All posts tagged in Simulation Game
Jul 27, 2023
Create the City of Your Dreams
Heard of the Story? is all about forging your very own medieval town. With the help of your townspeople, you’ll embark on an adventure to transform a few sticks and pebbles into a beautiful, flourishing city. Or, you can sit back and watch as the townspeople live and thrive on their own!
All of the villagers in Heard of the Story? are highly intelligent AI who really feel alive and self-aware. Not only will they help you build your city into the perfect cottagecore village or bustling castle town, but you can watch as they discover their own passions, spread rumors, and even tell some interesting stories to each other. You can even form friendships with them.
In order to build up your dream city, you’ll need to cooperate with your villagers in gathering resources. Explore the mountains and forests beyond the city to find fruits and treasures, as well as other profitable items. Heard of the Story? even lets you discover and nurture your own craft! Discover new recipes through some creative genius or learn from the villagers. Specializing into a role, such as blacksmith, opens up new necessary items for you and your city. Once you’ve mastered the trade, perhaps start your own guild, too!Coming Soon!
Heard of the Story? is coming to Steam and will be available August 17th.
The Wandering Village and Gourdlets are a couple of other great city-builders!
- Jul 26, 2023
In Millennials, you’ll create your very own college freshman. Experience the prime of your youth while also experiencing the ups and downs of college life. Attend classes, work, make enemies, and forge friendships. Even chill out and decorate your dorm room!
When you create your college freshman in Millennials, you have control over what type of person you make. Choose qualities and skills to create a hard-working bookworm or an extroverted party animal. Make time to network with those around you, as it can make college life more fun. Or go the lone wolf route and avoid making friends at all. Join a sorority or fraternity and take part in mysterious initiations. Even throw parties or arrange annual events. If that doesn’t appeal to you, though, you can join a club or just forge friendships and maybe even find love.
You’ll even have to find the perfect work-life balance while you’re at it! Partying is fun, but you’ll need to attend classes and study in order to pass exams. Mix in working part time to pay for tuition, and you’ll have to manage your time in Millennials really well! Just don’t forget to have fun, because all work and no play is dull. Oh, and don’t forget about your reputation on campus. Network with influential students, complete goals, and accumulate good grades to become a campus celebrity.
Coming Soon
You can Wislist Millennials on Steam now! There is no current release date listed.
Looking for more life sims? Check out Palia, an upcoming cozy MMO. There’s also the adorable Japanese Rural Life.
- Jul 20, 2023
Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island is the sequel to Pretty Princess Party, and just as cutesy, magical, and pretty as the other. Only this time, you play as a princess who’s trying to revitalize a once flourishing island. You have full control over designing the island, as well.
Raise livestock to receive animal products to use in recipes. Grow crops and flowers. Manufacture other necessary items to craft beautiful dresses, hair styles, makeup, and decorations. Complete requests from visitors to earn money and points that level you up. You’ll unlock new buildings, decorations, and wearables as you level.
Decorate and Garden and Decorate Some More!
Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island looks a lot like Animal Crossing, honestly. You’re on an island that you get to design and decorate. You’re in charge of fixing it up without help, and there’s fruit picking and fishing to be done. Even the look of the map is Animal Crossing-esque. However, Garden Island successfully set itself apart, I think.
There’s mining, farming, even animals to look after, and you have functional craft houses and restaurants that produce different kinds of food. There’s a functional element to the game that gives me a reason to play beyond just decorating. Garden Island’s livestock aren’t needy, they’re simply a building you place, you feed them, then they produce items. Farming is easy, too. You buy seeds, plant them, and wait! There’s a cute little chime that plays when a crop grows to maturity, too. So don’t go into this thinking you’ll have a Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon experience. You won’t. It’s just what ACNH should have done with crops.
There is a timer to making items, however. The base time is five minutes, though they can be up to ten minutes. These timers apply to crops, the animals, crafting buildings, and restaurants. When I first encountered this mechanic, I thought it would get annoying fast. That wasn’t the case, though. I found that there’s enough to do around Garden Island that I’d get swept up in something else and not even realize five or ten minutes had passed.
The best aspect, and probably the main aspect of Garden Island, though, is the decorating. Decorate yourself, change your hair, slap on some makeup and hair bows, then go pretty up the island. It’s almost overwhelming how many incredible options for decorating there are. From pretty and cutesy to gothic, to normal garden and cottagecore styles, you shouldn’t have trouble picking out the perfect pieces to use. The excitement of this is a little offset by the need to craft dyes and other materials to use to buy the decor. However, you can place multiple of one building to have a whole crafting set-up going so it’s really not a huge issue.
Final Thoughts
Despite the minor gripes, I really, really enjoy Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island. It’s fun and simple and forgiving. I can pick it up for a little while to fill some time, or I can marathon it all day. I can create beautiful water themed areas or spooky gothic and Halloween displays. Or, if I’m feeling in the mood, deck the whole place out in bright pinks befitting a pretty princess. The purposeful crafting and fulfilling order really gives me a sense of accomplishment, too. It makes me want to play because I have to earn levels to unlock more stuff, and craft items to get that stuff.
Overall, I give this one:
You can find Pretty Princess Magical Garden Island on Nintendo Switch!
- Jul 19, 2023
Welcome to Fabledom, where you are the king or queen! A vast, beautiful land is waiting for you to colonize it. In this laid back city builder, there’s no need for optimizing. Simply build and shape the city of your dreams, and watch the settlers’ lives. Experience a fairy tale world filled with flying pigs, witches, and more. Watch the rise and fall of their relationships as you build a prosperous economy to create a flourishing society. Even find yourself a king or queen and fall in love. Build an army, then select a champion to provide your city with defense against vile neighbors and minions.
Fabledom is available now on Steam!
- Jul 19, 2023
Craft, Build, Farm, and Explore
ALOFT is an open-world sandbox game where you must survive living on islands set around a giant, eternal hurricane. You’ll build your base, set sail through the skies to discover new islands, and fight to eliminate the fungi corruption threatening to take over. Uncover the secrets of the past civilization, and learn about their demise by reaching new heights.
Build your base however it suits you. Block the harsh winds or allow them to pass through your structures, lay down some ziplines to get across the island faster, farm crops, and raise animals. Craft useful machinery like the windmill to automate your farm and free up your time. And when you tire of that, take to the skies of ALOFT with your handy glider to explore other islands.
Otherwise, craft a bunch of sails and oars to use your own island as a vehicle! You’ll have absolute freedom when it comes to making your sails. Control the height and width of the masts, as well as the sails, and rotate or expand them as needed. ALOFT allows you to create a host of sails suited for your gameplay, and even for decorative purposes.
Now, I know combat isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, or their idea of cozy, but I think ALOFT gets a pass. You will need to fight off corrupt fungi, but that leaves you in a place to revitalize the surrounding world. The fungi will grow on top of corrupted flora and affect the animals in the vicinity. As you fight back the corruption, you’ll unlock new animal companions, livestock, crops, and resources. There’s something wholesome and cozy about saving ecosystems, I think.Coming 2024
Unfortunately, there’s no specific date listed for the release of ALOFT, but it will be here next year! You can find it on Steam where you can add it to your Wishlist, as well as try out a demo!
Steam recommends this game for those who like Ark Survival Evolved and Terraria. It also reminds me of I Am Future.
- Jul 13, 2023
Welcome to Sugar Shack, located at the center of a world that’s stuck in an eternal spring. There, you’ve become the owner of a cute little restaurant where you’ll sell some sweet treats to the townspeople. Tap trees to collect maple syrup, harvest berries, and even grow some crops to use as ingredients in your goods.
As you play, you’ll receive hex tiles to place in order to expand the town. Place each tile how you want to create a fully customized town layout. Each tile interacts with the ones around it with positive or negative effects, so place them wisely. Play Sugar Shack solo or with up to 4 players to collaborate and split the chores. Each player even gets their own room they can decorate to their personal tastes.
You can find Sugar Shack on Steam, though it has no release date yet.
Give Puff Pals a look, too, for a cute village sim experience.
- Jul 13, 2023
I know many people don’t think fighting in games makes for a cozy experience, and I generally agree. However, Cuisineer is an exception! I got a chance to play the demo during Steam’s Next Fest, and I didn’t know I needed a roguelike restaurant management game in my life until then.
In Cuisineer, you play as Pom, a young adventurer turned restaurateur. You’ve just returned to your hometown of Paell to manage your parents’ restaurant only to find it closed and in deep debt. To pay off the debt, you need to re-open and make money. And to do that, you have to go delve into dungeons to collect ingredients.
Explore dungeons in a variety of different biomes. Fight giant chickens, artillery shrimp, fire-breathing peppers, and other creatures. Then collect the ingredients, take them home, and cook up over 100 different recipes to revive the restaurant. Even buy upgrades to expand the restaurant, as well as new furniture and decor to liven up the place, too!
You can find Cuisineer on Steam, though it has no release date listed.
For more cooking fun, check out my review of Yum Yum Cookstar.
- Jul 13, 2023
I wrote about Gourdlets back in November when I first discovered the game. It’s an absolutely adorable little city builder game with no challenges, no quests, no resource management. You just unleash your creativity and build little cityscapes!
Since November, developer AuntyGames has added some great new features to the game. You can now enter buildings and decorate them! Build cozy homes for your Gourdlets and sweet little cafes for them to frequent. This adds another level of customization for players to create the cityscapes of their dreams.
Fences are now more intuitive to build, too. It’s easier to form corners and make enclosures with them. So, if you had been wanting to create tiny zoos or farm pastures, now it’s much easier! What’s also easier is placing land tiles. Gourdlets has a paint bucket tool that lets you create islands without the hassle of all the individual clicking. And my favorite addition is farming! Place tilled dirt tiles, plant seeds, and the Gourdlets will water them and pull weeds. They’ll even pick the mature crops!
You can find Gourdlets on Itch.io, as well as Steam!
