Are we in the cozy gaming gold rush era? 'Cozy' has grown over 250% on Steam and 200% in my inbox since 2024

Cozy games on Google

First let's check back in on the same Google Search data I pulled in 2023 to compare how much we, the audience, are actually seeking cozy games. We're looking at the past five years or search interest for the terms: cozy games, relaxing games, and casual games.

The main term "cozy games" is twice as popular as it was in 2023 when I identified the surprising spike the phrase had already experienced between 2020 and 2023. Google doesn't share raw search volume so this is all relative, not absolute, but it's still clear evidence that the interest in cozy games has continued to explode.

What is surprising to me is the comeback for the phrase "casual games." It's one we used a lot in the late twenty-teens but was eclipsed by "cozy" around 2022. Anecdotally, I think "casual" suffered from also being pejorative and may have fallen away in favor of the more positive tone "cozy." They aren't exactly interchangeable terms, but it's interesting to see casual make such a sharp comeback this year, which may mean some cozy gamers are reclaiming it.

Cozy games on Steam

Okay, then what about the supply of cozy games? Yeah, that's gone up too.

This isn't a perfect measure either. It doesn't capture every game that cozy gamers might like, only every game that has been user-tagged that way. Naturally, the number of games identified as "cozy" goes up as the term itself becomes a popular descriptor.

When you look at the number of games tagged as "cozy" that launched last year between the same dates as this year (January to October), it's 468 last year to this year's 1,341. That's a 186% increase. Subgenres like tidying up games, farm sim idlers, and desktop companions are all booming with dozens of new choices each month, spawning new and more niche microgenres in their wake.

The sharp rise in AI slop games contributes to that, certainly, but I'm not sure it's necessarily affecting cozy games more than other genres.

Cozy games in my inbox

A source that you can't pull from public data is my poor, overstuffed inbox (which I ritually clean). This is really the basis of my "gold rush" thesis: the biggest change in cozy gaming in the past three years is that developers and publishers are using the word much more than before. They sure are deploying it in subject lines from PR teams, lemme tell ya.

Back in my 2023 article I quoted a measly 15 emails from the year including the word "cozy." Let's look at the three years since.

What I'd suspected back in 2023 was that "cozy" gaming was about to get really weird as marketing teams started slapping the label onto things that may not really merit it. I am noticing that in my inbox a bit. I sure can't imagine a post-apocalyptic gunsmithing job sim self-identifying as "cozy" four years ago. Is it abusing the term? I dunno, crafty repair sims are yet another one of those exploding microgenres of cozy game, so even if it's zombies and guns it feels pretty fair.

I still recall being aghast that cozy gamers were calling roguelike action game Cult of the Lamb a cozy game back in 2022 because of its small community sim feature. So I'm not sure PR emails can abuse the word more than cozy gamers themselves, who have already long been stretching the limits of a really flexible term.

Cozy gamers in the wild

Back in 2023 I felt protective of cozy gamers. Approachable games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley had attracted newer gamers who didn't always have the same gaming lingo fluency, and I worried they could be targets for low quality copycats entering the space. I wanted them to love gaming and not get turned away by bad experiences.

I'm not worried anymore. Over the past three years cozy gamers have adapted fast. They've become an extremely savvy audience capable of taxonomically describing the exact real-time restocking shop sim that they're looking for. They trade game recommendations so quickly that it feels like even average cozy game fans keep up with new releases and announcements as a part time job. Cozy gamers have become, dare I say, hardcore.

I don't think cozy gamers are going to get less engaged any time soon, so the cozy gaming movement is aging out of "trend" status into an enduring corner of the broader gaming community.

What's next for cozy games then? Maybe a plateau or a wobble in the next three years as an inherently positive genre reckons with the cynicism from increasingly aggressive use of 'cozy' as a marketing tool and the growing number of disappointing AI copycats.

I still don't think it's peaked, though. Let's check back in in 2028.