I was a cozy gamer long before we all gathered 'round that term and I'm thrilled that the cozy games label has brought new and returning PC gamers into the fold. So my list of best cozy games is a mix: puzzle and adventure games that hail from before the days of #cozy dominance, and the best of the new cozy generation too. If you want farm sims, head over to my list of best games like Stardew. There are so many of them that I didn't want them to overwhelm the rest of their cozy siblings!
Welcome to my overhauled best cozy games list! The newest game here is Promise Mascot Agency (yes it's cozy I swear!) but there's some shakeup likely coming later in September. One of my faves, Toem, has a sequel coming out and the long-awaited cyberpunk life sim Nivalis Nights is one I've been eyeing for quite a while and am keen to see if it's list-worthy.
Best cozy games on PC
A Short Hike
Style: 3D adventure
Play on: PC (Steam, Epic, GOG, itch), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
This single-serving adventure blew up back in 2019 and I was fully on the bandwagon. You're at a little mountain park just trying to hike to the peak for some cell service with fun little diversions and discoveries along the way. Stop and solve little quests for other hikers or look for extra hidden areas on the back side of the mountain. It's a grand little time climbing and flying your way around until you can find your way to the chilly summit. The flying part, in particular, is so satisfying.
Tiny Bookshop
Style: Shop management
Play on: PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, App Store, Google Play
I expected a game about books to play it safe with public domain stuff or just make up fake book titles. Tiny Bookshop does have the classics (and some made up stuff too) but it's also packed with modern fiction that I've actually read. The shop decorating and management is fun, but the real joy for me is when I get a customer asking for a coming-of-age fantasy and I pull a book off my fictional shelf that I've read in real life. I recommended one of my customers read an Avatar: The Last Airbender graphic novel that I have a copy of sitting right behind me in my office. It's a triple-shot of "I know that reference!" with a dash of showing a friend a book and them instantly enjoying it.
Chants of Sennaar
Style: Puzzle adventure
Play on: PC (Steam, Epic), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Trust a writer to geek out over a game about language. This is a puzzle adventure game where you progress by learning a new language. A fictional language, though, this isn't a Duolingo replacement. It starts out easy enough by having you figure out greetings or names of objects from context clues but then suddenly after mastering the first language you're using that to learn another language which you realize has a different sentence structure so the verbs are actually—it's great, trust me. The best part is how you use the notebook to pencil in your guesses on what words mean and see them reflected in dialogue until you lock in the correct translation.
Toem
Style: Puzzle adventure
Play on: PC (Steam) Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S
Nostalgia is one of the coziest emotions out there and that's always how I feel about a puzzle-y adventure game. Toem is a really cute one, sending you off on a stamp rally scavenger hunt to solve little riddles by snapping subjects with a camera. There are tons of little treats to discover and hidden objectives too. It's real bait for a completionist brain.
Donut County
Style: Physical puzzler
Play on: PC (Steam, GOG), PlayStation 4, App Store
Ever played a Katamari game? Donut County that, but the opposite. You're a hole that swallows up small stuff which somehow makes you a bigger hole that swallows bigger stuff until you can swallow all the stuff. It's a short and silly game about a girl and a raccoon creating mischief with magical cellphone-deployed holes all over town. I originally played this one on mobile, which I think may be the ideal experience (on your stomach making finger grease stains on your touch screen) but using a game pad to play on PC is probably the second best form of tactile hole control.
Dorfromantik
Style: Tile-based strategy
Play on: PC (Steam, GOG), Nintendo Switch
Dorfromantik scratches several of my cozy game itches at once: building, organizing, and strategizing. In the default game mode you're meant to score points by strategically placing each tile you draw to combine forests, cities, and rivers together but you can just go pure creative flow state and make a pretty map if you want to. I'm never getting back the two weekends this thing stole from me (complimentary).
Promise Mascot Agency
Style: Open-world exploration
Play on: PC (Steam, Humble, Epic), Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S
Yes, this is a game about a yakuza with a severed pinkie as a sidekick that begins with a gunfight but I lobbied to make it our best cozy game 2025 and I stand by that! This is a chilled-out open world questing and collecting game about managing mascots and making your profits rain down on a languishing rural Japanese town. The entire thing is played by driving a kei truck that can sprout wings and fly down a mountain after you upgrade it. There's a claw minigame. There's a sick soundtrack. There's absurdist humor and a found family. It's great.
Fabledom
Style: City-builder
Play on: PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, (soon: Google Play)
It's rare that I really want to sit down and get stuck into a city builder but Fabledom is the exact level of management challenge and coziness that I crave. It encourages you to spend time decorating and beautifying your city but things can get challenging if you don't prepare enough coal for winter. It's no Frostpunk, but the cold can set you back. I just love its idyllic little crop fields and silly mix of fairytale quests. Oh, and you can pick a neighboring monarch as a spouse by fulfilling their demands.
Potioncraft
Style: Shop sim + map exploration
Play on: PC (Steam, Epic, GOG), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 / 5, Xbox Series X|S, (soon: App Store, Google Play)
I'm always ready to gush about the crafty, tactile parts of Potioncraft: grinding herbs, pumping the bellows, and oh so carefully pouring water into a cauldron. I can design my own potion labels and names and add tabs to my recipe book too. It's all so delightfully witchy. A big part of the game also involves exploring around a hidden map of effects to concoct those recipes, and I'm a sucker for uncovering a blurry map by exploring.
Journey
Style: Exploration adventure
Play on: PC (Steam, Epic), Playstation 3 / 4, App Store
Journey is one of those games that doesn't age. It's got no words, no dialogue, incredibly beautiful scenery, and a soundtrack that will give you a Pavlovian tear-producing response to the sound of any cello for the rest of your life. It's a puzzle-lite adventure about learning to fly, braving the climb to the summit of a mountain, and all the sweet cloth creatures you meet along the way.
One of Journey's best bits is its understated approach to online co-op (I'm being vague on purpose in case you go in cold) which admittedly may not hold up these days as well as it did when more folks were playing it ten years ago. It's still a really beautiful game to play solo though, and the fact that I still see game trailers with a sand-surfing shot to this day tells me Journey really tapped into a primal sense of wonder with that bit.
Are you counting how many games on this list have flying in them? I think we've discovered my secret weakness.
Staff Picks
I'm the current Chief Cozy Officer of this list, but my fellow cozy-enjoyers have more favorites to add. Particularly Unpacking, which I specifically solicited because I know it deserves to be on this list but I still haven't personally played it (I know, I know).
Out and About
What's more cozy than running around picking random plants and learning what to do with them? This features everything I love about cozy games: town restoration, friendly neighbours, and taking on a new hobby you might not know much about in the first place.— Kara Phillips, Evergreen Writer
Unpacking
The best of two cozy gameplay staples: decorating spaces and satisfying chores. I love the puzzle aspect it brings to organization while also acknowledging there's no one way to do it. I can create my own satisfying solutions that speak to personal taste. —Andrea Shearon, Evergreen Writer
Readers' Choice
