The video game industry is extremely lucrative, reaching new heights year-on-year and it’s now the most profitable newmedia – worth nearly double the film and music industry combined.
Growing by a staggering 11% between 2021 and 2023, the industry’s success has widened the player base into broader demographics, leading to greater diversification of game genres and broader appeal for potential players.
Two genres have stuck out in recent years after receiving an unexpected boost in popularity – life simulation and “cosy” games. Life simulation (sometimes called life sim) games see either mundane or career-based tasks gamified, such as mowing lawns, flying planes or even power-washing. This genre of game is predicted to grow by $17.43 billion between 2022-2027.
Cosy games, on the other hand, are harder to identify. A phrase coined by TikTokkers, cosy games refer to games with friendly characters, approachable worlds and minimal-to-no threat for player characters. With #CozyGames seeing 88.5 million posts on TikTok, it’s unsurprising that developers are merging the genres of life sim and cosy games with encouraging results.
The most popular of these cosy-influenced life simulation games incorporate a heavy dose of interior design. From designing farmhouses to building mansions, customising living rooms and bedroom compartmentalisation – those of us who love interior design have been spoilt rotten by the games industry.
Does the thought of lounging back with your feet up whilstdesigning your dream home appeal to you? If so, we know where you can start. With help from the fitted bedroom specialists at The Sliding Door Wardrobe Company, we’ve found five fantastic cosy games that let you live out your interior design fantasies consequence-free.
House Flipper 2 (79 Metacritic score)
House Flipper 2 is the closest to a genuine reference when designing your real-life home interiors.
House Flipper 2 tasks players with renovating dilapidated houses, rebuilding them from the ground up and selling them on for profit. Intuitively designed with smooth controls and a realistic first-person perspective, the game has a fully-fledged story mode as well as a creative sandbox mode.
Keen interior designers will be spending most of their time in the sandbox mode thanks to its unrivalled freedom in house customisation. With an endless budget and free reign to design whatever they can imagine, the sandbox mode has allowed players to create their dream homes and play around with design concepts to inform their real-life projects.
The most recent game on this list, House Flipper 2 is the latest example of a game that isn’t only fun, but also a genuinely useful tool for honing your skills in interior design.
Available on: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC.
Unpacking (83 Metacritic score)
Are you the sort of person who gets back from holiday and finds emptying your suitcase incredibly satisfying? Perhaps filling a new cabinet with your book collection or organising your laundry scratches an indescribable itch?
If you answered “yes”, then we have a treat for you.
Unpacking is best described in developer Witch Beam’s words – “a zen puzzle game about unpacking a life.” Following the journey of a person through each life milestone, the passing of time is represented by them organising their living spaces as they get older.
From organising their childhood bedroom to moving into university digs, furnishing their first apartment and moving in with their partner, Unpacking lets you decorate these spaces and experience the feeling of unpacking a life in boxes again and again.
Surprisingly heartfelt, this satisfying and imaginative narrative puzzle game won a BAFTA in 2022 for EE Game of the Year.
Available on: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC.
The Sims 3 (86 Metacritic score)
The Sims needs no introduction, but just in case you need a reminder, The Sims is a pop-culture life simulation game that took the world by storm back in the year 2000. The first of its kind in many respects, The Sims franchise lets players create their own families, design their own homes and essentially play God in a virtual city.
The Sims 3 is the most popular and critically acclaimed game in the franchise, still racking up an average of 1,600 concurrent players despite being released in 2009. It’s considered to be the critical peak of the franchise, in part due to The Sims 4 having less building freedom and more transitions in its gameplay than The Sims 3 at launch (later improved upon with home-building expansion packs).
The Sims 3 reached such popularity that pop star Katy Perry had her own expansion, featuring recordings of singles sung by Perry in The Sims’ own language – Simlish.
Perhaps its most popular game mechanic, and the one that gives it pride of place on this list, is the ability to architect and design your home with no restrictions. Design the foundations, materials, window shape and interiors, and discover thousands of options for furniture, lights and decorative items.
The home-building mechanics are so intuitive that the Sims community regularly hosted player-built home competitions online, many of which you can watch compilations of on YouTube.
Available on: PC, MacOS.
Stardew Valley (89 Metacritic score)
Stardew Valley is arguably the game that catapulted cosy games into the mainstream, with a staggeringly positive Metacritic score of 89 and years of free post-launch content.
Stardew Valley was the passion project of one person made over the course of four-and-a-half years. It’s a farming, mining and life sim that sees players inherit a farm from their grandfather who has recently passed, tasking the player-made character with making a new life as the town of Stardew’s only farmer.
Equal parts funny, heartfelt and silly – players are left to forge relationships with the quirky townspeople, restore the farm to a profitable state, redesign their farmhouse and battle the evil JoJo Mart, a satirical parody of big supermarket chains that plans to gentrify the town to oblivion – Stardew Valley has become a cult classic.
The game has received a slew of well-deserved awards, including the coveted Breakthrough Award at the 2016 Golden Joystick Awards and the aptly-named ‘The World Is Grim Enough Let’s Just All Get Along’ prize in the 2017 Steam Awards.
Stardew Valley can be best summarised by its 2017 Steam Award: it’s fun, light-hearted and rewards creativity in an industry which can sometimes take itself a little too seriously.The game recently received another update in March of this year, so there’s never been a better time to jump in.
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, IOS, MacOS, Android.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons (90 Metacritic score)
Available exclusively on Nintendo Switch, the latest in the Animal Crossing franchise sees players becoming the Mayor of their very own island.
Updating the community centre, welcoming new anthropomorphic islanders and constantly renovating your home is the name of the game in this adorable life sim. Perfect for the whole family, Animal Crossing: New Horizons was welcomed by fans and critics alike in 2020 with rave reviews.
The highest-rated game on this list, New Horizons is the most creatively inspired edition of the franchise to this date. It encourages players to share their villages, homes and creations with unique island codes – sharable codes which allow players to visit each other’s islands and exchange gifts to make their homes more, well, homely.
New Horizons is perfect for interior designers who like to watch their homes develop organically over a year in real-world time. The Animal Crossing franchise is known for its unique use of the real-world clock. If you play the game after work at 6pm, it will be 6pm in the game too. If you play at Christmas or Halloween, your islanders will also be celebrating the real-world festivities.
It’s touches like this that make your island feel real, investing players in the game world and keeping them coming back throughout the year.
Available on: Nintendo Switch.
Will you be picking up any of these games to satisfy your design itch? With so many great options to choose from, you really can’t go wrong.