I don’t have any such games, but I know that Stardew Valley is a game that’s pretty divisive with regards to how cozy it is. The vibes the graphics and music give off are cozy, but I know that for some the gameplay can be stressful even if they consciously try not to minmax.
I’m still not even sure what a cozy game is supposed to be. Is it a specific genre, or any game that can feel “cozy” to play? (And what does that mean, really?)
Not entirely sure! It was a point of discussion on this community once. I personally think it’s one of those vague terms where you know it when you see it, and everyone has a vague idea of what you mean, but when you try to hammer down the specifics of what makes a cozy game and what is not a cozy game there’s a lot of disagreement.
I did find an article that tries to define what makes a cozy game cozy and think it makes a lot of good points.
For me, cozy is a game that I can shut my brain off to or play while I listen to a book or something. Any kind of time gating automatically disqualifies a game as cozy for me because I hate to be rushed or feel like I’m missing something. I’ll drop a game if I find out that there was some cool thing or story beat arbitrarily hidden or locked because I passed some kind of milestone in a quest.
I think the general accepted idea of cozy is games with little to no pressure or time gating and no combat or options to make combat easy. Farming sims do well in the cozy community because there’s usually no rush and a lot of little low impact things to do to keep you comfortably busy without being overwhelming. Top it all off with a pastel color pallet, and you’ve got a lot of people’s definition of cozy lol