GYGO Cosy: So Many Cosy Game Announcements

Hi friends, it’s Zainabb here with this month’s cosy gaming news. I’m barely coping with life right now but there’s been loads of announcements recently so this month, I’m mostly going to sit in the warm, comforting waters of cosy game releases I’m looking forward to. Let’s get to it, but first!

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All the Upcoming Cosy Games I’m Excited About

The Crush House, a dating game based on reality shows like The Bachelor, is set to release on August 9 for PC. The player is put in the shoes of the in-game show’s producer, who must match characters to create romance and drama while unravelling a “sinister mystery” at night. Watch the trailer below.

Hello Kitty Island Adventure is coming to PC and Nintendo Switch in 2025, with a later release for PlayStation 4 and 5. As someone who enjoyed Hello Kitty Roller Rescue as a young’un, I’m excited for this life sim featuring all my favourite Sanrio characters.

Toukana Interactive, the developers behind building game Dorfromantik, has announced Star Birds, a resource management game where bird creatures build and collect resources on asteroids in space. Listen, resource harvesting mechanics always make my colonialism sense tingle, but this game looks extremely cute so I’m intrigued to see more. Star Birds is set to release at some point next year.

Speaking of colonialism, Sonderlust Studios has announced a new solarpunk city builder called Generation Exile with an explicitly anti-colonial approach! Players must develop a new home for citizens using only the resources they’ve brought with them on their last ever “generation ship”, and work with the new world they’ve landed on. Generation Exile doesn’t have a release date yet.

A Highland Song developer Inkle has teased a new game called Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls, which I’m looking forward to based on the name alone. The game only has a Steam page at the moment and seems to be a mystery game set in the 1920s at a prestigious girls’ boarding school, with the player possibly taking on the role of a scholarship student from a “lower-class background.” Dark academia? A girls’ (and therefore definitely gay) boarding school? A murder mystery and class critique? Sign me up for the next semester!

Witch Beam, the developers of Unpacking, has announced an upcoming musical puzzle game where you collect magical flowers across a series of floating levels. Tempopo looks exceedingly cute, chill, and is set to release at some point this year for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Annapurna has dropped the first trailer for upcoming adventure game Mixtape, which follows three teenagers as they leave high school, all set to a nostalgic soundtrack featuring the likes of Roxy Music, Iggy Pop, and The Smashing Pumpkins. The trailer shows off the game’s stop-motion art style as the protagonists skateboard down empty roads in golden light, float in the air, and ride dinosaurs. Mixtape is expected to release in 2025 for PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.

In other news…

A new expansion pack called Lovestruck has been announced for The Sims 4. The pack focuses on romance, introducing online dating and new romantic relationship interactions and dynamics. Best of all, the base game is getting a free update ahead of the pack’s release which will allow all players to set so-called Romantic Boundaries for their Sims. These customisable boundaries establish how a Sim feels about emotional and physical exclusivity, finally allowing players to create polyamorous Sims! The new pack releases on July 25 with the update dropping shortly before.

In sadder life sim news, Paradox Interactive’s Life By You has been cancelled after several delays to the early access release. Personally, I was looking forward to this one… but I’m unfortunately not surprised by its cancellation given the extremely ambitious scope of the game. For folks looking for a similar premise (create and control the entire world, from randoms on the street to the buildings in town), I recommend checking out Krafton’s upcoming inZOI, which does not have a release date yet.

In absolutely devastating news (for me), Cozy Grove: Camp Spirit is now out but only via Netflix Games. The sequel to one of my all-time favourite cosy games expands on the original with a multiplayer mode and more features but, as developer Spry Fox is now owned by Netflix, it’s only available on mobile via your Netflix account. As someone who no longer uses Netflix after it tightened password sharing rules, I had no idea Camp Spirit came out and now I’m bummed I can’t play it—yet another reason to hate corporations, I suppose. Nonetheless, if you have Netflix and like cosy games, you should give this one a go and let me know what you think in the comments so I can live vicariously through you.

Speaking of crappy corporations, Nintendo has vowed to take “appropriate action” against horny fan art that might make some players “feel uncomfortable… anywhere they come into contact with our IP.” Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa apparently made this statement in response to concerns raised over a Mario cosplayer sending inappropriate pictures to minors, which is absolutely a good line to draw! However, the sweeping scope of the statement suggests the company may also look to “take action” against spicy fan creations they deem unacceptable to their brand. Nintendo is known to tightly control creations by fans so let’s see how this develops.

A new farming sim called Tiny Garden is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter. Developer Ao Norte is a “trans-inclusive LGTBIQ+ friendly” studio in Spain, and describes Tiny Garden as “a tiny farming and easy-going strategy game inside a tiny toy from the 90s.” That tiny tony is clearly inspired by Polly Pocket, which I had a couple of growing up and which bring me great nostalgic joy. The Kickstarter is running until August 1 and has currently made four times its original goal of £4,231. You can also wishlist the game on Steam.

The next Life is Strange installment has been announced for release on October 29, on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Life is Strange: Double Exposure follows Max Caulfield, the protagonist from the first game in the series—now at college—in a “fully standalone” murder mystery as she tries to find out who killed her new best friend across two parallel timelines. It sounds bizarre and I will be playing it! Watch the announcement trailer below.

Davey Wreden, creator of The Stanley Parable, and Karla Zimonja, co-creator of Gone Home, are working on a new game called Wanderstop, which tasks the player with running a magical tea shop in the woods. The game is set to release on PC and PS5 at some point later this year.

Finally, I’m not sure it really counts as cosy gaming news but, like, it’s cosy to me, okay? The upcoming Dragon Age: The Veilguard will feature a range of accessibility features, including adjusting player and enemy health, aim assist, and disabling player death entirely, so disabled players like myself can spend less time struggling through combat and more time smooching our faves. It’s great to see and makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, so I’m including it because this is my column and I do what I want.