Just played through Spiritfarer, and I think I have a theory about Cosy Games. Cosy Games by-customer-need must fit in a genre where you are both given clear instruction for what to do (achiever) and also something you can doodle on with no expectations (explorer). This is why RPG style games sort-of fit, because once mastery is achieved the game becomes rote, and you trivially achieve while exploring.
This is why a game built for being Cosy doesn't work. It must simultaneously satisfy both urges, the urge to get told you're doing well at a given task, and the urge to not be held to a high standard. You end up with games which are regimented in that they must score you somehow, but also they need to sort of act like they don't care about it. That's what feels off about these games. They're like “here's a task, you could do it, or not upto you”. This is also kind of where Animal Crossing sort of works: It gives you tasks a computer cannot score (draw a picture, make a song) other than completion, which the player dictates. Then, the other residents “judge” you on it, and they're always nice. It's a neat trick where they bait-and-switch from game rules –> narrative.
Ergo, if you're making a cosy game, you should create open ended tasks and then the “judgement” should come from narrative elements.
I've been meaning to restore the old blog, but there are a number of issues.
First, I did a backup and restore of some metadata incorrectly, and one of my cohorts' posts ended up under my own name. Secondly, realistically I was the only one posting for a long time, so it made sense for this to become my personal blog. Thirdly, I would have liked to post more often, not to mention post using the Fedi standards, but I just never could do the work to create a bespoke blog.
Finally, this blog used our real names, and while that might have been OK a long time ago, I just don't trust the world anymore. I still trust you if you're reading this. I just don't trust the automated systems which link data everywhere. You probably know who this is.
As such, I also think it's unwise to keep my old posts here. They were of me and us as children, and no longer reflect who I am now. I'll miss it, because I don't regret any of it, but we live in a world of bad faith and fragile egos. But also, a world where whatever edgy humour might have been here has acted as cover for actual hate to fester and spread. I guess I'm not so proud of that.
Nevertheless, let's see how we go. I'll try and post more long-form stuff here. My online persona is now purposely fragmented, shorter stuff goes to Mastodon, upvotes and shitposts go to Lemmy. I'm on slrpnk and aus.social with different names. They're nice places with good mods.