I like the idea of breaking out of the constraints of labels and genres. It does feel like taking on a strictly "cozy game" term would set up expectations both from how you develop and what people except. Genres should grow and branch out to explore all the unique angles of what it can creatively.
As someone who owes her career to injecting decidedly non-cozy vibes into an, erm, cozy-coded genre/medium, I am really fascinated by the idea of post-cozy games.
I think an unspoken assumption about "cozy" games as a genre is that, while they might take inspiration from Animal Crossing or Sim{foo}, we think of those titles as mainstream precursors to the genre, not examples of the genre itself. Cozy games IMO are definitionally indie titles, and I think they slot nicely into the pixelated nostalgia-bait mode of indie game; they're just using Harvest Moon as a baseline rather than Ninja Gaiden Or Whatever. There's a version of this description that throws around words like "reactionary" but I think it's great that I can play 100 Super C clones on Steam, and similarly I think it's cool that people are still making kawaii Hamtaro clones in 2024.
And yet I think these games can and should use the "language" of retro computer games to tell stories that we couldn't tell in 1996 - or honestly, that we couldn't tell today in mainstream games! What I think is neat about Danshi Days - just going off the promo info so far!! - is not just that you are dealing with real-world stuff, but that the particular real-world question it's grappling with of "what will we do with our lonely elders in a rapidly graying Japan" is being answered with "give them kawaii AI simulacra of human interaction" ... which is arguably what this genre of game is, if you're being cynical!!! And that's a really interesting tension IMO. "Post-cozy" is the perfect word for it.
Yeah I've always wondered about the reactionary take on 'nostalgia-bait'... on one hand there are cases where the inspirations aren't really built upon meaningfully. But, nostalgia-bait doesn't allow for the fact that many games coming out are essentially 'didn't you like this recent game'? I would ask a reactionary in this case to better examine what actually is the issue in 'nostalgia-bait', which IMO is not taking influence from an old game - as, objectively, all games take influences from games that are older - the issue is more copying design decisions without thinking about why they were made in the first place. And that issue applies to all games regardless of how much they are framed by nostalgia.
(As a side note, while there are many contra clones, you'd actually be hard-pressed to find anything resembling a Hamtaro clone!)
I would say that the cynical take on post-cozy (or Danchi Days) isn't quite right - it's not right to call the NPCs themselves as 'simulacra' of human interaction. Or, if one were to call them that, then you'd have to equally call characters in *any* fiction as 'simulacra'. The power of any fictional character is the fact that they are caricatures and abstractions of real people, so I don't think games are necessarily doing any wrongs there (outside of maybe, people who are insistent on trying to make characters 'really really realistic' via LLMs, etc).
Likewise I don't think a game that has some themes based in real-world issues is necessarily viewing itself as a solution to that problem - like any artwork it's just something that coexists side-by-side with the problem, and it's unpredictable what a particular player will get out of the experience. (On the other hand, I do think that a work that isn't made with the intention to be thinking about certain themes - it is less likely that work will spark ideas or thoughts from a given player, regarding that theme)
I like the idea of breaking out of the constraints of labels and genres. It does feel like taking on a strictly "cozy game" term would set up expectations both from how you develop and what people except. Genres should grow and branch out to explore all the unique angles of what it can creatively.
As someone who owes her career to injecting decidedly non-cozy vibes into an, erm, cozy-coded genre/medium, I am really fascinated by the idea of post-cozy games.
I think an unspoken assumption about "cozy" games as a genre is that, while they might take inspiration from Animal Crossing or Sim{foo}, we think of those titles as mainstream precursors to the genre, not examples of the genre itself. Cozy games IMO are definitionally indie titles, and I think they slot nicely into the pixelated nostalgia-bait mode of indie game; they're just using Harvest Moon as a baseline rather than Ninja Gaiden Or Whatever. There's a version of this description that throws around words like "reactionary" but I think it's great that I can play 100 Super C clones on Steam, and similarly I think it's cool that people are still making kawaii Hamtaro clones in 2024.
And yet I think these games can and should use the "language" of retro computer games to tell stories that we couldn't tell in 1996 - or honestly, that we couldn't tell today in mainstream games! What I think is neat about Danshi Days - just going off the promo info so far!! - is not just that you are dealing with real-world stuff, but that the particular real-world question it's grappling with of "what will we do with our lonely elders in a rapidly graying Japan" is being answered with "give them kawaii AI simulacra of human interaction" ... which is arguably what this genre of game is, if you're being cynical!!! And that's a really interesting tension IMO. "Post-cozy" is the perfect word for it.
Yeah I've always wondered about the reactionary take on 'nostalgia-bait'... on one hand there are cases where the inspirations aren't really built upon meaningfully. But, nostalgia-bait doesn't allow for the fact that many games coming out are essentially 'didn't you like this recent game'? I would ask a reactionary in this case to better examine what actually is the issue in 'nostalgia-bait', which IMO is not taking influence from an old game - as, objectively, all games take influences from games that are older - the issue is more copying design decisions without thinking about why they were made in the first place. And that issue applies to all games regardless of how much they are framed by nostalgia.
(As a side note, while there are many contra clones, you'd actually be hard-pressed to find anything resembling a Hamtaro clone!)
I would say that the cynical take on post-cozy (or Danchi Days) isn't quite right - it's not right to call the NPCs themselves as 'simulacra' of human interaction. Or, if one were to call them that, then you'd have to equally call characters in *any* fiction as 'simulacra'. The power of any fictional character is the fact that they are caricatures and abstractions of real people, so I don't think games are necessarily doing any wrongs there (outside of maybe, people who are insistent on trying to make characters 'really really realistic' via LLMs, etc).
Likewise I don't think a game that has some themes based in real-world issues is necessarily viewing itself as a solution to that problem - like any artwork it's just something that coexists side-by-side with the problem, and it's unpredictable what a particular player will get out of the experience. (On the other hand, I do think that a work that isn't made with the intention to be thinking about certain themes - it is less likely that work will spark ideas or thoughts from a given player, regarding that theme)