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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
We know that cosy games have big audiences – so where's my epic Call the Midwife sim?
I am 85 hours into Death Stranding 2, an apocalyptic nightmare about Earth becoming infected with death monsters, and I've realised that I'm playing it as a cosy game. For hours at a time, I trundle along the photorealistic landscapes in my pick-up truck, delivering parcels to isolated communities and building new roads. The only reason I complete the main story missions is to open new areas of the map so that I can meet new people and build more roads. I find it blissfully enjoyable. Of course, I am far from alone in playing video games this way. 'Cosy games' have become a thriving cottage industry over the past five years, led by crossover successes such as Minecraft, Stardew Valley and Untitled Goose Game, but also housing hundreds of smaller titles that appeal to highly engaged communities. On Steam this month you'll discover Catto's Post Office, a delightful game about a feline postal worker, Fruitbus, a cute food truck management sim, MakeRoom, an interior design challenge, and Tiny Bookshop, which is about running … a tiny bookshop. Most of these games are united by the same elements: small teams, often young, often working remotely; short play spans; low-stakes challenges; and highly stylised visuals, as an aesthetic choice and an economic necessity. But why, if the audience for cosy games has been firmly established, aren't there more lavish mainstream, triple-A examples? It's clear producers such as Ubisoft, EA and Xbox are finding it tough to come up with fresh ideas – that's why they've all spent (wasted) many millions trying to make the next identikit live service shooter to compete with Fortnite. So why not, I don't know, try to make a big open-world adventure based around positive interactions and soft drama? The TV, film and book industries are crammed with this sort of stuff. Where is my video game version of Call the Midwife? Why can't I ride a bicycle around 1950s east London delivering babies while faintly patronising decent working folk? Where is the video game equivalent of Downton Abbey or Gilmore Girls? Of course, I understand the most obvious answers. Like Hollywood, mainstream game development is largely based on minimising risk, and since the dominant cultural strand has always been action, violence and power fantasy, we inevitably end up where we are: with a thousand different combat adventures and not a single big-budget game about the love lives of a witty single mum and her sometimes exasperating daughter. But when we start to talk about culture rather than money, other factors come into play. 'I think cosy gamers are a nuanced audience that values stories and mechanics over visual fidelity,' says Moo Yu, creative director at small studio Team Artichoke, which is making an adorable anti-capitalist puzzle game named Mythmatch. 'While I do think big-budget cosy games are absolutely going to be developed, it is an audience that isn't begging for one and is capable of appreciating a wider range of experiences at a wider range of price points.' This is an important detail – high-end visuals and vast open worlds aren't necessarily the prize goal, they're just one aesthetic and immersive option. Untitled Goose Game would perhaps not have been so amusing if the lovely village had been photorealistic and the horrible goose constructed from 100,000 texture-mapped polygons. Stardew Valley is beautiful because it resembles a vividly colourful retro game, not despite it. Art is not just about slavish reproduction, thank goodness. Part of the cosiness of the cosy genre is the restriction of both choice and outcome; the game takes your hand and says come this way, you are safe. My lifelong friend Jon Cartwright is a veteran game developer who mentors small studios in Australia and New Zealand. When I emailed him about all this he replied: 'When I think of a cosy game, I think of limited scope/size. And that's been a function of them broadly being developed by smaller indie teams with limited budgets. But I think with the overload of … well, everything going on in the world, and especially during the stress of Covid, having a small, safe environment with low stakes gameplay was a really untapped market. The fact that the visuals were 'simple' was another source of comfort and charm.' Charm is hard to replicate – it won't materialise because you've developed an expensive new graphics engine, or because you have 500 staff working on it for 18 hours a day. You can't build hi-tech charm centres in the desert. It can happen in big games, just like it can in big TV dramas, but it's a limited and unstable commodity. And in fact, the whole notion of the cosy game as an identifiable genre or deliberate play metric is still relatively young; games for so long, were mostly about winning. The verbs and adjectives of games about being nice to people have yet to be formalised. There's a hoary old cliche that games are the opposite of film because explosions are cheap but a closeup shot of a human face showing emotion is wildly expensive. You could say that, in an interactive medium with historically limited visual naturalism, it's been easier to create drama through having someone shoot at you than ask you on a date. But we have a hundred years of animation history to show us how charm, cosiness and emotional intimacy can be drawn from the most symbolic and stylised palettes. Moo Yu is certain that mainstream, naturalistic cosy epics will happen – in fact, he cites the fashion-focused role-playing game Infinity Nikki as an example. Until then, I will be in Death Stranding 2, having to fake care about chiral contamination and extinction entities just so I can rescue kangaroos, visit inventors and drive my truck through irradiated landscapes of considerable beauty. Sometimes you have to play their game to win your own. August is proving a spectacular month for retro arcade collections and I cannot resist recommending one more before I regretfully return to the 21st century. Operation Night Strikers is a collection of four acclaimed Taito shooters from the late-1980s including the seminal light gun blaster Operation Wolf, essentially an interactive combination of the action flicks Rambo and Commando. Also here are its decent sequel Operation Thunderbolt, plus two lesser-known greats – cyberpunk flying car shooter Night Striker and Space Gun, a frenetic take on Aliens, complete with face huggers and flame throwers. As usual for modern collections, save functions have been added, and if you get the Switch version, you can use your JoyCon as a makeshift light gun. It's not very accurate, but it'll remind veteran arcade dwellers of using Operation Wolf's original mounted Uzi gun controller. These colourful, fast and ridiculous popcorn games perfectly capture the spirit of the era, with their smooth scrolling 2D backdrops, banging electro-pop soundtracks and monosyllabic, muscle-bound heroes. You'll be back. Available on: PC, Switch Estimated playtime: 10-plus hours In a story that will strike a chord with anyone who remembers the antics of Veruca Salt, McDonald's Japan has had to cancel a Pokémon promotion due to massive food waste and rampant scalping. According to Eurogamer, an exclusive Pikachu card was made available as part of a limited-edition Happy Meal deal, but fans queued for hours, got into fights and discarded their unwanted food in the streets. Inevitably, scalpers were out in force attempting to horde the cards, which are now on auction sites at vastly inflated prices. It's always worth reading Rob Fahey's industry essays on This week he looks at the unsuccessful success of PlayStation, analysing why and how the console is raking in revenue, despite plenty of mis-steps, including the seemingly obligatory pivot to live service, which has failed to yield any noticeable rewards. Has it really been 20 years since Xbox achievements changed game design? To mark the occasion, AV Club has written an interesting analysis of their arrival, focusing on how gamers reacted to having their dopamine reserves so heavily commodified. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Mandrake – the rural life sim that lets you befriend a river and eavesdrop on the dead Tiny Bookshop – a truly cosy escape made with readers in mind 'It's not just football with blood': Fear FA 98 is the Silent Hill meets Fifa 98 mashup we never knew we needed Bernband's alien landscape is the perfect place for digital wandering – just don't expect a map This one came in from Rich John on BlueSky: 'Is it healthy for the industry to have a juggernaut like GTA VI sucking up lots of the headlines and (expectedly) money? How does it impact other publishers?' Well, put it this way: no major games company is going to be putting up its big hope for 2026 in the same launch window as Rockstar's long-awaited behemoth. When the game was originally slated for a late 2025 launch, three triple-A developers told industry newsletter the Game Business they were giving it a wide berth. This can be hugely disruptive to development teams who may have spent years planning for a specific release slot – it can also create a media and marketing black hole, where for a few weeks, no one is interested in anything else. However, it's not all bad. When GTA V arrived in 2013, it didn't destroy everything in its path – casual mobile games such as Puzzle & Dragons and Candy Crush did fine, as did titles with dedicated fanbases such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Also, a massive hit like GTA brings wider attention, interest and potentially investment to the whole industry, and there is plenty of money to be made from releasing similar titles in the wake of the original – Grand Theft Auto spawned a whole genre of gangland adventures from Saints Row to Sleeping Dogs, while also lending innovative new design features to the entire market (GTA Online was, after all, the original live service experiment). So yes, it's healthy. Kind of. The immediate financial shock can be challenging for other studios, but GTA V showed that casual gamers and dedicated fans of other franchises didn't abandon everything and flock to Rockstar. Furthermore, the aftermath of a spectacular success can open new opportunities. After all, before Star Wars, no Hollywood studio would have touched a big budget sci-fi flick, but in the following years, we got Alien, Blade Runner, The Thing and the Star Trek movies. Success is inspiring – even when it happens to our rivals. If you've got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – email us on pushingbuttons@
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
We know that cosy games have big audiences – so where's my epic Call the Midwife sim?
I am 85 hours into Death Stranding 2, an apocalyptic nightmare about Earth becoming infected with death monsters, and I've realised that I'm playing it as a cosy game. For hours at a time, I trundle along the photorealistic landscapes in my pick-up truck, delivering parcels to isolated communities and building new roads. The only reason I complete the main story missions is to open new areas of the map so that I can meet new people and build more roads. I find it blissfully enjoyable. Of course, I am far from alone in playing video games this way. 'Cosy games' have become a thriving cottage industry over the past five years, led by crossover successes such as Minecraft, Stardew Valley and Untitled Goose Game, but also housing hundreds of smaller titles that appeal to highly engaged communities. On Steam this month you'll discover Catto's Post Office, a delightful game about a feline postal worker, Fruitbus, a cute food truck management sim, MakeRoom, an interior design challenge, and Tiny Bookshop, which is about running … a tiny bookshop. Most of these games are united by the same elements: small teams, often young, often working remotely; short play spans; low-stakes challenges; and highly stylised visuals, as an aesthetic choice and an economic necessity. But why, if the audience for cosy games has been firmly established, aren't there more lavish mainstream, triple-A examples? It's clear producers such as Ubisoft, EA and Xbox are finding it tough to come up with fresh ideas – that's why they've all spent (wasted) many millions trying to make the next identikit live service shooter to compete with Fortnite. So why not, I don't know, try to make a big open-world adventure based around positive interactions and soft drama? The TV, film and book industries are crammed with this sort of stuff. Where is my video game version of Call the Midwife? Why can't I ride a bicycle around 1950s east London delivering babies while faintly patronising decent working folk? Where is the video game equivalent of Downton Abbey or Gilmore Girls? Of course, I understand the most obvious answers. Like Hollywood, mainstream game development is largely based on minimising risk, and since the dominant cultural strand has always been action, violence and power fantasy, we inevitably end up where we are: with a thousand different combat adventures and not a single big-budget game about the love lives of a witty single mum and her sometimes exasperating daughter. But when we start to talk about culture rather than money, other factors come into play. 'I think cosy gamers are a nuanced audience that values stories and mechanics over visual fidelity,' says Moo Yu, creative director at small studio Team Artichoke, which is making an adorable anti-capitalist puzzle game named Mythmatch. 'While I do think big-budget cosy games are absolutely going to be developed, it is an audience that isn't begging for one and is capable of appreciating a wider range of experiences at a wider range of price points.' This is an important detail – high-end visuals and vast open worlds aren't necessarily the prize goal, they're just one aesthetic and immersive option. Untitled Goose Game would perhaps not have been so amusing if the lovely village had been photorealistic and the horrible goose constructed from 100,000 texture-mapped polygons. Stardew Valley is beautiful because it resembles a vividly colourful retro game, not despite it. Art is not just about slavish reproduction, thank goodness. Part of the cosiness of the cosy genre is the restriction of both choice and outcome; the game takes your hand and says come this way, you are safe. My lifelong friend Jon Cartwright is a veteran game developer who mentors small studios in Australia and New Zealand. When I emailed him about all this he replied: 'When I think of a cosy game, I think of limited scope/size. And that's been a function of them broadly being developed by smaller indie teams with limited budgets. But I think with the overload of … well, everything going on in the world, and especially during the stress of Covid, having a small, safe environment with low stakes gameplay was a really untapped market. The fact that the visuals were 'simple' was another source of comfort and charm.' Charm is hard to replicate – it won't materialise because you've developed an expensive new graphics engine, or because you have 500 staff working on it for 18 hours a day. You can't build hi-tech charm centres in the desert. It can happen in big games, just like it can in big TV dramas, but it's a limited and unstable commodity. And in fact, the whole notion of the cosy game as an identifiable genre or deliberate play metric is still relatively young; games for so long, were mostly about winning. The verbs and adjectives of games about being nice to people have yet to be formalised. There's a hoary old cliche that games are the opposite of film because explosions are cheap but a closeup shot of a human face showing emotion is wildly expensive. You could say that, in an interactive medium with historically limited visual naturalism, it's been easier to create drama through having someone shoot at you than ask you on a date. But we have a hundred years of animation history to show us how charm, cosiness and emotional intimacy can be drawn from the most symbolic and stylised palettes. Moo Yu is certain that mainstream, naturalistic cosy epics will happen – in fact, he cites the fashion-focused role-playing game Infinity Nikki as an example. Until then, I will be in Death Stranding 2, having to fake care about chiral contamination and extinction entities just so I can rescue kangaroos, visit inventors and drive my truck through irradiated landscapes of considerable beauty. Sometimes you have to play their game to win your own. August is proving a spectacular month for retro arcade collections and I cannot resist recommending one more before I regretfully return to the 21st century. Operation Night Strikers is a collection of four acclaimed Taito shooters from the late-1980s including the seminal light gun blaster Operation Wolf, essentially an interactive combination of the action flicks Rambo and Commando. Also here are its decent sequel Operation Thunderbolt, plus two lesser-known greats – cyberpunk flying car shooter Night Striker and Space Gun, a frenetic take on Aliens, complete with face huggers and flame throwers. As usual for modern collections, save functions have been added, and if you get the Switch version, you can use your JoyCon as a makeshift light gun. It's not very accurate, but it'll remind veteran arcade dwellers of using Operation Wolf's original mounted Uzi gun controller. These colourful, fast and ridiculous popcorn games perfectly capture the spirit of the era, with their smooth scrolling 2D backdrops, banging electro-pop soundtracks and monosyllabic, muscle-bound heroes. You'll be back. Available on: PC, Switch Estimated playtime: 10-plus hours In a story that will strike a chord with anyone who remembers the antics of Veruca Salt, McDonald's Japan has had to cancel a Pokémon promotion due to massive food waste and rampant scalping. According to Eurogamer, an exclusive Pikachu card was made available as part of a limited-edition Happy Meal deal, but fans queued for hours, got into fights and discarded their unwanted food in the streets. Inevitably, scalpers were out in force attempting to horde the cards, which are now on auction sites at vastly inflated prices. It's always worth reading Rob Fahey's industry essays on This week he looks at the unsuccessful success of PlayStation, analysing why and how the console is raking in revenue, despite plenty of mis-steps, including the seemingly obligatory pivot to live service, which has failed to yield any noticeable rewards. Has it really been 20 years since Xbox achievements changed game design? To mark the occasion, AV Club has written an interesting analysis of their arrival, focusing on how gamers reacted to having their dopamine reserves so heavily commodified. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion Mandrake – the rural life sim that lets you befriend a river and eavesdrop on the dead Tiny Bookshop – a truly cosy escape made with readers in mind 'It's not just football with blood': Fear FA 98 is the Silent Hill meets Fifa 98 mashup we never knew we needed Bernband's alien landscape is the perfect place for digital wandering – just don't expect a map This one came in from Rich John on BlueSky: 'Is it healthy for the industry to have a juggernaut like GTA VI sucking up lots of the headlines and (expectedly) money? How does it impact other publishers?' Well, put it this way: no major games company is going to be putting up its big hope for 2026 in the same launch window as Rockstar's long-awaited behemoth. When the game was originally slated for a late 2025 launch, three triple-A developers told industry newsletter the Game Business they were giving it a wide berth. This can be hugely disruptive to development teams who may have spent years planning for a specific release slot – it can also create a media and marketing black hole, where for a few weeks, no one is interested in anything else. However, it's not all bad. When GTA V arrived in 2013, it didn't destroy everything in its path – casual mobile games such as Puzzle & Dragons and Candy Crush did fine, as did titles with dedicated fanbases such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty. Also, a massive hit like GTA brings wider attention, interest and potentially investment to the whole industry, and there is plenty of money to be made from releasing similar titles in the wake of the original – Grand Theft Auto spawned a whole genre of gangland adventures from Saints Row to Sleeping Dogs, while also lending innovative new design features to the entire market (GTA Online was, after all, the original live service experiment). So yes, it's healthy. Kind of. The immediate financial shock can be challenging for other studios, but GTA V showed that casual gamers and dedicated fans of other franchises didn't abandon everything and flock to Rockstar. Furthermore, the aftermath of a spectacular success can open new opportunities. After all, before Star Wars, no Hollywood studio would have touched a big budget sci-fi flick, but in the following years, we got Alien, Blade Runner, The Thing and the Star Trek movies. Success is inspiring – even when it happens to our rivals. If you've got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – email us on pushingbuttons@
Forbes
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
10 Of The Best-Looking Indie Games From 2025's Summer Showcases
You know it's a busy time for the industry when the first major console release for nearly five years is immediately overshadowed by days of showcases that throw brilliant game after brilliant game at your face. But with so many titles hitting you about the eyes, chin, and nose, it's hard to figure out what needs to be wishlisted. As a huge fan of smaller studios, which have smashed it out of the park this week, I've drawn together 10 releases that cannot be forgotten by anyone looking to play the next generation of indie darlings in 2025 and beyond. As with any list like this, especially for small studios, it won't capture all the greats, so be sure to share any that you love in the comments or reach out to me through my Linktree, because the little guys deserve our love more than ever. Developer: House HousePublisher: PanicRelease date: 2026 God knows we need more co-op games, but few seem quite as exciting as Big Walk, the latest project from House House (Untitled Goose Game). It's weird because Big Walk is largely unexciting as a premise, but its ideas and technology are so incredibly clever, you wonder why it hasn't been done before. The explainer trailer is one of the most fascinating things to come out of the 2025 gaming scene, and you'd be mad to miss out on it: So, yeah — in Big Walk, you go on a big walk with friends. There's a massive focus on communication; it employs a natural-sounding, proximity-based voice chat system that's governed by distance, while gestures and message boards can be used when you can't hear your friends, if they're on a faraway ridge or behind soundproof glass. Between House House's pedigree and the strength of the ideas, this could be one of the best indie games to arrive in 2026. Developer: Sans Strings StudioPublisher: TBDRelease date: TBA If Avenue Q met Punch-Out!!, it'd be Felt That: Boxing. This might be one of the most brilliant concepts of the last few years, and one superpowered by a ridiculously high visual potential, even if the trailer emphasises that it's rendered in the game engine, rather than being actual gameplay: You assume the role of the weedy Ezra 'Fuzz-E' Wright, a puppet 'with a heart of felt and fists of… also felt,' who enters the Tournament of a Million Punches to save his childhood orphanage from demolition. It's a story with well-trodden tropes, but that's part of its hilarious charm. The fact that Felt That: Boxing is yet to finalize a publisher can only be due to one of two reasons: either it's not actively courting anyone, or there are literally dozens of companies (fittingly) fighting one another for the rights to this, because it looks like a masterpiece in the making. Developer/publisher: NikkiJayRelease date: June 24 At least one of this list's games is coming sooner than you think — in fact, it drops in just over two weeks. Solo dev NikkiJay's Quantum Witch is a narrative, choice-driven adventure that draws on the point-and-click style perfected by LucasArts in the 90s. You enjoy the journey of Ren, a shepardess in her 20s who gets 'thrown into a multiversal conflict while on a fetch quest to find her lost flock.' This is a game of choices — difficult ones, at that — in which tasks range from finding your wife and offering gifts to friends, to speaking with a skeleton who can see through time and dethroning God. Quantum Witch is one of those games that doesn't give much away ahead of its release, but I'm glad NikkiJay has kept her cards close to her chest — this has all the hallmarks of a fantastic experience that'll thrive on surprises. Developer: Kong Orange, WiredFly, Morten SøndergaardPublisher: Epic Games PublishingRelease date: 2026 Out of Words is 'about the doubt and confusion that comes with communicating first-time love.' This two-player game, clearly inspired by Split Fiction, Unravel, and Harold Halibut, is among the most beautiful indie games showcased this week, and an instant wishlist addition for co-op fans. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder It's the result of a three-way collaboration between Kong Orange — the creator of Felix the Reaper — with stop-motion experts WiredFly and Danish poet Morten Søndergaard. The physical craft and sheer attention to detail it offers are off the scale; here's hoping it has the narrative to match its stablemates. Developer: Beethoven and DinosaurPublisher: Annapurna InteractiveRelease date: 2025 Mixtape has been on the cards for a long old time. This narrative-driven adventure from Beethoven and Dinosaur takes place at the end of high school, when a group of teens relive memories through vignettes inspired by mixtape songs — a coming-of-age tale built around a fantastic soundtrack. I'd put a solid chunk of my mortgage on this being a banger, but maybe I'm a little biased. I named the developer's debut, The Artful Escape, the best indie game of 2021, and I still stand by it; it might well be the best thing I played that year outright, even though I adored Deathloop. If anyone can do something well and differently, it's Beethoven and Dinosaur. Developer: Outerloop GamesPublisher: Annapurna InteractiveRelease date: Early 2026 Another big-hitter from Annapurna's game publishing division is Dosa Divas: One Last Meal, the follow-up to 2023's immortal Thirsty Suitors. This turn-based RPG sees 'two sisters and their trusty spirit-mech fighting corpos and reuniting with loved ones, one snack at a time.' With elements of its predecessor as well as the spectacular Venba, Dosa Divas sees Amani and Samara reconnect with loved ones in a weird dystopia as they fight against a fast food empire, cooking tasty food and reviving the local community. If it has the same humor and character depth as its predecessor, it'll be a sure-fire success. Developer/publisher: DORFteamRelease date: TBA Anything that aims to capture the magic of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 deserves all of our time. D.O.R.F. goes one step further, combining this influence with the Fallout universe, making it one of the most irresistible real-time strategy games in years. Is it isometric? Check. Does its score sound like it's heavily inspired by Frank Klepacki? You betcha. Are bolts of electricity a common form of attack? You're goddamn right. Is it set in a universe you'd love to visit but would hate to live in? Yes yes yes yes yes. D.O.R.F. knows what it's doing; it's the perfect example of fan service. Developer: Vermila StudiosPublisher: Blumhouse GamesRelease date: 2025 Crisol: Theater of Idols, which I covered when Blumhouse Games launched its six-strong collection of debut horror titles, is an irresistible first-person game set in Spain that delves into folklore, religion, and creepy statues that are possessed by malicious flesh, and out to get you. You delve into Tormentosa, a tainted realm filled with legends and rituals, where monstrous saint statues come to life with the hope of ending yours. If that wasn't enough, you use your own blood as ammunition. It's the type of affair you can't wait to lose sleep over. Developer: Eyes OutPublisher: Blumhouse GamesRelease date: 2026 That's not all from Blumhouse, thanks to the sumptuous Sleep Awake, which combines A Nightmare on Elm Street with Control, Still Wakes the Deep, and plenty of other devilish influences. Its trailer makes you realize how much effort has gone into creating a hellish, haunting dreamscape. It's the brainchild of Spec Ops: The Line creator Cory Davis and Nine Inch Nails' Robin Finck, and places you in 'an unknown city where its denizens are disappearing in their sleep.' Anyone who has the strength to stay awake still needs to avoid death cults and fight off otherworldly forces. I can't wait to regret playing it in 2026. Developer: MetronomikPublisher: Shueisha GamesRelease date: 2026 Last but certainly not least is No Straight Roads 2, the follow-up to 2020's original NSR from Malaysian studio Metronomik. Given that its predecessor was arguably the coolest game of COVID times, there's every reason to believe this long-awaited sequel will raise the bar again. In this music-infused action-RPG, 'music is your power, your crew is your weapon, and your tour van is your HQ.' Mayday and Zuke, A.K.A. Bunk Bed Junction, return in their bid to climb the international charts by fighting fellow musical stars, but they're not alone, thanks to two new playable bandmates with their own styles and mechanics. If you've got any recommendations for indies that emerged this year, give me a shout via Linktree — I'm all ears.
