I Hate Cosy Gaming

Fancy owning a farm?

Not since Stalin have we seen so much collectivised farming.

Since the release of 2016’s Stardew Valley: a game about fleeing the corporate rat race to live on an idyllic farm, fight big corpo and renovate the local dom kultury we have seen an explosion of very similar, very samey looking other games about having a jolly good time frolicking in the countryside, often with friends if you can find some to be bored with you.

With all due respect to Stardew Valley, the fact that it’s the original (I’m sorry Harvest Moon fans) has the mine to explore and the realistic threat of gentrification and the death of small business makes it the only game of its kind I can stomach. It seems every Switch Direct or month we get one of these things spat out onto the E-Shop or Steam and I have to ask, with Stardew Valley already being the price of a Wii game from CEX… who is buying all these knock-offs?

Is the full 3D and disgustingly saccharine art-style of Fae Farm worth the extra price?

Moving on, we have the wider ‘cosy game’ genre which often has significant overlap with the Stardew knock-offs. Now, let’s be honest, there are some days when you’re tired or frustrated when a nice, relaxing game is more appealing than your daily hour of ranked Tekken or the next leg of your Dark Souls 2 Ladle Run, I totally get it… but I also don’t want to be bored.

One of my biggest issues with this genre is that they’re just so bloody boring and seem to have an unpleasant, amateurish blemish to them.

Take Animal Crossing: New Horizons for example. I’ve tried to get into this game so many times, with its lovely soundtrack, charming art-style and personality but the game is just boring! I’d love for someone to comment and tell me how they do it, I have friends who have 300+ hours in the game just crafting and decorating, it drives me insane to play it. Worse, it lacks so many basic quality of life features: why do items have such small stack sizes? Why do most items not stack? Why is moving objects such a pain? Why do my tools break so often? It’s small stuff but it all adds up to make the game an absolute chore for me.

Finally, I want to wrap up by touching on my most hated aspect of these games: how infantilising they are, specifically to women.

I know this is a topic that will make some people’s eyes roll so far that they resemble Wii Sports Bowling and don’t worry, this isn’t the beginning of my downfall into a culture wars grifter but it has to be said. So many of those games are clearly marketed towards women or young girls with baby-blues and pinks splattered all over them and gameplay made as braindead as possible and I have to ask, women, do you really want this?

I have known many women who played/play video games before and I can’t think of any who didn’t recoil at seeing some of these, passing them up in favour of the Mario Karts and Kirbys of the world. Nobody wants to feel pandered to.

Cosy doesn’t have to mean childish and relaxing doesn’t have to mean brainless and that’s why I hate cosy games.