Take out your blankets and get settled, everyone. It's time for cozy games.
Wholesome Direct's latest showcase offers an hour-long celebration of innovation and convenience in independent development, with over 30 meditative, relaxing and downright adorable experiences. Some of the titles are new, some are being updated, many of them have demos, and others simply deserve time in the spotlight. One thing they all have in common is an inherent ability to warm your heart.
The entire Wholesome Direct 2024 presentation is worth watching. It's packed with brilliant indie gems and new trailers, and many of the featured titles already have demos available for download. Here, we've rounded up four games that came out today as surprise releases tied to the showcase: Kamaeru: a haven for frogs, POOL, The palace on the hill and Thought Clues. I spent some time playing the first three games on this list and each is charming in its own way; I left my thoughts with the game descriptions below.
Watch, read, and then play a bunch of cozy, wholesome games – not a bad way to spend your Saturday. Or a summer.
Kamaeru: a haven for frogs
This is for gamers who can't get enough of games like Neko Atsume and Usagi Shimaor for people who really love adorable amphibians. Kamaeru: a haven for frogs is a farming simulator about building and maintaining a protected wetland space where wild frogs can thrive, and it goes much deeper than simply buying new beanbags for the animals to sleep in. In Kamaeru, players have to excavate the wetlands, collect ingredients to make jam and other treats to sell at the market, monitor their environmental impact, and purchase items to create a welcoming space for all their frog friends. Players can take pictures of the frogs, feed them, name them, and even raise them, mixing their color combinations in a tic-tac-toe Punnett square.
Kamaeru It's a relaxed, methodical, and surprisingly deep experience that's full of cute, colorful frogs. It's much more than a passive animal-watching game, and it takes quite a bit of effort, but in a really welcoming way, for the on-screen rewards to start coming. After about an hour of playing, I feel like I've only scratched the surface of this game.
Kamaeru is available now in steam, itchi.io and Nintendo Switch, and is verified on Steam Deck. It is developed by Humble Reeds and published by Armor Games Studios.
POOL
Count them, there are four O's. POOL is a sweet, simple game with infinite replayability, much like the stick-and-ball sport that inspired it. In POOL, players throw bouncy balls of various sizes around a contained rectangle, one at a time, in an attempt to make spheres of the same color touch. When two identical balls collide, they instantly combine into a larger ball, which can then be combined with another of the same size, and so on. It's something like Three! but with colored balls instead of numbers. Finally, the balloons reach their limit and disappear with a pop, leaving plenty of room for new balls to appear. The round ends and the score is counted when there is no more space to throw the spheres.
POOL is a charming little physics simulator with a friendly art style and relaxing, repeatable mechanics. This is a game that rewards strategy, but is also incredibly forgiving of mindless clicking and dragging, and both styles of play result in a satisfyingly lively experience. Put it in your pile of games to play while you kill time or pretend to get work done, and you'll get a lot of use out of it. POOL comes from developer Noah King and publisher digimoss, and is available right now in steam.
The palace on the hill
This one is special. The palace on the hill is a thoughtful and solid slice-of-life game set in a fictional town in rural India in the 1990s, starring a young man who helps his family earn money during the summer. Players plant, tend, and sell their crops, work shifts at the local tea shop, and do odd jobs around town, meeting residents along the way. The young man is an aspiring artist and finds inspiration for new paintings in the town, sharing stories about the area's past in beautiful watercolor vignettes. There is a rich history here and many things to do at any given time.
The palace on the hill is a sweet surprise of an adventure game, fascinating, methodical and enlightening. The rural town where it takes place feels alive and its boundaries delicately expand as the game progresses. Each NPC has a distinct personality and a unique relationship with the protagonist, and his world quickly becomes familiar, even as it remains full of secrets. I wholeheartedly recommend this game.
The palace on the hill is available today in steam, Xbox Series x/S, Xbox One, iOS and Android, and is verified on Steam Deck. It comes from the independent studio Niku Games.
Thought Clues
Thought Clues is a game about chatting, card management, and solving mysteries, and it all takes place on a long-distance locomotive headed to an unknown destination. After passing through a strange tunnel, all the passengers on the train forget where they are going, and it is up to the protagonist, a friendly purple ladybug, to find out what is happening. Ladybug's personality is determined by the player's interactions with other passengers, and conversations play out like card battles where the goal is to resolve conflicts and help everyone get on the same page.
Thought Clues It has a cartoony art style and a cast of cool, insect-like characters, and seems to offer a clever mix of conversation and card battles. With today's reveal, this game has appeared in a total of four Wholesome Directs (yes, that's almost all of them), so it's especially nice to see it now. in steam and the epic games store. Thought Clues comes from developer Tidbits Play and publisher Freedom Games.
Catch up on all the news from Summer Game Fest 2024 right here!
