While the Play Store has its fair share of apps geared towards action and challenge, there is also a substantial portion devoted to relaxing experiences; mentally stimulating gameplay loops punctuated by calming atmospheres. You’ll find no fast-paced tests of skill here, just peaceful time-wasters that prioritize serenity and comfort. Perfect for the cold months. These cozy apps are often creative, replayable, and built to exploit the format of your bargain Android phone.

It's important to keep things low-fi this time of year, and we’d like to help with this roundup of our favorite cozy games to get you through the chilly season. Check out these snuggly apps.

1 Stardew Valley

A famous example of a chilled-out experience, Stardew Valley is a farming simulator/RPG hybrid centered around building and maintaining a farm in a beautiful, pastoral, pixel art world. You've left your job in the big city to live off the land and grow your own business. Farming mechanics resemble Minecraft's, plowing fertile land, planting crops, and keeping cattle. What sets Stardew Valley apart is its focus on farming aspects. Weather changes must be accounted for to prevent your crops from dying, and supplies/tools must be bought from the local village full of vendors that offer unique designs and personalities.

It's all about tending your farm at your own pace and slowly building something out of love and care. A perfect alternative if Terraria and Minecraft are too ominous or combat-heavy for you. Also, be sure to check out our best chill games like Animal Crossing roundup if this is your thing.

2 Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp

Animal Crossing is a reliable go-to for relaxing, given its laid-back world, cute art style, and pleasantly mundane gameplay tasks. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp brings Nintendo's social simulation to the mobile platform with its signature constructive and decorative gameplay, with a slew of fetch quests, character interactions, and colorful upholstery to enjoy along the way. Recurring series characters like Isabelle, Tom Nook, and K.K. Slider make appearances as you develop your campsite, which is fun for series veterans and great for newcomers.

Take part in yearly events that unlock special items for decoration, and even customizable cosmetics for your player Avatar. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp goes to extra mile to make you feel at home in its world, with things to keep recurring series fans happy. If you're looking for a free mobile alternative to Animal Crossing and can't bear to leave the series, check this out.

3 Stray Cat Doors

The first of a few animal-centric games, Stray Cat Doors, is a cute escape room puzzle game based on unlocking an exit door by solving random puzzles. In essence, the gameplay resembles a point-and-click adventure, deciphering clues and combinations from the environment to proceed. The level of comfort this game exhibits is mesmerizing, the art style is beautiful, the lighting sets the mood perfectly, and the soundtrack could lull you to sleep if you aren't careful. There is a simple joy in solving small puzzles in a calm environment in the service of a fluffy animal.

While not very long, Stray Cat Doors offers a quality experience, delivering exactly what you’d expect. Probably the first time you could describe an escape room game as relaxing.

4 Penguin Isle

Nothing like an idle game for relaxing, Penguin Isle is a city-building simulator that requires very little action from the player. The game is appealingly simple in terms of visuals, displaying a boundless blue ocean. Set on an expanding iceberg penguin settlement, you are required to manufacture penguin-based infrastructure. You orchestrate the construction of fishing huts, bakeries, theaters, and penguin Ferris wheels, all the essential trappings of a functioning society. Developing the island yields points for further development; nice and simple.

While the game has some minor issues with frequent ads, the overall experience is solid. A relaxing little penguin-themed distraction to mess around with while watching TV.

5 Townscaper

Sticking with the causal god game theme, Townscaper offers a creativity toy devoid of tension, existing simply to entertain and satisfy the player. You are given the tools to construct your ideal coastal village with unlimited resources, simple controls, and all the time in the world. Outside of its charming art design and calming music, Townscaper’s most interesting feature is its attention to terrain detail. Small dips and peaks in a surface affect how your structures manifest, warping around those natural occurrences.

This feature saves Townscaper from being a simple drag-and-drop experience, ensuring that every structure is unique. Overall, Townscaper is great for expressing your creativity in a mellow environment. The Lego-style vehicle for unique creations makes it perfect for relaxation.

6 Monument Valley

Probably the most unique game so far, Monument Valley is a stylized puzzler centered around manipulating optical illusions. You are a silent protagonist called Ida, ascending to the summit of several monuments to place something; before progressing to the next optical illusion puzzle. You'll move along flat-shaded narrow paths while twisting certain path alignments to make new areas accessible. Monument Valley’s music is splendid, slow, and celestial. The levels start simple but ramp up in difficulty pretty steeply toward the end. But the difficulty is not based on quick thinking or sharp instincts.

There is no time limit, and you are free to take your time to complete these surreal puzzles. Recommended for those who want a little challenge while they’re relaxing.

7 Sky: Children of the Light

If you prefer something a little more epic in your downtime, Sky: Children of the Light provides a great experience. You play a small humanoid traveling through a series of beautiful overworlds; in pursuit of purifying corrupted souls. The primary loop is the traversal mechanics, which involve your character using their poncho-like wings. You are free to glide about as you see fit, allowing you to kick back and enjoy the gorgeous scenery. This game also features multiplayer; other small owl children can be found and collaborated with in all seven of the overworlds, with some puzzles only being solvable with multiple owl children.

While it can be a little tricky to follow at times, Sky: Children of the Light offers a breathtaking explorative world, beautiful fluid animations, and music that suits the setting perfectly. If you enjoy the gliding mechanics in Breath of the Wild, this game will tick that box.

8 Hidden Lands - Visual Puzzles

Another great perspective-centric puzzle game, Hidden Lands - Visual Puzzles is a beautifully animated hidden object game. Depicting locations spanning multiple themes and seasons, Hidden Lands - Visual Puzzles allows you to rotate two floating islands rich with detail, requiring you to locate the difference between the two. This is about as Zen as it gets. There's no conflict, plot, or urgency, just a simple season-themed observation test. Perfect for getting cozy this winter.

9 I Love Hue Too

Appreciate the feeling of arranging several different colored objects in ascending or descending order of shade gradient? Well, Zut! studios certainly do because their latest game, I Love Hue Too, does exactly that. The game presents a series of color-matching puzzles based on creating perfect hue gradients, hence the name. The app offers just shy of 2000 of these puzzles, each of which ramps up the gameplay challenge with increased grid sizes and shape complexity, so you'll feel well served if this is your preferred way to relax.

While it's not the most complicated game in the world, it isolates its primary gameplay loop. It refines it into an atmospheric and calming experience that engages your brain enough that things stay relaxed without being boring. Perfect for winding down.

10 Tap Tap Fish AbyssRium (+VR)

Infinite clicker games are nothing new, but outside of mindless grind, they have an understated aptitude for simple, engaging, and yet relaxing gameplay loops. Tap Tap Fish AbyssRium presents this very kind of loop, putting you in charge of tapping the screen to generate currency to build your own coral reef, teeming with a diverse society of marine life. What constitutes the core gameplay here is hard to determine, as the requirement to click the screen to generate currency for upgrades is something that can be made redundant by said upgrades. No, the main goal is creating as many fish as possible in the same vein as tending a garden.

The variety of fish is quite impressive, including jellyfish, sea turtles, sharks, and even whales. While it wouldn't feel out of place with the best idle games on Android, Tap Tap Fish AbyssRium is engaging enough to warrant a closer look.

11 Resonance of the Ocean

Resonance of the Ocean is a short and sweet puzzle game themed around making music on a serene deserted island, with only the soothing sound of the waves for company. The 2D artstyle and minimal animation give the experience a storybook feel. You roam around the island looking for random debris that can be crafted into varied instruments and use them to answer the call of a mysterious melody emanating from the ocean.

It’s not a very long experience and hasn't got a great deal of replayability, but the gameplay is relaxing and easy to grasp, the soundtrack is disarmingly relaxing, and the scenario’s mystery is intriguing enough that you find yourself wanting to continue.

Getting comfortable with fan-favorite Android games

Comfortable? Thank this roundup. Simplicity is the key to a relaxing experience when mobile gaming, uncomplicated gameplay loops that don't overwhelm or overexcite the player, and simple gameplay loops are where the Play Store shines. Whether you like solving some of the best puzzle games, exploring, or growing a garden, there is something on the Play Store to help you unwind on the best Android phones.

Give a couple of these a try, and let us know what you think down below. Feel like a bigger screen to admire your handiwork? Feel free to peruse these neat Android tablets. AP's roundups are constantly being updated, and there is no way we got to every good game in this genre. So stay calm until the next update.