Amid all the chaos and stress of modern existence, it can feel exhausting to sit down at your game night to a cutthroat, VP-grabbing, efficiency euro. Even cooperative games can bring tight dice rolls and the downer ending of collective failure. Some nights, the raw stakes can breathe fresh life into days defined by destinies delivered without control.
Some nights, you just wanna wander about and explore, with failure not inevitable, but impossible.
Mythwind, The New Cozy Game Standard-Bearer
While the concept of the cozy game has been floating about for a few years now, prompted in no small way by digital drivers like Powerwashing Simulator, boardgaming’s cozy time is sweeping in this year thanks to a couple adventure-driven gems. Mythwind (Nathan Lige, Brendan McCaskell) is, by its own definition, a cozy game without a set end. See, you, with or without your friends, must venture forth into a magical valley to build a new town.
There’s a zillion euros with a similar setup, and with most I’d next talk about your limited actions, rounds, and potential to score points based on buildings before the game’s end. Mythwind tells you to take a breath instead. Building a town takes time, and who’s to say when it’s done?
This setup might devolve into mush, but Mythwind delivers an enticing structure suffused with progression. Your characters are unique, and their skills, whether farming, crafting, or similar rustic pursuits, will improve as you complete goals. These skills aren’t just different flavors of the same thing, but significant changes to gameplay—the farmer will interact with a given action differently than the crafter, making each space differ in value depending on your goals. Lean into your character’s advantages and you could optimize every season … or not.
Mythwind wants you to enjoy yourself within its toolbox. If you’d really like to be the best ranger the valley’s ever seen, then dig in and master your hunts with deadly intent. But if it’s late on a Tuesday and you’d rather sip some wine and fulfill a few casual orders without worry about nailing every last bit or beating your partner, Mythwind’s down to engage you with a pleasant puzzle. When the next session comes around, if your maxed-out ranger’s getting a tad stale, retire them and march right along with someone new. No strict goals or big boss fights necessary.
Your reward, beyond the tactile joys of learning every class and spending tensionless time with friends and family, comes in unlockable story bits and bobs. As you complete a new building, say, you’ll get a new story snapshot, giving more color to your growing valley village. This isn’t a burning quest or several novels worth of narrative meant to deluge you in proper nouns, but a little reward for continuing to explore.
That none of this is necessary, that you could spend sessions building wealth like some magical valley magnate, taking stress-relief in your business savvy, is part of Mythwind’s magic. This is very much the Stardew Valley of board games—much more so than the Stardew Valley Board Game, which is tight, luck-filled puzzle—and from that phrase alone, you’ll know whether Mythwind belongs on your shelf or not.
If the idea of Mythwind’s chill adventuring appeals, but you’re looking for more story, add Lands of Galzyr to your watch list. It’s packed with more narrative and a harder bend towards exploration, but its limited printings means it’s a harder game to find.
Worker Placement, Cozy-Style
If there’s one way to up the cozy quotient of your game, throwing in anthropomorphic animals is it. Creature Comforts (Roberta Taylor) understands this perfectly, tasking you with three seasons to get your den ready for winter.
At its core, Creature Comforts blends well-known mechanisms like worker placement, hand management, drafting, and more into a warm, light broth fused
together by a nifty dice element. When the round begins, everyone rolls a pair of player-specific dice, after which you’ll have to place your furry friends around various woodland spots. These aren’t automatic successes: you’ll only be able to do those fun activities, like gathering food, if the numbers to activate the space have been rolled. Now, if those numbers depended on the two dice you get to yourself, that wouldn’t be much of a game.
Add in four communal dice, rolled by the first player in each round after you place your critters, and now you get something interesting.
You’ll have to hedge based on your own personal dice whether a space will be viable when the big batch rolls. If the dice dodge your numbers, there’s a chance you’ll be twisting in the wind. In another setting, this might feel harsh, but Creature Comforts gives you mitigating feel-good options, like crafting a bicycle that lets you move your creatures after every roll. There’s also no space blocking, so you’ll never be kept from pursuing your own goals by other players—there’s a couple things that reward initiative, but by and large, Creature Comforts isn’t interested in players punishing each other.
As the seasons pass, the available spots and their offerings will change. Not surprising that summer would give different opportunities than spring, but this thematic element keeps you immersed in the game’s journey as you build up cottages, goodies, and point-scoring combos, like baking delicious pies or stocking a bookshelf with reads for the Winter.
Creature Comforts plays in an hour or less and, while it can scale up to five, it’s a great evening dalliance with a partner or a couple of friends. Warm up some apple cider, put on some pleasant music, and marvel at the cute homes you’ll all build. When it’s done and you’ve tallied up the points, don’t be surprised if the first words aren’t “I won,” but “Can we play again?”
A Peaceful Plant Puzzle
So we’ve gone on cozy adventures and built a cozy home for winter, why not create a cozy inside too? In Verdant (Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Aaron Mesburne, Kevin Russ, Shawn Stankewich), you’re playing a spatial puzzle by dropping plants around your house and using nurture tokens to spruce them up, aiming for matching combos as you go.
Published by Flatout Games, who also made the similarly pattern-based puzzler Cascadia, Verdant continues their fresh tradition of approachable, pleasant titles with addictive mechanics. Verdant has you drafting plants from a central layout every turn, with your choice not just getting you a new flower or fern, but an associated token from that plant’s place in the central grid. Those tokens give you the aforementioned nurture opportunities, but also give you items to place in your home—like a couch that’ll match just right with that lily—to score bonus points. You’ll also juggle potting plants, grabbing green thumb bonuses and their action flexibility, and ensuring your house has enough variety to get the nodding approval of your inner interior decorator.
Verdant straddles the cozy divide, offering a pleasant back-and-forth draft and score game for folks who want to get their plants in place, while giving range for tight, brain-burning play for those who want it. You can, say, look at your opponent’s tableaus and assess what they might choose, and therefore what’s going to be available to you from the center, and plan your moves time and time again.
Or smell the flowers, see what opportunity offers, and enjoy making your potted palms happy.
There’s another element Verdant nails, one that’s key to the cozy atmosphere, and that’s the look and feel. Verdant packs beautiful artwork of all the plants, with lush color on the cards and cute tokens. This isn’t a beige assault, nor one drowning you in iconography. Your house will look pretty at the end of the game, win or lose, which, coupled with light rules and an under-an-hour playtime, makes Verdant an easy recommendation for just about any level of board gamer.
Grab a blanket, because Cozy’s just getting started
Cozy games are an emerging part of our hobby, and not one to dismiss for fear of being ‘too easy’ or ‘non-competitive’. It’s more about a vibe, a chance to de-stress while still engaging with our friends, partners, and children. Maybe you’ll go on an adventure without fear of death, or perhaps you’ll put together a house that warms you up on a cold night. Either way, you’ll find yourself smiling, relaxed, and, more than likely, ready to play again.
Cozy, indeed.
