The idea of Cozy Gaming is a phenomenon which I have seen crop up in the domain of video games, and can cover games ranging from Stardew Valley to Animal Crossing. They originally sprang out of what I think was arguably a more child-age focused genre of game, designed to provide a game experience to kids which wouldn't horrify parents by focusing on crafting, farming, talking to NPCs and solving non-violent quests and stuff. Over the last twenty years this genre has sprung whole cloth into its own sort of thing.
Where once video games were informed by tabletop RPGs, now the reverse is true. Cozy gaming experiences in the tabletop scene are springing up, and while I have as a rule of thumb mostly ignored this genre (being that one who likes Call of Cthulhu, Mork Borg and other skittery nightmares on my shelf) I have made an exception for two games of note: Land of Eem and Obojima.
Land of Eem is based on some juvenile graphic novels about a skeleton bard trying to make his way through the eponymous Lands of Eem; beyond the graphic novels you can use the game to explore a rather fabulous setting that reminds me of that Adventure Time cartoon (a show which seemed rather fun, albeit coming out waaaay too many years too late for me to enjoy it meaningfully). Obojima is a slightly different take on cozy gaming, instead being a sort of world/universe inspired heavily by Studo Jibli anime, movies which I know a lot of people really love (and which I have seen none of except for Nausicaa Valley of the Wind). It presents a land far in the future, where relic technology of a bygone age is scattered about in a pastoral land overlapping the spirit world. It's many denizens are a blend of natural and supernatural, and there aren't too many high stakes problems going on.
I have one or two other games that may or may not count as "cozy gaming" depending on how you stretch the definition. For example, one might look at Tales from the Loop and The Electric State to be somewhat cozy gaming adjacent, insofar as they both depict semi-post-apocalyptic lands where bad things happened, then as a side effect of this great and troubling collapse things got a lot calmer, and then also a lot more interesting.
A key element of these games seems to be an emphasis on exploration and low stakes. Exploration in that you have weird locales and people/creatures/robots/things to meet and talk to (having more, rather than fewer opportunities to talk to things is pretty key), and that even if the atmosphere is eerie and weird, it is also simultaneously relaxing or at least not nerve wracking (so nothing like Alien RPG or Call of Cthulhu, the diametric opposite the cozy gaming genre). Likewise, low stakes in that you are not likely ever going to need to save the universe, fight a monstrous demon horde, or protect the town from certain doom.....although I suppose creative use of the genre can allow for anything, with he right context; but the point being that you are far more likely in a cozy game setting to be protecting a local fishing pond, finding new ingredients for a potion, making friends with strange spirits or having a wild adventure with the legendary Mister Toad than anything else.
Anyway.....this is a long way of saying I picked up Obojima and while I am currently reading through it I may write more soon, especially if I can convince my old group to give it a try.
