We’re a bit obsessed with cosy culture here at Dreamland HQ. And why wouldn’t we be? We spend our days writing about heated blankets and helping our readers design cosy reading nooks. Well, you know what they say, write what you know!
But a few of us here are gamers, too. And there’s nothing cosier than cancelled plans and a night in with a new pixelated world to melt into.
What is a ‘cosy game’?
Feel free to skip this part if you’re not already aware. But after much debate in the office, we landed on some criteria for what we consider a cosy game:
- Minimal or zero combat, conflict, or fighting
- Calming visuals, music, and sound design
- Zero or not much story to follow
- Open world or at least free-to-roam environments to encourage exploration
- A game that you can plug into for hours, or just 5 minutes
Before we dive in, it’s worth mentioning that we purposefully haven’t gone down the route of listing the all-time cosy classics like Stardew Valley and Spiritfarer (though Animal Crossing does get a mention thanks to the hotly anticipated 2026 New Horizons update).
These are all games released in late 2025, early 2026 or are slated for release in the first part of the year, so you shouldn’t have to wait too long, if at all, to get playing.
We’ve also tried to cover games that are available on multiple platforms (not just Steam), as well as slightly older consoles like the OG Switch and Xbox Series S.
Oh, and they mostly aren’t farming sims either, which might come as a relief to anyone absolutely bored to tears of harvesting aubergines in order to buy…more aubergine seeds.
So without further ado (as they say on every YouTube game review before a lot of actual adoing), let’s get to it. Like and subscribe…
Here are the Dreamland team’s top 10 new cosy titles for 2026:
1. Pokemon Pokopia
Platform: Nintendo Switch 2 Exclusive
Price: Around £60
Breaking the hearts of anyone who loves cosy gaming but doesn’t yet own a Switch 2, Pokémon Pokopia landed in early March this year to a lot of fanfare.
Pokopia is a gentle island-building game where you play as Ditto (the shape-shifting blob from Pokémon Red and Blue back in 1999) and slowly grow your island into your own personal Poké Paradise.
Players will find themselves crafting, building, and gardening alone or with up to 4 players, while befriending Pokémon, who teach you new moves for interacting with your cosy environment.
Early reviews in the Dreamland office so far have been overwhelmingly positive (unusual for a flagship Nintendo game these days), with players calling it a sort of Minecraft and Animal Crossing hybrid, with a huge world to explore and addictive JRPG-style quests. A cosy classic in waiting!
2. Animal Crossing: New Horizons 3.0 (2026 Update)
Platform: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2
Price: Free update, original title around £35
Animal Crossing New Horizons (ACNH) was released at literally the perfect time for a super immersive, cosy game players loved putting hundreds of hours into: March 2020. Yep, a few weeks before the entire planet was forcibly locked indoors for months on end thanks to a global pandemic.
When the world outside your window was scary and unpredictable, ACNH served as the perfect antidote.
Six years on, Nintendo has rolled out a notably big (and free) update to lure us back into Tom Nook’s cutesy-capitalist world of turnips, tents, and quietly escalating mortgage debt.
Here’s the best of what’s new for 2026:
- A new resort hotel on the pier (with guest room decorating)
- Slumber Island dream mode (sandbox-style terraforming)
- Resetti's Cleanup Service (rapid clearing of island flowers, trees, items)
- New cross-title items to collect from Zelda, LEGO, and Platoon
- Improvements to crafting
With new stuff to see and do, it’s just nice to have an excuse to dive back into island life on one of the best cosy titles of all time.
3. Outbound
Platform: Nintendo Switch, Steam
Price: £20
What could be cosier than living off-grid out of a beat-up old camper van?
Outbound is a cosy open-world exploration game set in a hopeful, near-future world. You start with a tired old camper and slowly turn it into a fully self-sufficient home on wheels.
Scavenge for materials, craft new gear, and build your dream mobile base piece by piece, whether you're travelling solo or teaming up with up to four pals.
Harness energy from the sun, wind, or nearby water sources to keep the lights on while you roam from biome to biome growing crops, cooking meals, unlocking new tech and upgrading your van.
Outbound’s world is colourful, laid-back, and full of places to explore at your own pace.
Farm Together 2
Platform: Nintendo Switch, Steam, Xbox Series X/S, PS5
Price: Around £20
We know, we know. Yet another farming sim. But at the risk of losing half our readers at this point, hear us out on this one.
What sets Farm Together games apart from all the other farming simulators, in our humble opinion, is how plug-and-play Nintendo it all feels. There’s no storyline, no romancing the townsfolk, no incurring fines when your character can’t chop down saplings for ten minutes without collapsing in a heap.
Its beauty is its sheer simplicity - that and the awesome tractor you get to zip around on, a mechanic omitted from most farm sims for some unfathomable reason.
The second you fire up this game, there’s stuff to do, but no real consequences for not doing them. Or any real order to do them in. It’s almost an idle game that occupies just enough brain power to keep you playing, but not enough to force you into thinking too hard.
The seasons change every 20 minutes, which switches up what crops are available as well as transforming the environment with ever-changing weather systems.
It’s just as delightful as a one-player game as it is coop, and dropping into a friend’s farm for half an hour to help harvest pumpkins somehow never stops being satisfying.
If you’re after a game you can dip into without needing to navigate complex menus, quests or storylines, Farm Together 2 absolutely nails that cosy “just ten more minutes” feeling.
5. Dave the Diver
Platform: Nintendo Switch, Steam, PS5
Price: Around £17
On paper, Dave the Diver doesn’t sound especially cosy. You spend half the game diving into the ocean catching fish… and the other half running a sushi restaurant.
But somehow it works beautifully.
During the day, you explore the mysterious Blue Hole, a vibrant underwater world that changes slightly every time you dive. You’ll discover new species of fish, hidden caves, strange characters, and the occasional secret boss encounter.
Then in the evening, you help serve up the day’s catch in a bustling sushi bar, upgrading the restaurant, hiring staff, and expanding the menu.
Despite the occasional bit of action while diving, the overall vibe is wonderfully relaxed. The pixel art is gorgeous, the music is mellow, and the gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying.
One minute you’ll think you’ve only got time for a quick dive before bed, and the next thing you know, you’re still optimising your sushi menu at midnight.
6. Starsand Island
Platform: Steam, Nintendo Switch 2 (expected)
Price: Around £20
If you’ve ever wanted a cosy island game that leans a little more into creativity and customisation, Starsand Island might be your next obsession.
Set on a bright tropical island chain, the game blends farming, fishing, decorating, and exploration with a much bigger emphasis on building and shaping your surroundings.
You can design your home almost from scratch, decorate interiors with an absurd number of furniture options, and slowly transform your island community into the dream seaside town you wish existed in real life.
The art style is soft and colourful, with breezy beaches, lantern-lit evening markets, and plenty of gentle background music to soundtrack your wanderings.
It’s the sort of game that invites you to potter about for an hour doing absolutely nothing urgent, which is exactly what a cosy game should do.
7. Loftia
Platform: Steam, Nintendo Switch 2 (planned)
Price: Around £20
If Animal Crossing and a futuristic eco-city had a baby, it would probably look a lot like Loftia.
This cosy MMO is set in a floating city where players work together to build a sustainable community in the sky. Think rooftop gardens, solar panels, hanging bridges, and cosy little apartments overlooking clouds.
You can farm, cook, decorate your home, run small businesses, and take part in seasonal festivals with other players.
The emphasis on sustainability is actually baked into the gameplay, too. You’ll collect rainwater, grow food on vertical gardens, and help power the city through renewable energy.
Don’t worry, though, it’s all handled in a very chill, colourful way rather than feeling like an environmental lecture.
If you enjoy social cosy games where you can quietly exist alongside other players, Loftia looks like it could be something really special when it finally lands.
8. My Time at Evershine
Platform: Steam, PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Price: Around £25
Fans of the long-running “My Time” series (My Time at Portia is a cosy classic) have been patiently waiting for the next instalment after the success of My Time at Sandrock.
This latest entry moves the action to a lush new frontier where you help rebuild a struggling settlement into a thriving community. Expect plenty of crafting, farming, building, and relationship-building with a cast of charming NPCs.
Compared to earlier games in the series, Evershine leans even more into exploration and town-building, giving players more freedom in how they develop their little corner of the world.
It’s still got that familiar cosy loop of gathering materials, upgrading tools, and slowly transforming your environment into something beautiful.
And yes, you can still spend hours rearranging furniture instead of doing any of the quests. Zero judgement here.
9. Over the Hill
Platform: Steam, Xbox Series X/S
Price: Around £18
Not every cosy game has to involve farming, cute critters, or decorating houses.
Over the Hill proves that simply going on a very slow off-road drive through beautiful landscapes can be just as relaxing.
In this peaceful driving sim, you take classic off-road vehicles across mountains, forests, muddy trails, and winding countryside roads.
There’s no racing, no timers, and no pressure. The goal is simply to explore, take in the scenery, and enjoy the journey.
You can play solo or with friends, tackling tricky terrain together while chatting away over voice chat like you’re all on the world’s slowest road trip.
It’s oddly calming watching the sun set over a valley while your battered Land Rover crawls up a muddy track.
Fans of truck sim games like Euro Truck Simulator and Snowrunner will appreciate this mega-chill take on the genre.
10. Project Bloomwalker
Platform: Steam
Price: Around £15
Finally, we have one of the more unusual cosy games arriving this year: Project Bloomwalker.
In this beautifully stylised exploration game, you play as a mysterious wandering figure who restores life to forgotten landscapes.
As you travel through forests, ruins, and quiet natural environments, plants slowly bloom, and ecosystems begin to recover in your wake.
There’s very little in the way of traditional objectives. Instead, the game focuses on peaceful exploration, environmental storytelling, and the simple satisfaction of bringing colour back to the world.
The art style leans heavily into soft lighting, painterly scenery, and tranquil music, perfect for anyone looking to unwind after a long day.
If you enjoy games that feel more like interactive meditation than traditional gameplay, this is definitely one to keep an eye on.
Cosy games have come a long way from their humble farming-sim beginnings. Whether you want to run a sushi restaurant, live in a camper van, rebuild a town, or simply drive very slowly through some mountains, 2026 is shaping up to be a great year for low-stakes gaming.
Tune in, grab your favourite electric blanket, and relax with some cosy gaming!