The 7 Best Cozy Games to Play This Fall

As the air gets a little crisper and the days get shorter, cozying up with a chill video game sounds more and more appealing. We have some long-standing favorites—Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Stardew Valley, and The Sims 4 are at the top of the list. But if you’ve already played those classics and are looking for something new and a little different, we have plenty of games to relax with on the couch, whether you’re playing on your phone, PC, or console.

Cult of the Lamb

Rated T; Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation, Xbox

Cult of the Lamb is sort of like Animal Crossing, but instead of decorating cute homes for your villagers, you subject them to ritual sacrifice. It sounds dark and morbid—and technically, it is—but it’s also strangely relaxing. (Maybe that says something about me, but take my word for it.) The game sets you up as a lamb who has been sacrificed and brought back to life by an underworld deity under the condition that you start a cult in his name. To do this, you fight through roguelike levels to take down a rival cult and convert the adorable animals you find along the way into your loyal devotees. When you’re not fighting for your life, you return home to manage your own little colony by keeping your followers happy, farming resources, and making leadership decisions that impact both you and your cultists. Or, you can gamble your wealth away in an addicting minigame called Knucklebones.

—Haley Perry

Tsuki’s Odyssey

Rated E; iOS, Android

Tsuki’s Odyssey takes you to Mushroom Village, where all the characters are cute and the entire environment is beautifully illustrated in a style that reminds me of the Winnie-the-Pooh books. This passive-player game uses a real-world clock, so each time you log on, you find the characters doing different things based on the time of day. And it isn’t a big time commitment: It’s a game that you can spend just a few minutes on throughout the day. You’ll have low-stakes fun interacting with the villagers and furnishing your treehouse—it’s perfect for warm and fuzzy feelings on a cold day.

—Ivy Liscomb

Alto’s Adventure

Rated E; iOS, Android, Fire OS

This little game about a snowboarding llama farmer and the endless mountain ahead is one of the most peaceful gaming experiences I’ve ever had. Alto’s Adventure has a quiet and soothing soundtrack, and the understated graphics are absorbing without being overwhelming. The premise is simple: Your llamas have escaped, and you must glide down the mountain on your snowboard to catch them. You have no endgame to aim for, just new high scores—so curl up with a blanket, turn your brain off, and watch Alto skim over the snow.

—Ivy Liscomb

Ooblets

Rated E; Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox

Ooblets, a wholesome game about collecting creatures by winning dance battles, has been the chicken soup for my soul over the past year. You can challenge the creatures, called Ooblets, to turn-based dance battles if you acquire different resources by farming, cooking, and exploring. If you win, they join your squad and help you battle other Ooblets or tend to tasks around your farm. You can collect more than 50 different, wacky species—my personal favorite is Hermble, a birdlike critter with a terrible haircut on the sides of an otherwise bald head. He is a perfect specimen of nature. Ooblets has a surprising amount of things to do, an adorable art style, and a catchy selection of dance-off songs that never fails to cheer me up whenever I return to it.

—Haley Perry

Two Point Campus

Rated T; Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation, Xbox

Two Point Campus (and its medical-themed predecessor, Two Point Hospital) comes from two of the developers who worked on Theme Hospital and the Fable series back in the day. In a way, it feels like the best combination of the two, with its mix of tongue-in-cheek British humor and approachable simulation gameplay. In Two Point Campus, you manage your own university by building a curriculum of unconventional courses such as Wizardry, Internet History, and Money Wangling, the last of which teaches students how to get rich using unsavory financial techniques. You also design the look and the inner workings of the school, organize extracurricular activities, and keep an eye on your staff to make sure everything is running smoothly. Striking the right balance between structured gameplay and creative license, this game is ideal for people who prefer building things without feeling overwhelmed by freedom or confusing mechanics. Although running a successful business is the goal, the financial side is simple enough to grasp without getting too geeky—unless you want to. Two Point Hospital offers the same style of gameplay and bizarre elements, but in a hospital setting rather than on a university campus. If you like that premise better, it’s an amazing game, too.

—Haley Perry

Disney Dreamlight Valley

Rated E; Nintendo Switch, PC, macOS, PlayStation, Xbox

I expected Disney Dreamlight Valley to be an average Animal Crossing clone with a Disney coat of paint slapped on, but I was pleasantly mistaken. It has everything I want in a classic, cozy sim—soothing music, lovable characters, and endless domestic chores—but it weaves in a sweet story and polished gameplay that’s appealing for both kids and adults alike. Your goal is to restore Dreamlight Valley, a village once inhabited by familiar Disney characters before it was ruptured by an event called the Forgetting, which caused everyone to lose their memories and flee for safety. Scattered around the world are iconic Disney and Pixar characters, and you get to explore tons of whimsical regions to find them. I was delighted to see some of the more recent Disney characters, as well as those less represented in other Disney-spinoff games or in the theme parks, such as WALL-E and Moana. Their dedicated realms feel like they came straight out of the films, too, right down to the heaps of scrap metal and garbage littering WALL-E’s world. Dreamlight Valley’s homesteading tasks, such as gardening and fishing, easily consume much of your time, but it also has a satisfying skill-leveling system for the other characters that makes the friendships you cultivate feel worthwhile. The amount of customizable content and quests is almost overwhelming, but that’s one of the best things about cozy games—you can do it all at your own pace.

—Haley Perry

Megaquarium

Rated E; Nintendo Switch, PC, macOS, PlayStation, Xbox

Every once in a while, I get nostalgic for the original Zoo Tycoon game, which I used to play as a kid. I loved the simplicity of building out the park and the challenge of keeping everyone happy, and it was filled with cute animals to care for. Nowadays, Megaquarium scratches that itch for me—only instead of managing a park full of tigers and giraffes, I can obsess over my colorful sharks, fish, and crustaceans. It isn’t the most graphically advanced game, nor does it have the most extensive building mechanics, but I reach for this simulation game often because it’s both relaxing and engaging. Building and placing objects is easy, but running a successful aquarium requires a lot of strategy. As in any theme-park game, you have to keep your guests—and, more important, your sea creatures—happy. Each animal you unlock needs a specific environment to thrive, and you’ll spend hours designing fish tanks to nail the perfect temperature, population, and water quality for their well-being. You can choose between the guided campaign or the open sandbox mode, and you can set the game’s difficulty to make it as calm or as hectic as you’d like.

—Haley Perry

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Signe Brewster.