Cozy Holiday Review (PC)

Cozy Holiday embraces the festive spirit of Yule with a radiant smile and a wintry coating that feels both tremendously warm and cozy to accommodate, with its wonderland aesthetics and a joyful message of love and light adding a ribbon to what is, in spite of its simplistic nature, a surprisingly good couch co-op gift that gives a lot more than it lets on. Courtesy of its gentle nod to the Christmas season, it exhumes all of those adorable qualities that we both love to unpack and juggle, and it finds the perfect balance between being an entry-level multiplayer indie and a faithful ode to wholesome pastimes.

True to the spirit of Yule, Cozy Holiday centers its premise around the four pillars of a seasonal axis, with the joy of Christmas and the warmth of gifting fortifying its foundation and establishing the perfect setup for a short co-op endeavor. Two people; one home in need of a seasonal embellishment; a chain of homes without gifts; a winter wonderland in dire need of a bauble or snowflake to flourish. The goal behind all of these things is simple, really: ensure that the townsfolk are ready for the festivities, even if it means taking on the brunt of the problem yourself.

Embedded within this Yuletide expedition is a simple A-to-B decorating and typing game—a quest in which both you and a companion work simultaneously to add decorations to homes, cook delicious appetizers, and travel to different homes via your trusty wagon to deliver gifts to your neighbors. There’s a little more to take on here, but that’s about the thick of it. It’s an apt treat for seasonal enthusiasts—a short romp through the snow that emits Christmassy vibes and an easy-to-digest progression system that allows for creative collaboration. It isn’t much more than that, but then, it doesn’t need to be to put you in the festive spirit, to be honest.

Festive Cheer, All Year

Cozy Holiday presents you with a series of tasks to complete, with each one contributing to the surge in festive spirit. For example, in the initial portions of the game you have the responsibility of decorating and preparing a home for the holidays—a job that involves shoveling snow, adding thematic flourishes, and preparing ingredients to create a season banquet for your guests. It’s a simple process that doesn’t require much effort; in fact, it more or less involves taking control of one of several tools or items, and running back and forth between stations until that cozy cubby of yours transforms into a seasonal haven for the local townies.

What entails after the initial preparation process is a series of tasks, most of which involve driving around the town, completing quick typing prompts—inputs that allow you to activate the windscreen wipers and control certain interior mechanisms—and spreading joy to your neighbors, which more or less involves delivering gifts and completing simple fetch quests. Truth be told, there isn’t much of a challenge for you to overcome here; in fact, with the game being built with a younger audience in mind, it keeps things as simple as possible, with only a handful of mechanics and prompts for you to execute. In other words, if you’re hell-bent on tucking into a strenuous exercise, then you might want to seek shelter in an alternate festive spot.

If you’re wondering whether or not there a point to any of this — no, there isn’t. Or at least, there’s no major goal that you’re trying to accomplish, other than to embellish a wonderland and add a few extra snowflakes in time for the festive season. It’s no Light Up the Town, but it serves its purpose as a warm prelude to the main event — and that counts for a lot.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Cozy Holiday is a short game that you ought to be able to sweep beneath the snow-glazed rug in a single sitting or so. It doesn’t boast much replay value, as it more or less manages to tie the ribbon on most of its contents before taking the initiative to add another potential layer to the box, so to speak. But, for what it’s worth, it does keep you busy in its short runtime, with a generous collection of festive chores and typing tasks to keep you sprinkling joy and happiness. It’s cute, though hardly a back-breaking affair that flaunts the gift of longevity. Not that this is a deal breaker, mind you.

Given the rather low admission price, I’d say that Cozy Holiday does more than enough to warrant your time and effort, more so if you’re actively looking for an opportunity to teach a younger gamer the basics of a co-op video game and the controls that make up most, if not all Overcooked-like party games. It’s a simple game all in all, but for what it does bring to the table, it makes for a surprisingly entertaining and wholesome multi-tasking experience that can be enjoyed by players of all ages.

Verdict

Cozy Holiday makes for a neat and relaxing beginner-friendly co-op game that can not only teach younger players the fundamentals of typing, but advance their mechanical wizardry and creative flourishes through a conduit of charming mini-games and collaborative projects of a seasonal variety. It’s still a small game that leaves a lot to be desired, true. However, it does provide a generous collection of jobs for you to enjoy and shovel through, as well as a few notable anchor points to help you flex your sensory skills during your short time on the plow. Maybe that’s enough, maybe it isn’t.

When all’s said and done, Cozy Holiday isn’t “the gift that keeps on giving”; on the contrary, it’s a short, somewhat self-contained venture that serves only to provide you with some well-needed festive treats to kickstart your traditions ahead of the holidays. It isn’t a perfect game by any stretch, and it doesn’t bundle the prowess of a picture-perfect multiplayer game into its stocking filler of a game, either. But again, if you can gloss over the imperfections and embrace the nod to the moral imperative, then you should be able to find more than a gift’s worth in this wholesome winter wonderland of Centurion Developments’.