a long, merchant of the sky was the only game that could scratch that itch. It got the right mechanics, but is overall too lacking in either main story content or random event and becomes way too repititive as a consequence.
However, I was blessed this summer as Merchant of the six Kingdoms dropped out of nowhere. It was exactly what I was looking for in terms of traveling merchant kind of game. It could be a bit overwelhming if you approach it with a completionnist mindset, but otherwise the ability to work from NPC's propositions allow to not need to remember the value of everything. Unless you try hard mode. I advise against this.
I did try moonlighter, but something about it wasn't working out from me. Funnily enough, Recettear (which is clearly its inspiration) has a much better overall feel despite weaker combat.
SPIRITFARER MENTIONED LET'S GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
For me, RF4 isn't as good as it could be because I'm a queer woman, and it makes it kinda hard if I can't romance other girls. Which sucks because I share your opinion on RF5.
Im happy to see Spiritfarer on the list. It's one of the only ones on here i've really sunk my teeth into short of fully completing everything after the main story. It was one of the few games that really punched me in the gut & broke through a lot of my usual stoicism when playing games with lore & plot. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that it really nailed the sort of Ghibli angle with thematics & imagery very well actually. Not to mention maintaining a boat to house lost travelers/souls was interesting & kind of different at the time for me. Sometimes i got a little lost with a lot of the managing systems & resources, but I actually WANTED to crack that system & that's kind of rare for me with a lot of these games. I remember playing that for more than a years time & growing to love really every aspect of that game. There is genuine attachments to all the players involved in the journey, so i definitely understand the overwhelming existentialism that this game really hangs on to cause some moments were just a LOT to bear.
I can't believe that you casually dropped that you were a top 200 StarCraft 2 player in a cozy game tierlist.
(Thank you for the tierlist I've been absolutely itching to play a new cozy game this past week)
Also, please keep making these, I have a bad habit of playing these in very early access and then not knowing which games are worth coming back to when they're finished!
Great video! Monster hunter world is my cozy game lol
You're a very good creator who can make any kind of content informative, entertaining, and relaxing! I watch your videos because I like seeing you express your ideas and not necessarily because I'm expecting a certain kind of content from you, so you should just do what makes you happy and we'll follow you along the way!
Does our cozy lawyer not have a discord server?
I feel like the reason i stick around moon channel in general IS your use of legal terms and controlled definitions and it makes me want to listen to you speak on the topic the video is about. Even if normally I dont care about the topic being spoken about, hearing you clarify and allowing me to understand these terms better has actually given me some interest in topics that i had previously been either avoiding or indifferent to. Also i wishlisted several games from this video and hope others have found some new things to like also! Thanks moony! You are carving your niche very well! 🙂
Harvestella is definitively not a cozy game and you should not approach it like one. It is a JRPG first and foremost. That's not at all a bad thing, the story is great and the music is spectacular. But understand what you are getting into with it.
amazing video! you should totally make more like this!
Law student here — also no slouch as far as what scares me (nothing to a fault), basically never a crier — and yet WAS BAWLING HYSTERICALLY at Spiritfarer. It’s a magnificent, beautiful game, but it will wreck anyone with a soul.
Quite enjoyed Rune Factory 4 until a certain cutscene where it becomes apparent that the flower vendor, one of the npc's you can't avoid if you want to work on the farm. Is an absolute piece of shit.
Honestly I have a hard time with Stardew Valley due to both the time limit of the day-night cycle and the energy metre. It was a similar problem with Minecraft (where I put up with the day-night cycle but slowly fell away when hunger was added). But on the other hand Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda game and it has a very strict time limit so I'd say its energy bars are my gaming 'trigger' (and now that I think about it I avoid units in RTS games with energy bars too). I don't play 'cozy games' but games where I've had a feeling of coziness include: Celeste (action-platformer), Doki Doki Literature Club (visual novel – and I think a lot also aim at a cozy feeling), A Hat in Time (Action-platformer), The Trine series (Action-platformer), Worlds Adrift (???), and even certain grand strategy games like EU4 (admit it, being surrounded by a crowd of loyal vassals is a cozy feeling…What? Just me?). All of which is to say I think I enjoy coziness as a side dish.
Please play the original Harvest Moon so you can know the pain of throwing your carefully curated gift on the ground and watch it disappear. Become like me
For a long time, Baldur's Gate 2 had been my cozy game for the winter months.
Hi Moony! I love your videos and would consider them pretty cozy themselves, but lately they are becoming harder to watch. I watch YouTube on my TV and the ads every couple of minutes take the cozy out. Would you consider less ads for future videos?
I would looove to see another cozy tier list from you that features games that don't include farming mechanics! I love cozy games as a whole and I really want to love it more, but farming in games is not fun to me and it gets discouraging when the market seems to think that you can't have a cozy game unless you include that mechanic (fishing too, for that matter).
Honestly, cozy doesn't also just have to include life sims. Cozy can be any genre of game so long as it meets your requirements. For example, the Trials of Mana remake is a game I would consider super cozy, since to me it's not hard at all and harps back to traditional, simple, and fun JRPGs (same with Dragon Quest XI). Certain Visual Novels are also cozy since they're akin to the experience of sitting down with a cup of coco reading a nice book.
I was enjoying Stardew Valley until I found out you get CHASTISED if you don't complete a bunch of objectives before a certain time limit. Ruined the game for me.
Cozy games are not the kind of games I want to powerplay/minmax/optimize/speedrun.
Omg starkid song??
This was fun. I enjoy listening to you going on tangents because its obvious to me how much you love these. Your enjoyment makes this fun. I hope to hear your report on "out and about" when it comes out.❤
Team Nina!? You uncultured swine!
I, for one, appreciate how precisely defined the terms of this Tier-list are.
I love your channel and your voice is so soothing 😌 If you like dressing up and beautiful sights you should try playing sky children of the light ❤
This was so endearing.
Re: the fiddliness of the Animal Crossing formula, New Leaf pushed the grind too far for my tastes. For example, in early AC games you got a golden shovel by burying a shovel in a glowing spot, then growing a shovel tree. This is such surreal, 'my dad works at Nintendo, trust me bro, there's a Mew in the trash can' Easter egg logic, and I loved that. By New Leaf though, it became an Achievement reward for performing certain tasks dozens of times.
New Leaf also had so many items to collect, and an interconnected storage system. This was a double-edged sword, because it meant you could never get more storage when your home and storage was inevitably maxed out by Nintendo memorabilia. I was surprised how suffocating I found the experience.
You probably have been asked this before, but have you played Judgment series?
Spiritfarer is fantastic. I do recommend everyone play it. I mean, obviously, Stardew Valley is great and everyone sings its praises but Spiritfarer doesn't get enough love.
Please continue with these kinds of videos