Songs of Glimmerwick

This game was delightful. Beautiful art, cute story and gameplay. Cozy but also not afraid of getting a little dark. While inventory management can be a bit of a pain, the UI could use some improvement in that regard, it's really not a big part of the game, and it didn't distract me from the charm of the rest of it. The rhythm game stuff was challenging occasionally, but as someone who's not very good at rhythm games I still managed to eventually master every song except the extra hard "challenge" song and catch every fish. The developers have been great, super responsive. The one bug I encountered was fixed the day after I reported it, and they're active responding to questions and reports. The only real negative for this game is that I wish there were more. It's kind of nice that you just play a year and then it's over, but I'm so used to squeezing the most that I can out of every day that even by the end of that year I was a little low on things to do. I wanted more spells to learn, more quests to go on, more potions to make, more uses for items, etc. I collected like 10 of every item I could and most of them went unused. You can keep playing infinitely if you want, but with little to do other than tend your garden and make more money, there's no real point. So basically, I loved the game, and I hope there will be more content, expansions, sequels, anything someday.

Hidden gem. I just happened to come across this when looking through the Autumn sales. Was instantly hooked by the artwork. Played the demo and instantly fell in love with the music and voice acting (seriously the best voice acting I've heard in a long time which is really important considering how much dialogue and lore narration there is). It starts out kinda slow but definitely picks up with lots to do later on - literally everything from joining a band to playing DnD I mean Forests and Fairies. The minigames start out pretty easy but scale in difficulty in a way I've really enjoyed. This one is definitely heavy on character interactions and story. There are points where it will have you just sit and listen to lore. It is skippable but honestly you are missing out on a big part of the game if you do that. Might not be for you if you are looking just for a simple repetitive gameplay loop like other cozy games offer. But if you like a variety of mini-games and fetch quests (and lots of farming) separated with moments of storytelling then I highly recommend. I'm personally addicted and will likely be putting in more hours than I care to admit in the next few weeks. Absolutely charming and full of artistic passion and interesting characters/story.