If you've been here a bit dear reader, you know I love Bloodbourne. For those who aren't familiar, Bloodbourne is a Soulslike game where you play as a monster hunter to kill monsters infected by bad blood. The point more or less, is that you get into really difficult fights, maybe die, and than try again. Unlike rouguelikes or roguelites, you keep your invertory and level-ups.
Now, here's the point. I find Bloodbourne very cosy. As, it's more or less a meditative system in which you tend to get better and learn and eventually enemies which were able to almost one-shot you just become a minor inconvinence. I think that feeling of growth is honestly what I crave with games. And since that's how people describe cosy games, is it not a cosy game?
By this defination, I wander what other games count as cosy?
Skyrim is mostly pretty cosy. Especially if you've gotten all the DLCs. You get the fun of exploring, more simplistic combat, collectibles and the fantasy of being a choosen one. Plus, later on, or with the dlc's, you could get married and build your own house.
Well, unlike Bloodbourne, Skyrim does have more simple combat, focusing more or making the game way more sandbox, allowing the mix-match of many different weapon types and spells and what not.
Since Skyrim has a good mix of things to do and reasonably balenced difficulty is part of my reason why I believe Skyrim whould be counted as a cosy game.
Yes, Ultrakill has be described as, and I quote, "A FPS for the mentally unstable", I believe, it could count as a cosygame, namely because of the flow state and sandbox aspect.
And despite how Ultrakill is described, it does have a very reasonable balencing of difficulties, namely difficulites like Harmless and Lenient being quite accessable instead of other FPS games out there. Not to mention, it's one of the games where your characters don't level-up, rather your skills improve.
Say what you will about Cyberpunk, love it or hate it, but it honestly has damn good gameplay. No only can you spec into a play style, you can get cybernetics that will alter you're entire playstyle and that's not even mentioning environmental hazards, enemies and so on. The gig and side-quest system is pretty fun. Especially if you roleplay as a regular working merc who is just trying to earn money and move up in the world.
Depending on the game difficulty you choose at the beginning, the game can actually be pretty easy and lax. So, it is possible that you can play the game in a pretty chill manner, you know? More along the lines of just chilling.
I might be an unfair example here, as I have literally been playing racing games as long as I can remember. I mean, Need For Speed: Undercover was one of the first games I remember playing. So, the gameplay loop of a racing game is very much my wheelhouse.
Now, I believe NFS is a cosy game genre because of the fun of cars. Honestly, the free roam mode that some games give you is pretty cool. You could just drive around and enjoy the environment and radio. Or you could spend your money customising your car with colours, upgrades and even more interestingly style options, like spoilers, mags, sometimes underglows. It's honestly, probably, more of a cosy game if you enjoy cars and car culture.
Here's the thing. I'm sure most cosy gamers would go to bat for why I'm explaining cosy games wrong, which is fair. I don't entirely like what I keep seen as advertised as cosy games but I did start to look at how these gamers describe how cosy games makes them feel and well... I started seeing some simularities with how I felt playing some of my own games, namely Bloodbourne. And well, curiosity killed the cat, so here's this whole page on it.