What Other Anime Should Get a “Cozy” Game?

“People get depressed, and they need to relax. This has always existed in gaming, but it was a less marketable idea in the past.”
Alblune co-founder Alexandre Stroukoff

The idea of a “cozy” game has existed in games for years, but the definition used to vary from person to person; one individual’s idea of a relaxing time is playing Stardew Valley, while mine is mowing down thousands of enemies in a Musou.

In recent years, cozy games have become their own subgenre, spinoff off from simulators like Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and The Sims. GamesIndustry.biz contributor Colin Campbell describes them as games that feature “cute characters, often anthropomorphic animals or child-like humans, who engage in player activities such as farming, gathering, growing and nurturing, with a vague goal of creative personalization and in-game socialization.” These are games that focus less on gameplay mechanics and more on the overall player experience.

After the release of both SPY×ANYA: Operation Memories and Shin-chan: Shiro and the Coal Town, I’ve been wondering more about how viable an expansion into cozy games would be anime games. 2024 brought us a lot of heavy hitters overall, like Bandai’s month-and-a-half run with Gundam Breaker 4, Sword Art Online: Fractured Daydream, and Dragon Ball: Sparking! ZERO. Although I sunk a lot of time into the latter two games—Sparking! ZERO derailed my schedule so much that I’m taking several certification exams weeks later than I should have—I think that there’s definitely a space for cozy anime games to thrive. The biggest roadblock I can think of for cozy anime games is that, for a lot of the best picks, there isn’t a fanbase big enough to carry them to moderate relevance. But what if bigger took a crack at it? Well, now we’re stuck on the next roadblock.

The overwhelming majority of big manga, light novels and anime are action-focused series, so their games are usually action or fighting games. Most games that stray from the mold do not sell nearly as well. The Switch version of Demon Slayer: Sweep the Board, for example, sold 5 times less in Japan than the Switch version of Hinokami Chronicles in their first week. Could you, hypothetically, make a cozy Dragon Ball game that takes place during any of the longer timeskips like the 7 years between Cell and Buu, or the 10 (at this point, probably 5ish) years between Buu and the 26th World Tournament? For sure. Will it sell more than a million copies in the first week like Xenoverse 2, FighterZ, and Sparking! ZERO? In the words of Kain Carter, formerly known as hotdamnirock:

To kickstart the cozy anime wave, publishers would need an IP that fits the following qualifications:

It needs to be a series in which a major piece of its identity can be translated into a cozy game.
It needs to be a low risk but scalable series. Dragon Ball is too big, Me and Roboco is too small.
It needs to have a worldwide audience.

With these things in mind, here are a few titles I think would work best.

MY NEXT LIFE AS A VILLAINESS: ALL ROUTES LEAD TO DOOM!

“After hitting her head particularly hard one day, Duke Claes’ daughter, Katarina, suddenly recalls all the memories of her past life: that of a teenage Japanese girl. Just before her untimely death, this girl recalls playing an otome game… that is exactly like the world she’s living in now!

She is now Katarina Claes, the antagonist of the otome game, who nastily hounded the protagonist until the end. Knowing all the possible outcomes of the game, she realizes that every single possible route ends with Katarina being murdered or exiled! In order to avoid these Catastrophic Bad Ends, she has to use her knowledge of the game and her own wiles, starting with breaking off this engagement with the prince…

Will Katarina survive while making her way through this world, where bad flags trip at every turn? Find out in this reverse-harem rom-com, led by everybody’s favorite villainess!”
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!, Vol. 1

My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! isn’t what many people would call a “big” IP but it’s on that road, with over 600,000 copies of the light novel and manga in circulation, two seasons of the anime, a movie, and one of the few anime visual novels released in English under its belt. It also has a simple, tried and true concept that can easily be adapted into a game: Katarina loves farming. Visual novels may have been the primary game choice for light novels that aren’t Sword Art Online at one point, but the “light novel to visual novel” pipeline all but crumbled once MAGES. left Kadokawa. If My Next Life as a Villainess were to get a second game, the best route for it to go would be to collaborate with Marvelous and create a Story of Seasons spinoff, similar to what Bandai did with Doraemon.

SHY

“In an age when superpowered defenders from each country have brought peace to the world, Japan’s representative is a timid young girl known as “Shy.” She may be embarrassed by the mere thought of slipping into spandex, but she’ll prove that despite it all, she still has the heart of a hero!”
SHY, Vol. 1

Superhero manga tend to have a slice-of-life aspect to them that, if expanded on outside the original, could X. However, many of those series don’t focus on those areas nearly as much or are aimed at an audience that wouldn’t really care about those concepts in game form. For example, My Hero Academia only addresses everyday hero work during the Hero Agency Internships and One Punch Man needs to correct the mistakes of A Hero Nobody Knows before even considering a Mumen Rider game. One newer series does manage to strike a better balance between action and everyday shenanigans, and would therefore be a good fit for a cozy game: SHY. SHY benefits from being one of the IPs Bandai has more control over due to their involvement in the anime’s production (including Bandai owning the animation studio, Eight Bit), and they’ve already started releasing merchandise for it. It’s also easily comparable to My Hero Academia since both have an awkward protagonist and both have a game in development right now. SHY’s game probably won’t be the APLUS-developed arena fighter I think it deserves, but I think the series would benefit from 6 to 7 hours of Teru being a dork.

A major aspect of a cozy game is building relationships between you and the characters in that world, and the best series for that goal are those that already that goal built into the narrative. Three series come to mind here.

EDENS ZERO

“At Granbell Kingdom, an abandoned amusement park, Shiki has lived his entire life among machines. But one day, Rebecca and her cat companion Happy appear at the park’s front gates. Little do these newcomers know that this is the first human contact Granbell has had in a hundred years! As Shiki stumbles his way into making new friends, his former neighbors stir at an opportunity for a robo-rebellion…And when his old homeland becomes too dangerous, Shiki must join Rebecca and Happy on their spaceship and escape into the boundless cosmos.”
EDENS ZERO, Vol. 1

In EDENS ZERO, one of Shiki’s big goals aside from finding Mother is befriending everyone he meets. He even says he’ll befriend a major villain mere seconds before said villain puts him in the ground. This goal, when combined with Shiki’s general demeanor, could easily be spun into a game that retells the story in a low-stress environment and branches out in a way that the upcoming action RPG probably won’t.

MARRIAGE TOXIN

“Poison Master Hikaru Gero is about to take on his most challenging assignment yet—getting married! Gero couldn’t be more clueless when it comes to dating, but thankfully, marriage swindler Mei Kinosaki knows everything there is to know about love. Together, this unlikely pair is going to do whatever it takes to get Gero hitched—even if they have to take on the entire criminal underworld in the process!”
Marriage Toxin, Vol. 1

Marriage Toxin also falls under the “befriend everyone” category since Gero’s family requires him to date multiple women and find a wife. Similar to a cozy EDENS ZERO game focusing on Shiki befriending everyone, a similar game for Marriage Toxin could focus on the dates themselves without the action. Six girls have been introduced so far, which is more than enough to build a game around. If timed right, this game could coincide with the anime adaptation that’s getting announced within the next year and a half, and also set the stage for the 3D fighter I’m going to ask for more frequently as soon as that anime hits episode 6.

HITORI BOCCHI NO MARUMARU SEIKATSU

“Hitori Bocchi, a girl with extreme social anxiety, has had only one friend throughout elementary school. When Bocchi learns they’ll be split up after graduation, she makes a promise to her: “By the time of my middle school graduation, I’ll make friends with everyone in my class.” And if she can’t… they won’t be friends anymore?! But Bocchi has a hard time talking to people. When she gets nervous, her legs cramp. She can’t look other people in the eye. She doesn’t even know how to make friends! Every way she thinks of to make friends ends up failing. Will her friend-making plan pay off?!”
Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu Crunchyroll description

Although EDENS ZERO is probably the biggest series to reasonably utilize the friendship/relationship angle and Marriage Toxin would benefit from having both a manga and anime running if its first game is released within a reasonable time, I don’t think there’s a series that embodies this more than Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu. Bocchi’s goal is to befriend everyone in her high school class before graduation, so it can easily be modeled after Shin-chan’s games or Boku no Natsuyasumi itself. It isn’t an action series either, so there’s less risk of alienating its audience by not going down that route. The main issue with a game for Bocchi specifically is that the manga already ended and the anime only ran for one cour, but those problems can easily be handwaved if you slap a “Manga 15th anniversary” or “Anime 10th anniversary” banner on it.

FRIEREN: BEYOND JOURNEY’S END

“Elf mage Frieren and her courageous fellow adventurers have defeated the Demon King and brought peace to the land. But Frieren will long outlive the rest of her former party. How will she come to understand what life means to the people around her?

Decades after their victory, the funeral of one her friends confronts Frieren with her own near immortality. Frieren sets out to fulfill the last wishes of her comrades and finds herself beginning a new adventure…”
Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, Vol. 1

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is tailor-made for a cozy game. Frieren’s whole journey is to help her learn more about humans in the comparatively little time she’ll have with them, so what better so series is there to get a game where she can just hang out with her new party? A Frieren game has only two real options if it chooses not to adapt the story: a prequel story or laziness and magic chores. One would probably be too expensive to justify doing it right (in comparison to Frieren’s lack of a financial track record with game publishers), while the other might be funnier with the low budget shenanigans.

WONDERFUL PRECURE!

“In the Animal Town where humans and animals live together, Iroha who loves animals is very close to her dog Komugi! One day, a mysterious creature GaruGaru goes berserk in her city. In order to protect Iroha, Komugi transforms into a human and even Precure…!? We have to protect such berserk animals! Let’s join forces and return the animals to the Niko Garden!”
Wonderful PreCure! Crunchyroll description

Years ago, PreCure got a handheld game to go with every season. Bandai stopped consistently publishing those games after 2015’s Go! Princess PreCure, but returned with a HUG! PreCure Switch game in 2018 and eventually handed the series off to sister company D3 Publisher for Soaring Sky! PreCure in 2023. We’re probably never getting a PreCure Musou for reasons I’ll get into eventually, but the most recent season makes the greatest case for a cozy game: Wonderful PreCure! has a dog. The franchise has reached new financial heights thanks to the power of our A.D.D. (Adorable Dog Daughter), and Bandai (or D3) would be insane to not capitalize on it.

NARUTO

There’s one other series that has a perfect setup, but the execution would clash with what fans actually want. Fortunately for everyone, the fans are no longer in a position to complain after a string of failures and one predictable dud. Although Naruto lacks anything substantial at the moment, and allegedly had a game canceled, there’s one moment in the series that would make the perfect “cozy” game: the lead-up to Naruto and Hinata’s wedding. Anyone who’s been around at any point while a wedding is being planned knows there’s a lot that goes into that special day. Catering, location scouting, documentation of the event as well as behind-the-scenes footage. There is a lot of content that can be used to recreate Naruto and Hinata’s wedding. If CyberConnect2 is involved, there are plenty of assets from the Storm games that can be used and reworked. We now have a fully-modeled post-war Leaf Village, as well as various stages and traversal paths from Storm 2 and 3’s story. CyberConnect2 can recruit Groove Box Japan once again to make the minigames, and I’m sure their experience on both Operation Memories and Demon Slayer: Sweep the Board! will come in handy. If the game needs a hook to bring in Storm fans, they can craft a series of boss battles reflecting Naruto and Hinata’s journey, starting from both of their fights against Neji. Those boss fights could be function as a tech demo for their next Naruto game (visually, not combat-wise) and could also correct some of the mistakes of both Storm 4 (by adapting The Last) and Connections (by properly updating characters’ movesets). The game would be cost-effective because of the asset reuse, while also preparing the team for their next project in the same way that content from Sweep the Board! will be reused in Hinokami Chronicles 2.

Anime games’ potential for cozy games has only recently been explored through Doraemon, SPY×FAMILY, and Crayon Shin-chan. With the series we have at our disposal, both old and new, I think there are more than enough opportunities to expand the genre and create a third pillar of anime games, alongside fighters and RPGs.

What series would you guys want to see get a cozy game? Let me in the comments here, or in the video below.