What Is Cozy?

What is cozy?

How can you innovate upon the genre while retaining the classic "cozy feel"?

Wish Guardian works to add a quality combat into the core gameplay of a farming sim.

 Originally, our idea for combat was tower defense. What you farmed would become towers that you use in tower defense game play. Victory would unlock new crops that would become new towers. However, while this idea sounds good, it misunderstands the appeal of cozy games. Tower defense is a fast-paced combat system, and relies on constant resource gathering. If you have to wait a week to grow new towers, losing suddenly becomes intimidating. By combining slow and cozy farming with fast and intense tower defense, you got the worst of both worlds. We were about a year into development before we eventually called it, and restarted with a new combat system. It just wasn't fun.

Our next, and current, idea is combining farming with deck building. What you farm becomes new combat cards, which you can then use again and again. Once again, victory would unlock new crops, which then become new cards. To make it even better, the more you play a certain card, the better it becomes. This eliminates the possibility of cards becoming useless as enemies become more powerful. While you still need to collect resources to maintain and make new cards, victory is determined by luck and strategy, not just what cards you own. The turn-based nature of card based games allows you to take your time and plan out what to do next. And there is no penalty for losing, except that you have to start the dungeon back at the beginning. By adding strategy, but no stress, we maintain the best of both farming and deck building. It has been a year, and so far, this version of Wish Guardian has fared much better.

While we still have a long way to go, we better understand our goals when developing Wish Guardian. Cozy games don't just mean "add plants and some cute animals", a lot more goes into it. Without the heart of low-stress and wholesome game play, a cozy game just isn't cozy anymore. There's nothing wrong with more stress and action-packed games, but if that isn't the game you want to make, make sure you always remember that.