No Interest in Running or Fighting? Try These Cozy, Slow-Paced Apple Arcade Games

I mentioned in Wear, Watch, Want #208 that I’ve become addicted to Cozy Grove, a game introduced to me through a free subscription to Apple Arcade. I assumed Apple Arcade was full of platform games, running games, and otherwise fast-paced “arcade” style stuff. But they have a SLEW of slow paced, cozy games - which are FAR more my style. I want to explore an environment, do puzzles, help villagers, run a small business. I don’t want to be timed, or rushed, or have to shoot/zap/punch anything. Here are my favorite cozy games available on Apple Arcade.

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

One caveat of Apple Arcade (and maybe the whole App Store) is that they do NOT give you a decent idea of what something is before you download it. In Apple Arcade they play a little video behind the title, and it’s gameplay that only makes sense once you have actually played the game. I thought Alba was a game for preschoolers! It’s definitely accessible for younger players (Apple suggests ages 4+), but this isn’t a “baby” game.

You play as Alba, a young girl who visits her grandparents on a tiny island in Spain once a year. This year, the mayor has teamed up with a developer to replace the nature preserve with a luxury hotel. Alba’s mission for her vacation week (it’s actually five days) is to get signatures from all the citizens for a petition against the hotel, all while cleaning up the island, restoring the nature reserve, and photographing and cataloging the wildlife of the island through an app on her phone. Each morning, Alba gets a text on her phone with a task for the day, ie meet Grandpa at the castle, or take a boat to the other, even smaller island. These tasks can be accomplished very quickly, and they advance the “day,” along, which in turn gives you less time to achieve every goal. You could finish playing Alba in a matter of an hour or two, but if you postpone the daily tasks, and therefore postpone the day progressing, you can wander the island freely, collecting animals in your phone and accomplishing many more tasks than the “day” allows. The first time I played, I didn’t really get this, and was disappointed when my vacation ended and I hadn’t restored the preserve or filled my animal guide. Now I’m playing a second game, and taking each day as slowly as possible. There’s definitely replayability with Alba, although I wish you could skip past the tutorial at the beginning.

Monument Valley+

Monument Valley is in the regular app store, but with the Apple Arcade version, you get Monument Valley ($3.99) and Forgotten Shores ($1.99), PLUS an added standalone pack of puzzles just for Apple Arcade. And all for free (in the way that watching a movie on Netflix is “free”). Monument Valley is a game full of Escheresque puzzles that keep you entertained for hours. No one is chasing you, but you do meet obstacles and have to alter your perspective to solve the puzzles. It’s easy to get lost in Monument Valley, listening to calming music and completing little puzzles, for hours. I was sad when it ended, but again, replayability is a factor. The puzzles aren’t so simple (or so difficult and frustrating), that you will finish the game and enver want to come back.

The Last Campfire

Do you want your puzzles with an added layer of moodiness? In The Last Campfire you play as Ember, a creature best described as a non-binary toddler mitten. (Best described? Maybe not, but once you play the game you will realize I’m spot on). The Last Campfire is a story about the afterlife, or something along those lines, narrated by what sounds like a young woman with a northern European accent. Ember has to travel around three strange lands, helping other mitten creatures to cross over into the afterlife. It took me awhile to understand the game, but once I figured out the mechanics, I was enthralled and played all 7ish hours of the game in a matter of two days. To summarize: The Last Campfire is like Bjork telling you a slightly goth bedtime story, but with puzzles.

Patterned

It’s a jigsaw puzzle, but different. Patterned is a game where you need to take pieces of a colored picture (more a pattern than a picture) and place them in the correct spots over a black and white outline of the pattern. Some of these puzzles are easy, some not so easy, but tis the kind of game you can play while listening to a podcast on a plane (as I did recently when I realized I had NO interest in reading my book).

The Oregon Trail

The GRIP Oregon Trail has on millennials, I TELL YOU. You say Oregon Trail and I say YES, and you didn’t even ask me a question. The Oregon Trail on Apple Arcade is an improvement on the original, but in a way that’s actually better and not just different. There is far more actual gameplay and strategy involved in this version, and parts of it are actually really difficult. I made a wagon and barely made it to the end. My party rolled into Oregon with one survivor (out of four), one ox (out of three) and a wagon that was as depleted of supplies as it was damaged (if I hit one pebble on the trail it was going to be over). There are also side quests, which unlock other types of settlers, or tools, or more challenges, and you can choose different difficulty levels. I’ve played this game a lot, and I’ve only finished about 30% of what it has to offer. There’s also a statement at the beginning of the game about the legacy of Oregon Trail, particularly in how it portrayed Indigenous Americans. It mentions that Indigenous people were consulted, and there are even games you can play entirely from the perspective of native people.

(Sidenote on the Trail-verse: My school also had Yukon Trail, which I liked a bit more than Oregon Trail, and at home I had Amazon Trail, which was by far my favorite.)