There are more than a few gaming showcases out there right now, but none that tackle games that are both cozy and dark at the same time. The Cozy After Dark Showcase is made to fill that gap, with a 52-game showcase made and presented by people who love both genres. From zombie survival games to a rogue-like castle builder where you play as Dracula, building a spooky abode.
The whole showcase was presented by Dames 4 Games, a non-profit that is dedicated to spotlighting women and femme-identifying people across the gaming industry through mentorships, digital showcases, micro-grants and community programs. So, without further ado, let’s get into all the spooky but cozy games presented.
Spirits of Baciu
Set in the Hoia Baciu forest, one of the most haunted and mysterious places on the planet, you set out on an adventure through the roots and shadows of the forest. Players will take control of a little spirit called The Lost One and set off to answer the questions of how he got there and what is haunting the forest.
Along the path, players will have to solve numerous riddles scattered around the bark and spoken in secret by the other spirits that inhabit the forest. By using these spirits and their knowledge of the forest, you can unlock multiple new items and mechanics that will help The Lost One along the trail.
The Road of Dust and Sorrow
Inspired by games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, The Road of Dust and Sorrow emulates the story-driven survival horror genre through a pixel-art lens. The world itself is in the midst of an apocalyptic event caused by a genetically engineered crop that was meant to end hunger, but instead mutated all who consumed it into bloodthirsty monsters called dusters.
You play as a woman named Katherine who is wandering this broken world with her daughter Ava. Throughout their journey of survival, they (and you) will encounter multiple intense situations that you must fight your way out of in a desperate bid to stay alive. But after you draw the attention of a pastor and his mysterious following, who see regular humans as soil for future plans, dusters are the least of Katherine and Ava’s problems.
Gloomy Eyes
“When the sun gave up on humanity, darkness and gloom took its place” are the binding words of the world of Gloomy Eyes. While the living and dead war with each other over the half-dead world, a zombie boy named Gloomy and a human girl named Nena are the only two souls who can defy the world and bring the light back.
Described as a “self-coop” adventure, Gloomy Eyes is a fully single-player experience where players will take control of each character whenever needed to solve environmental puzzles. Using each character’s special abilities to get through levels inspired by Tim Burton’s work, all in order to restore warmth to the divided world.
In Full Bloom
While this game may not exactly fit very well into the “cozy” aspect of the showcase, it definitely fits the horror role. Deep down, though, it’s actually kind of cute. Based off of Katamari, the goal of In Full Bloom is just to take care of a little hungry mouth that depends on you to grow bigger.
As your little creature begins to grow bigger, and hungrier, the environment around you will change to accommodate bigger and bigger meals for your pet. But as the mouth gets too hungry for its own good, you must make the choice between mindless consumption or taking responsibility for the actions that lead to what your little guy has become.
Mutter
During World War II, an English boy named Maddox Holloway is living with his mother in rural England while his father fights on the front lines. But his mother is acting more and more strangely, and as the days roll on, more monstrous too. Maddox sets off on a task to uncover his family’s curse and bring his actual mom back from whatever dark corner she’s been stuffed down into.
Maddox and the player must journey through the countryside using your trusty bicycle to solve puzzles and platforming to uncover the secrets that lie buried deep in the fields.
Catechesis
When an altar boy from a fringe religion gets possessed by a demon, all his good deeds suddenly open portals to hell itself. Therefore, it is the boy – Daniel’s – job to do good by day and fight demons by night, all in an effort to save his grandpa while walking a slack line that will doom the world to eternal hellfire if he fails.
As a kind of persona-like system, Daniel will have to attend school and work during the day and fight off the forces of evil at night, and try not to pass out by only having 4 hours of sleep every night. During the story, you will also find friends and allies, play sports, use stealth to your advantage, and much more.
Not A Crow
Destiny is a fickle and dangerous thing, especially when one doesn’t want to face it, a challenge that the main character of Not A Crow – Cro – must avoid at all costs. As she crosses a world filled with ruins and darkness, she will also encounter other creatures shaped by the same darkness that shaped her. But some creatures out there are better left to their own devices.
Featured as a point-and-click narrative adventure, players will have to solve puzzles and explore the Hollow Knight-esque shadowy world that comes with the task.
HINO
The natural light of the world has disappeared completely, and countless machines plus new monsters have taken full advantage of that fact. A girl with a red ribbon named Hino and her skeletal companion Monimoni are in search of a place that will let them finally rest in a world where rest is but a forgotten concept.
At times Hino will have to run from danger, while other times she may have the tools ready to fight off the danger, and with the help of records left behind by others before you, find out why the world is like this at all.
Vale’s Echo
When Vale died, she expected to go anywhere else but a train, a train to nowhere. She had no idea where she was going or even who she actually is. She has only one friend, a floating skull named Echo, who helps her along her journey to find her peace, but maybe some questions are better left unanswered.
Talk with human-fish hybrids while going back to the train to cargain with a leech, or even pet the cute little guy above; it’s all possible on your journey to find out where and what Vale is.
Deathy Delights
A spirit named Grimm is trapped in a small town with only one goal: to get home to their family. Along this journey, Grimm passes through the supposedly bright town of Ea’apple, but the entire town is abandoned on arrival with no signs of life at all. Grimm makes his way to the exit of the town and finds a hole spewing a constant dark mist before he is grabbed by a massive hand and dragged down to limbo, where he finds the trapped inhabitants of Ea’pple Town.
The main goal of the game is to go from door to door and find out if the one inhabiting the house is a real person, or a monster with dark intentions. That’s just the tip of the shadow though, with many more mechanics and new friends waiting for Grimm to find and help them out.
Apothecurse
Leon is an out-of-work apothecary who finds himself working in a town ruined by unknown previous supernatural events, and Leon is on a course to find out the truth. He does this by exploring the town and hand-drawn levels that will leave him with multiple scavenged and malicious materials to turn into potions.
Night Errand
Sage and Nur are both detectives, one human and one monster, both working together to solve crimes in the complete darkness of Morrow Pines. But as the crime rate begins to increase in the city, the disillusioned Sage has grown distant from the job at hand and while Nur still believes in humanity, your choices across the story can influence these characters to be better or worse.
After the famous actor Rem J. Knox was gunned down during a performance, their co-star Luna Clair is seen as the only one who could’ve done it, but as Sage and Nur dig deeper into the case, the facts just don’t line up. While investigating cases, Sage and Nur must challenge the facts along with their own biases to get to the bottom of the enduring mystery of more than just the case at hand.
Private Psychic
Maple is a psychic who has just graduated from Psychic College and has moved to a new town in order to help people with supernatural problems. She does this by opening a psychic agency but encounters a hitch in the road when her powers get disturbed by her fears and doubts about being truly on her own sink in. The game follows Maple as she tackles her first few cases while navigating the working world.
With multiple psychic abilities at your disposal, like filters that show ghostly activity and a Spookypedia to catalogue them, it’s up to you and Maple to solve the mysteries plaguing the town of Bewearf.
The Darkside Detective: Backside of the Moon
Detective McQueen is the only person standing in the way of the onslaught of supernatural crimes and criminals plaguing the city of Twin Lakes. Along with his sidekick, Officer Dooley, the two heroes are tasked with taking on six new cases that will put them against odds with werewolves, cursed items, and the most despicable monster of them all: rich people.
As a sequel to the first game in the series called The Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark, the developers originally tried to just remaster a few cases, but ended up making a whole new game.
Recollage
Set in a fantasy scrapbook world, the goal of Recollage is to tell a dark coming-of-age story about living in a dysfunctional family. By using the scrapbook itself to change your appearance and abilities, players will use their own scrapbook creations to navigate and survive the treacherous cut-out world and discover the hidden memories of its creator.
Helix: Descent N Ascent
When you wake up in a strange, disembodied world, you are alone for a long time, but when wandering around you inevitably find a dark clone of yourself walking the same road. But who is this doppelgänger? And is he a friend or enemy? These questions are the crux of Helix: Descent N Ascent.
Helix invites the player on a journey of self-discovery, identity, solitude and the relationships formed along the way. Through puzzles, powers, and beautiful art, the player will set off on a mysterious journey for the truth.
Cages: Hidden Worlds
Every sound, shadow, and mechanism matters in Cages, where, through the act of repairing complex machinery, you find the secrets hidden within. Players will channel the mysterious force known as the Crimson Pulse through items found within a house storing the remains of a carnival and uncover the stories of the very items you repair. Each item has a different themed puzzle associated with it that has a correlation to the unknown fate of the ones who used it before it ended up in an old house.
Frieda is Changing
Frieda’s sister is missing, and it’s up to her unwavering will and your mouse to help Frieda find her sister in this point-and-click adventure game. Frieda lives in the town of Rausching, a mysterious and isolated island village where Frieda lives with her dad – the mayor – which gives her some wherewithal in the town to knock on some doors, or have some slammed in her face.
Solve puzzles and choose your words carefully to unravel the cause of your sister’s disappearance for yourself, because no one else seems interested in finding her. By literally digging through people’s memories of the night she disappeared, you will find out what happened and, hopefully, find Frieda’s sister.
Murals
Murals is set in a twisted fairy tale world where all of the classic tales like Little Red Riding Hood and Sleeping Beauty have all seen better days. You play as a woman transported into this world with no memory of who she is or how she got there, and have to fight your way through hordes of formerly beloved characters.
Using the tools, weapons and more given to you or obtained from the world at large, you and your trusty friend Loaf have to journey across tales in an effort to find what went wrong in these worlds.
DeadRoot
Who says a snail can’t be a knight? No one in the world of Deadroot, where big and small critters all around participate in deadly combat. While a snail may be small, it’s still deadly, and with the help of teachers and friends around the deep roots you explore, you can be even deadlier. And you’ll need that extra umph against massive bosses like a rat king, but through use of climbing on walls, fitting into small gaps, and finding better and better gear, even a snail can slay a beast.
Mona: The Endless Journey
When a girl falls into a nightmarish world with only her pillow to comfort her, she meets Mona, a girl who looks almost exactly the same as her, but can control time and space itself. Using the pillow as both a weapon and shield, she and Mona venture into the dark world ahead to find companions, the truth, and a means of escape.
This is a co-op game with a heavy focus on teamwork in fights, because only the pillow can be used to block; you and a friend will have to be strategic in fights where only one can attack, and only one can defend.
Ritual Party
Have you ever wondered what Mario Party would be like if they had to summon eldritch deities instead of finding stars? Ritual Party answers that question. You and your friends are tasked with having to summon Cthulhu, but it seems like the forces of nature are, for some reason, against this prospect, as slipping on blood, getting swept away by a monster, falling in ice or random spirits all have it out for you and your efforts.
It’s definitely not a good thing that the police and actual bone-chilling winds are on their way to stop the ritual entirely, so make sure to get a head start and summon your eldritch god before the fuzz can stop it.
Spanky “Bat-a-Swing”
Spanky and the world they live in function’s completely off of music. Not unlike Hi-Fi Rush, every action or move you take can be synced to the beat of the electro-swing soundtrack. All throughout the game, each platforming section, boss battle, trap, and character you find, battle or meet will all be influenced in some way by a smooth, smooth beat.
Spanky is sick of this rhythm; however, having successfully transformed his ears into speakers, his goal is to use his own discord to stop the beat of the city and restore peace to the citizens within.
UnderMire
You and three other friends can now enter into a bunker and explore the labyrinth using magic and wits to go as deep as possible. In order to get that far, players will use the “smushing” mechanic; any player can get two items and then combine them into one to make a powerful new weapon.
The bunker itself has it out for you; it twists, changes, contorts, and uses everything in its power to get you out of its bowels, so get ready to smush a piggy bank and lighter together.
The Whisker Watch
You and a friend are now cats, yep. And now you are also in charge of protecting your human from void-borne creatures of darkness that attack the house every night, not a forgiving job. But luckily enough, you and your friend have a host of weapons and upgrades available for you to protect your owner and the house. By day, you can unlock rooms and decorate them with whatever furniture you want; each new addition makes the cursed house a little bit more secure.
Unusual June
What was supposed to be a cozy summer break has turned into a fight for a cemetery’s existence. June, the main character, and her both alive and dead friends are the main line of defence against the invading crystal creatures, disappearing ghosts and the new billionaire in town.
The third-person moveset is meant to be extensive and used against massive bosses. The orginal movset is simple: melee combos and a quick dodge eventually evolve into super moves, dashing, dodge cancels, and parries. Dodging successfully refills the super meter, and armour regenerates during fights, allowing for more aggressive combat, which gets even crazier as June gets XP for skills and upgrades across the course of the game.
Waltz and Jam
Waltz and Jam is the story about a little ghost called Waltz and his trusty shapeshifting dog friend Jam. Join Waltz and Jam in a journey through the afterlife of seven realms based on the seven deadly sins and platform to the very bottom of the last sin, all in order to obtain a ticket to UpTown.
Jam is the key to a lot of puzzles in the game, as he can shapeshift his body into useful items and objects like a waterball to splash or a trampoline to gain some height. Make sure to keep an eye out for toys scattered around each world as well; each one has a use to unlock hidden passages, trigger contraptions or just send foes flying.
Grave Seasons
A quiet town, a farm, friendly neighbours and a serial killer. That’s the basic gist of Grave Seasons, where you enter the role of an escaped convict living in the town, but when one of your neighbours is found dead, it falls on you to find the killer in one years time.
The cool part about this game is that for every playthrough, another random villager is picked to be the killer, making spoilers an impossibility and shock an absolute; it could even be your favourite character right under your nose. There is also an entire sim game underneath the murder mystery aspect, with farming, customization, artifacts to find, and much more.
Adopt Me Please
Adopt Me Please puts you in the shoes of an employee of the Softlight animal shelter, in charge of vetting stray animals and finding them a home. The tricky part is that some of these strays are mimics in disguise, and mimics kill. Your actual job is to do your best to root out which animals are animals and which are… something else.
Accomplishing this task can be tricky, as the only way to tell is to perform inspections on paws or – tentacles – while also checking to see if their paperwork checks out. The price if you fail? Maybe nothing for you, but you might just see one of your former customers in the paper as a victim of a brutal, mysterious attack.
FallBearers
Set in Victorian England, this wacky single-player or co-op game puts you and a friend into the bumbling shoes of two polebearers with a mission to deliver the body and casket on time; the tricky part is not losing the body. Evolving from a simple jaunt down the street to climbing a mountain or crossing a treacherous sea, fallbearing is not for the weak.
Fangtopia
Monsters deserve a place of their own to call their own, which is where you step in. Building an island for the supernaturally-inclined is no small feat; mind you, you also have to make sure that specific monsters have their ideal habitats. A Yeti needs a mountain and a vampire needs a coffin.
There are three modes to play in: Fangtopia mode for short and sweet sessions of building, Ghoulish Mode for building bigger worlds with a bigger assortment of tiles to play with, and island mode, which lets you create archipelagos connected by trains for that vacation every monster needs.
Mops & Mobs: A Sweeping Dungeon Adventure
Most games have you raiding dungeons to conquer them, but in this one you just work there. It’s your job to help the new owner of the dungeon with cleaning, repairing and designing the corridors and rooms that make up the labyrinth. Along the way, you will befriend the monsters dwelling within and find out their personal stories along with tales of an ancient war. By using what you learn about each monster, you can design their room according to their tastes.
Hundred Nights: DIFU
Running the Chinese interpretation of Hell is hard work, but it’s also now your job. As the new owner of Hell, it is your job to terraform, build, and construct the 18 new planes of Hell with mountains, floating islands and torture methods meant for the very souls that inhabit the plane.
It is all up to you how to run your version of Hell; you could be direct and have ravens peck forever, or be the most evil creature imaginable by making people wait in a line that never ends, truly horrifying.
Morbid Mailroom
Occult criminal offenders of this world have been locked up inside of Dethlam, a massive prison complex where you work as a package inspector. It is your job to inspect every package that comes in and incinerate the ones that don’t pass the check. But sometimes the package has a good reason to reach the inmate it’s meant for.
Will you do your duty, or have enough compassion to let some packages through? Letting some packages through or burning them may be the difference between life and death for you.
Tearoom of Terror
Your distant aunt has died of strange causes (most definitely murder) and has bequeathed unto you her tearoom where residents of the town gather to have a delicious spot of tea with a hint of malice. It is your job to sate your customers with whatever they ask for, whether that be Earl Grey or agreeing to poison another customer’s tea to support the plot of another.
Try to survive the plotting residents through deception, the right choices, and a little investigation of your own to find out the full story of your aunt’s death before the big party of Halloween.
Curse of Resthaven
After your niece disappears on the eve of a catastrophic event, you take control of the cursed island colony of Resthaven. You will need to govern effectively through haggling with traders for a good price, allocating resources accordingly and deciding which person or people to trust.
That’s only half the story, though; your secondary goal is to stop the complete destruction of the island by uncovering a Lovecraftian plot. After seven days pass, the island might be destroyed, but you are sent back to the start each time by the fading island goddess with all your memories and experience intact; only by using them can you stop the cataclysm before it happens.
Dicewood
You and your animal friends are trapped in a dark forest with the goal of escaping the horrors within. The only way to do this, however, is if the animals themselves become dice to roll, each with their own abilities and strategies to use. It’s up to you to use the dice to their full potential and try to break the game mechanics themselves to destroy any enemy you come across.
Hell Deck
Using a board and a series of cascading sacrifices, it is up to you and your strategic mind to fend off the despicable forces of heaven in this roguelike deck builder. The goal is to create a unique “ecosystem” of demons that cannibalize each other to create stronger demons, so on and so forth, inevitably culminating in a demon that rivals a god in power.
Night Hike
Ever get lost in a dark forest full of lost souls, no? Well then, Night Hike is the perfect way to finally get that experience under your belt. As a roguelite, this game lets you play multiple playthroughs in a row where you plot a course through the forest, hoping to eventually reach the end of the hike, either through dumb luck or careful planning. Along the road, you will meet your fair share of wandering forest folk, but whether they are helpful or harmful is up to you and how you play.
Draftula
Building a castle is hard work, but when the goal is to build a castle strong enough to allow you to inherit the power of the strongest vampire that ever un-lived, it makes the days go by faster, to say the least.
The goal of Draftula is to build a castle as high up as possible through strategic use of which rooms to use where, each having an effect on the overall state of the castle itself. After you’re done for the night, the local village serves as a place to both buy new rooms to use the next day and unravel just what happened to the last vampire that needed a castle around these parts.
Astro Amigo
Set in the downright terrifying setting of Wisconsin, you will play as Austin, a young kid who is desperately searching for his missing dog, Amigo. Austin sets off on a mini-journey around his small town of Sidgrove to find out how his dog just disappeared in the middle of the night. Solve puzzles, uncover mysteries and try not to get (probably) abducted.
Lap of the Gods: A Visual Novel
Lap of the Gods is a visually stunning game that is set in the world of The Lap and pictured through 100+ hand-drawn backgrounds. Using some point-and-click elements, you can meet a ton of “people” with object heads, all in an effort to help Marion stop losing her grasp on the world she inhabits.
Hell Is Other People
Hell Is Other People is a psychedelic deep dive into the human consciousness and delivers it through the form of a kid who is different in a world where that is seen as wrong. While other games have weapons and armour to collect, all the little girl has in this game is a book of social skills to master. As the little girl goes through a tumultuous time in her life, you as a player will have to deal with meters displaying her overwhelm, paranoia and dissociation.
If you fail at being human, then the game will have a bad ending; after all, what’s scarier than being yourself?
Gretel & Hansel
A slight twist on the classic tale, you play as Gretel, while trapped in a beautiful hand-painted watercolour forest; you must guide your brother Hansel through puzzles, traps, tribulations and an all-seeing witch. A huge mechanic of this game is actually death itself; there are 50+ unique death animations, but death isn’t completely bad at all. In fact, dying oftentimes leads to secrets, treasure, and hidden paths.
Scarlet Hollow
While trapped in the town of Scarlet Hollow after your aunt dies, the entire town seems to go through a stint of bad luck. The mines cave in; something is preying on the cattle, and some houses seem to creak in a way that almost forms a word. It’s up to you to survive a week in this town, but the way things are going? You’d be lucky to last a day.
Choices have a heavy impact on how the story plays out; the developers themselves claim that you would barely see 1/5th of the complete story through just one playthrough alone. All depending on how you handle dialogue, being silent and observant may be preferable over being hot and clueless, or maybe your seldom-used animal-speaking ability will finally come in handy.
SPRKLS.exe
Your desktop is now haunted. To be more detailed, a girl named Rin now inhabits your computer through a program that was suddenly installed, which seems to be a gateway to a realm where spirits run free. Make friends, solve puzzles, and have fun, but when you go to sleep, the world you explored during the day has turned dark and shattered compared to before.
This dark world actually reaches into your physical desktop to deliver files filled with clues or open windows you need to interact with to progress. The future of paranormal computing is here.
Party on Hallow Grove
It’s Death’s birthday party, and you are in charge of throwing them the best surprise birthday party ever. This top-down RPG sets you off to invite guests, trade for decorations, explore the venue (a mansion), and many more party activities to be found. The quest you embark on will provide you with funny dialogue, new friends, and a new outlook on interpersonal relationships, and when an unexpected guest crashes the party, let’s just say you’ll face a big challenge.
The Doll Shop
A secluded dollmaker in a forgotten village has recently gotten the news that his childhood best friend has returned to the village; now he must choose: will he tell her how he feels, or keep living a hollow life?
Repairing dolls and exploring the village are the main gameplay features, with the player being able to visit shrines, soak in baths, and complete a journey to try every ramen flavour at the local restaurant. There are three endings to find based on what choices you make throughout the game, with a hidden one unlocking after the three are found.
Tom the Postgirl
A new postgirl has come to town! Tom is the newest addition to the town’s populace, and she is charged with delivering packages to the rest of the townspeople’s homes.
But Tom has a little secret: she is a depraved person who enjoys spying on people while they think they are alone, from a farmer having a nap with his chickens to seeing things she shouldn’t have ever seen. Tom toes the line between person and pariah daily; it’s up to you to choose which side she falls on.
A Vampyre Story: A Bat’s Tale
A returning classic from the golden age of the genre, Mona and Froderick return for another journey as they attempt to evade the clutches of a mad scientist. Mona was formerly a Parisian opera singer, but then was kidnapped and turned into a vampire. After she escaped with the aid of her bat friend, it is now up to them and their wits to go through multiple hand-painted levels in an effort to stop the mad scientist’s wicked plan, find a daytime guardian and get back home to Paris.
Welcome to Elderfield
Even though you are just trying to live a normal farmer’s life, these daggum eldritch beings seem dead set on interrupting that life. Sometimes you’ll have to clear the field of troublesome tentacles; other times you might get a huge payout on a harvest of eyes. It really depends on the day. All the normal “Stardew-like” stuff can be found in this game, from weird map occurrences to being able to marry a chosen villager; all’s fair in love and Lovecraftian.
That does it for all the games showcased for Cozy After Dark; this showcase is brand new and is backed by the people who love the type of games they show off, so you know it’s good. If you’re dying for more news about the showcase as a whole, check out their website.
