Gaming: My 5 Favorite 'cozy' Games That Don't Actually Look Like Cozy Games

Give your eyes a little break from aesthetically-mandated adorableness while still having chilled out experiences.

I've made cozy gaming most of my personality in the past several years, but even I sometimes feel numb to the aesthetically-mandated cotton candy color palette. Sometimes I want to play a cozy game while giving my eyes a little rest from the pastel apocalypse. I also just like trying to slip in some chill games to my friend group's rotation without them noticing that I've put cauliflower into their mashed potatoes—it's good for their blood pressure!

For this list of cozy games without cozy aesthetics I've banned pastel colors, chibi characters, and I've even managed to go completely pixel art free. That last part is maybe a little more hardcore than I needed to go (otherwise something like Graveyard Keeper would have been a nice fit) but I wanted to completely set aside the cozy goggles if at all possible.

Cozy style: Management and explorationSteam Deck: ✅ Verified

I need you to trust me when I say that this game about an exiled Yakuza tough and his severed pinkie mascot sidekick is a cozy game—the best one, according to our Game of the Year 2025 awards. It may start with a street fight, but the entire rest of Promise Mascot Agency is just driving around a quaint old truck, making friends, helping the locals, and bringing prosperity back to a languishing town. There really isn't anything more textbook cozy game than that.

Michi takes over a love hotel in a haunted old town and begins recruiting dozens of mascots to work for his agency. You'll help with high stakes obstacles like poorly stacked boxes, collecting old arcade cabinets, and running a counter campaign against the corrupt mayor. Most of your time in Promise Mascot agency is just driving your truck around a map full of collectibles while on errands for your pals, a much more chilled out experience than the initial pitch makes it sound.

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This one toes the line of cozy aesthetic, but it isn't really pastel so I'm counting it. Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle adventure game where you're teaching yourself four new (made up) languages in extreme immersion style. You start with simple puzzles like understanding greetings and then move on to tougher phrases like figuring out plural conjugations from context.

Despite how that sounds, it's so much more fun than just a fantasy grammar lesson

Source: PC Gamer