Wholesome Games is pretty well-known at this point for being the main arbiter of cozy little indies to play around the Summer Games Fest.
They’ve returned just before the 2023 Game Awards to bring up a smaller half-hour showcase to give us just a few more cozy, sweet little games right after another presentation full of bigger heavy hitters.
This Wholesome Snack showcase is a brand new thing for Wholesome Games, opting to be a much denser, smaller showcase, only focusing on a few games in a short time.
They’re still all cozy, comfort-food games you might be interested in if you’re a fan of Animal Crossing, but they’ll all be contained in this much briefer presentation than usual.
Wholesome Snack Presentation at a Glance
I’ll be going over each title they’ve announced in bullet point fashion, covering each one with just a little bit of detail so you can seek more information on them if you’re interested.
Despite the quick runtime, there’s quite a bit to cover, so let’s dive into each cozy little game found in this Wholesome Snack Showcase.
- Vivarium is a sweet, isometric game where you explore overgrown environments, talk to quirky characters, and experience life in a beautifully done style that looks accurate to 80’s anime. It’s mostly a visual novel and exploration game where you collect things you find along the way and talk to anyone you see.
- Communite is an early beta city builder where you collaborate with your friends to build big, tile-based cities and expand far enough to rescue any NPCs you might find while creating things together.
- Pine Hearts is an isometric narrative adventure game where you play as a little guy, exploring a big, open world and adventuring, collecting whatever you can find as you grow up, and solving a few puzzles along the way.
- Lightyear Frontier is like your standard farming game but set in the distant future, where you pilot giant mechas to do the farming work for you, harvesting with massive vacuum arms and getting the job done in a way cooler fashion.
- Go Go Town! is a co-op farming game where you work with up to 3 other friends to build up your farm, gather resources, and fix up a nearby town, from going up in flames to looking shiny and brand new.
- Snacko is a lovely 3D pixel-art game you might have remembered seeing back in 2020, and it’s finally coming out soon; it is an adorable Animal Crossing-style game about rebuilding a town as this cute cat character, exploring around and gathering materials to fix everything up.
- Usagi Shima is like Neko Atsume, but with bunnies, and it’s a free mobile game where you care for a bunch of bunnies on an island; it’s out now, with a new update adding a beach area so you can have some tropical buns.
- Baladins is an adventure RPG where you roam around extensive areas on a world map. It is similar to Paper Mario Color Splash, with everything rendered in a lovely popup book art style, and looks absolutely adorable.
- Eastward Octopia is a previously announced game back from the September Nintendo Direct, and it’s a full-fledged DLC for Eastward, adding an entire farming side game with cooking, fishing, and relationships to have as you grow your small community.
- Simpler Times is an infinitely replayable, meditative experience where you play as an adult in your bedroom, dreaming about flying through the stars and making your rocket ship as you move out and have to leave everything behind.
- Summerhouse is a game focused on building your home in various environments, letting you customize every detail rendered in low-resolution pixelated style, and it all looks adorable.
- Sky: Children of Light is another game from the creators of Journey, and it’s been out for a while, but now they’re updating it to add a wintery wonderland to the game, a giant snowy castle, and an environment with a few new games to play and things to find. It also has a Steam-exclusive Companion Cube on the launch of the PC version.
- Bugaboo Pocket is a similar experience to owning a Tamagotchi, but they’re all giant bugs; there’s a ton of minigames to try, a story unfolding as you play with your bugs and raise them, and it’s all done in super high-fidelity pixel art.
- Europa is a fantastical, dream-faring adventure where you explore a magical, whimsical environment as you get sent through a dream that one of your elders put you in to protect you from what is happening in the real world. It also has a demo out now.
- Duck Detective is similar to Return of the Obra Dinn, but you play as a Duck Detective, solving crimes and going through this silly world of wacky animals, trying to suss out who’s done whatever case you’re focusing on by investigating them.
- Trash Goblin is a 3D picross style puzzle game where you play as a goblin, get sent in a bunch of rubbish, and are tasked with looking at them up close, inspecting them, and chipping away until you’ve got something worth some money, selling it in your pawn shop.
- Momento is quite similar to Unpacking and A Little to the Left, having you rearrange all the objects in various rooms across a house, keeping everything nice and tidy, and putting stuff back where it belongs, all in cozy hand-drawn style.
- Sticky Business is a pre-existing game shown at a Wholesome Direct before, all about creating different stickers and sticker packs and selling them off. This update adds new, all-around content, namely stickers and goodies.
After that, we get another look at Simpler Times in a full gameplay trailer, another reminder of the Wholesome Games bundle on Humble Bundle, and a trailer for Voyages of Nera, a game about surfing the seven seas with your friends, exploring the massive open world, crafting the island to be however you want it to be, and ending the showcase.
Further Reading
If you want to hear more about cozy indie games and the best these Wholesome Directs have had to offer, stick around for more!
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