The Journey to Define Cozy Games

I’ve been on a journey for a few months trying to understand coziness in games from a top-down perspective. I think I’ve finally found, in reading some philosophy of language, a workable answer.

Backing up a bit, hi, I’m Chase. I’m here to admit I’m a cozy game nerd. I love cozy games so much that I’m making a cozy TTRPG. As cozy is so core to my work with Appleford Almanac, I feel I need a practical working definition.

But when I start talking with people about cozy games, whether board games, TTRPGs, or video games, I sometimes feel like we’re talking past each other. Majora’s Mask and D&D 3.5e are definitely not cozy to me, but I kept hearing those titles and others mentioned when I brought up cozy games in conversation.

I was really curious about this, since talking about cozy games is a minor obsession for me at the moment. What I initially saw were three broad clusters:

• Games designed to be cozy.
• Games that allowed for emergent cozy play.
• Games that evoked cozy feelings in the player.

I realized when people were talking past each other, often it was because they were thinking in a different cluster. I would be talking about community-centered play with manageable stakes and a high sense of agency, and the person in front of me would be thinking of a game that brought up a sense of awe, comfort, and nostalgia. 

Addressing the cozy design cluster, in 2017, a thinktank called Project Horseshoe produced a working definition of cozy specifically from the perspective of game design (Short et al.). While it certainly addresses some element of coziness that resonated, there are aspects that I strongly disagree with. For example, the idea that cozy games must have a low sense of urgency or no urgency at all. I found that bewildering, as notable and intentionally cozy game Stardew Valley has a great deal of urgency and ‘good stress,’ but in ways that aren’t punishing. Is it still a cozy game, by Project Horseshoe’s definition?

So when I started reading the works of the philosopher Wittgenstein, I found a great example that mirrors our quest to define cozy. 

Regarding seeking a definition for games themselves, Wittgenstein writes that “if you look at them you will not see something that is common to all, but similarities, relationships, and a whole series of them at that.” He shares examples of several different types of games, and points out that while there are commonalities, there is no hard and fast rule that encompasses and defines all games. “We see a complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail.” (Wittgenstein 1967 §§ 66 - 67).

When I think about this, and his following example of a family that has some resemblances among them, but don’t all look the same, I think about a complex Venn diagram that has more than 10 shapes in it, each representing a trait. In our example, at the overlaps of shapes, there are cozy games. Sometimes the cozy games in question line up with 7 or 8 cozy traits. Sometimes only 2 or 3. Thus should the definition include all 10 traits? Maybe. But the cozy games in question likely don’t share all of these traits. There is no hard and fast definition.

If only 2 or 3 traits can qualify for a given game, does ‘cozy’ become meaningless to describe it? Not at all, because family resemblance categories still have centers and edges, and some are extremely representative, some are borderline.

So, examining my broad clusters of conversational definitions earlier, these might not be independent and strict definitions, but different commonalities that can overlap.

Because of this, as I develop Appleford Almanac, I’m treating cozy as a bundle of design levers, like stakes, agency, pacing, social safety, and so on, rather than a simple genre checkbox. And as I continue to read and listen to designers, players, philosophers, and other folks, I’m gathering a list of cozy traits that help shape their understanding of cozy games. This list will be helpful for game designers, but also reviewers and players who want to talk about coziness.

For the traits themselves, I’d love to hear from you. Yes, you! Share your own experiences with cozy games of any kind. Try to consider multiple cozy games you enjoy and identify what they have in common, Wittgenstein-style.

Since my design work needs a practical working definition, not a perfect one, I’m excited to explore what cozy means in the gaming community. I think this can help shape not only my design work, but the overall conversation about cozy in games of any kind.

Short, Tanya X, et al. Coziness in Games: An Exploration of Safety, Softness, and Satisfied Needs. Project Horseshoe, 2017, https://projecthorseshoe.com/reports/featured/ph17r3.htm.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, Third Edition, Blackwell, 1967.