I am not the coziest of cozy gamers. I turn to lower stakes and chiller vibes in between longer games, but I tend not to stick with them very long. I know that for some folks, cozy games are a way of life. For me, they are mostly just a snack. But hey, snacks still taste good, right?
These are some of the coziest and cutest games that stood out to my unrefined palette at PAX West 2025.
A Corgi’s Cozy Hike
I didn't actually play A Corgi's Cozy Hike at PAX West this year, but that's because it launched over the PAX West weekend!
If you missed it before, this is an adorable 3D platformer/adventure game, that fits right in alongside A Short Hike and Lil Gator Game.
You play as an adorable Corgi in a cape who launches himself into the era to explore the world and collect secrets using “Corgi Butt Power”.
Plus, the developers are donating some of their proceeds to supporting animal shelters.
Come on, how can you say no to that? A Corgi's Cozy Hike is available now on Steam.
Birdseed VR
Birdseed VR rubs me the wrong way.
The basic game play of Birdseed VR is super simple. You hang out in a low poly, very calm environment listening to wildlife and snapping pictures of birds. It's like Pokemon Snap on melatonin. It's just chill and calm and quiet and nice.
And also you're only allowed to take like 12 pictures a day. In real time. Like, a 24 hour period on this actual planet earth.
I guess you'll actually unlock longer camera rolls as the game goes on, along with new lenses and other ways to improve your photography, but it sounds like a firm cutoff point is a core tenant of the development of this game. They don't want you to play games all day, so they will only let you hang out in their super pleasant and calm space for like a little bit.
And it's multiplayer! You can jump into a game with friends, and all chat while you take dumb fake pictures of dumb fake birds, and that sounds so cool and nice and chill. But you better not have two friend groups of virtual bird watchers, because if you go take pictures with one group in the morning you won't be able to take pictures with the others in the afternoon because you already used up all your dumb fake pictures!
… anyway, I really love the vibe in this game and since it's VR I probably wouldn't want to play it for that long anyway… But also, don’t tell me when to stop playing my game!
Birdseed VR is coming soon to Steam and available in Early Access on Meta.
Cat Secretary
I got to see a bit of Cat Secretary at The MIX, one of several smaller scale events that pop up around PAX each year. I’m always down to spend time as an obnoxious animal, and Cat Secretary feels right at home alongside titles like Untitled Goose Game and Little Kitty, Big City.
In this one, you play as a cat in an office building who has to work a desk job during the day, while sneaking around the office to uncover mysteries at night.
Everything about Cat Secretary is disgustingly cute. The bright, cartoony art style is super inviting; the voice acting is silly and fun; and the cat wears a little tie.
Cat Secretary will be the first game to come out of Good Story Guild, an art-forward production company that’s put out several radio plays in the past few years.
Cat Secretary doesn’t have an announced release window yet, but it is definitely one to keep an eye on.
Table Tactics
Table Tactics feels like someone made a board game out of Wargroove, and then my five-year-old invented his own rules for how to play it.
The game takes place on a board with grid markers sitting on a table, and you control an army of inanimate miniatures. Defeating enemies earns you gold, which you then use to buy new units and defenses to protect your castle. Survive long enough, and you win.
Easy peasy.
The “rules invented by a five-year-old” part comes in to play with the combat. There are no health bars in this game, no rolling dice to see if you hit, no table of weaknesses to check to see if you do bonus damage. Instead, combat is all about flinging toys at each other and seeing what happens.
It’s like playing Warhammer with a slingshot.
I do have to call out that this is a physics based experience with wonky physics. Normally that would drive me crazy, but the overall tone of Table Tactics is so silly that when something goes flying off in the wrong direction, it’s easier to laugh than get upset.
There is a demo available for Table Tactics now, and whenever it does fully release it’s set to launch with local skirmishes and a single player campaign.
War of the Western Deep
I was really hesitant to check out War of the Western Deep. I'm not really a point-and-click fan, so I didn't think the core game play would really suit me. I am, however, a kid who grew up on the Redwall books. Seeing adorable forest animals armed with swords and tiny helmets in gorgeous hand painted art was enough to get me in the door, and I'm so glad I checked it out.
First of all, the adventure game aspects of this are super approachable. You can toggle on highlights for intractable objects as you explore the environment, which is the only way I've been able to make it through games like The Case of the Golden Idol. There is also a really cool implementations of the environment into the puzzle solving.
At one point, I was directed to look for a clue behind a bush. I looked around, and found an intractable shrub at the base of a cliff wall. When I walked up to it, my character remarked that it looked prickly. It was enough of a hint that I realized I wouldn't be able to look through the bush by hand, so I went to my inventory and clicked on my sword.
No use-sword-on-bush, just standing near the bush and clicking on the sword was enough to chop it down, revealing new clues literally carved in to the cliff face where it had stood.
Streamlining the traditional adventure game mechanics meant I could focus on the puzzle instead of navigating the game's mechanics.
Then there is the combat. After chatting with the developer, my impression is that combat is a far distant secondary game mode, serving as punctuation at the end of a long adventure scenario. In the demo, the one combat encounter I got into was less than 20% of my time, but still pretty cool.
If you imagine Punch Out, you're in the right sort of head space for the mechanics here. War of the Western Deep uses stamina and health bars to make things a bit more interesting and much more readable than that, but it's still basically about reading an opponent and attacking or reacting to their moves.
But it also looks so nice. It's like if The Pokemon Company hired Don Bluth to design their battle screens.
I was convinced by this demo of War of the Western Deep, and then even more so by learning more about the history of the game. It is a companion to a webcomic that started in 2012. Because the writer had already been working in games for a few years when the comic started, the idea of a tie-in game was always bouncing around. It's really cool to see the same core team lead a project in two entirely different mediums.
There isn't a release date announced for War of the Western Deep, but there is a demo available on Steam!
Final Thoughts
I think that cozy games might be some of the hardest to check out at a convention. It’s easy to get a feel for a big action game or a silly racing game in a demo, and roguelites are already designed for shorter play sessions. With most cozy games, though, I feel like I need to curl up and really settle in to get a good vibe.
I had a good time checking each of these games out, but I know I’ll have a better time when I can play them wearing pajamas while curled up in a ball and covered with a giant blanket.