The worst August imaginable [Big Walk, Shatter, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, “Cozy” as a droopy marketing tool] (August 2026)
This month has not had a lot of video games in it for me. We were going to talk at length about some hot-button topics that we’ve since lost interest in. Here are some of the games that I and Margaret have managed to play this month.
Shatter (Sidhe, 2010, PC) first impressions
There is a mobile-forward remaster that’s also on Steam now, but this isn’t that.
I saw this being talked about in glowing terms on Bluesky, and it was less than two currency units, so why not.
I have nothing profound to say about this; it’s Breakout, or more likely Arkanoid, but with a visual glow-up and boss battles. There’s a campaign mode, and endless modes, with multiplayer supported. It all works well. The game is old enough that you have to configure the visuals and controls via a separate launcher, which is a pain.
I’ve done two of the campaign stages and I will play more. It’s a fun, audio-visually stimulating take on what you might uncharitably say is a staid formula, but no, Arkanoid has always brilliant, and I will fist-fight you on this.
It’s cheap enough that you should go and play it now, even if you don’t know what an Arkanoid even is.
Finding Big Walk (House House, 2026, PC) cozy and also not
Playing this for a couple of hours with Margaret, I enjoyed the co-operative, pressure-free puzzle solving, and exploring the world while we were together. It’s a wholesome, calm experience, but the apparent, sheer size of the world means that getting around it takes some genuine navigational skill (don’t try and climb up waterfalls, but climbing up rocks to look for landmarks and waypoints to head towards is a good start). The eerie moments of being separated from each other in it, especially in the dark (the day cycle is far too short and the night cycle is long enough to have you twiddling your thumbs while unable to move forward), stop it from being “””””””””””””””Cozy“”””””””””””””” , also, because it adds a dash of anxiety to it.
It’s not off-putting, though; I still find it warm and a game that I’ll like to play with Margaret, and I enjoy the immersive, outdoors feel of it. The way that the characters waddle is fun, and when you’re waddling after others, lifting them up rocks, daubing them with paint brushes, and solving puzzles together, there’s the old Untitled Goose Game chaos about it, and that tickles me. I don’t have deep observations, it’s a warm game that I’m glad is structured as a multiplayer experience, as I think, without that element, I would find it overwhelming, despite its capital-c Cozy stylistics.
We had a second session where we ran out of ways to immediately progress, and that makes the game harder to go back to. We had a fun time throwing and kicking a football (ball from game in which feet are largely ignored) about in the starting area, though, and that was, arguably, capital-C cozy, in that there were no objectives involved and literally no point to it, but it gave us pleasure.
The proximity chat is a really good, novel idea for a game of this type, but I find that the volume drains away too quickly. It’s easy to be not that far away from another person, and faced away from them, and be unable to hear them. I find that disorienting.
We’ll have to put more time into it. That there’s no immediate pressure is offset by the wide world of it, and, if I’m honest, the puzzle structure, because I’m a great big dum-dum.
To convince you that it’s not just me and that I do have a brain in my head, here are Dr. Margaret Downs, PhD: Cozy Correspondent’s own thoughts on the subject:
In the second week of August, Chief Raccoon and I took advantage of the fact that I had the entire week off work and spent a whole day playing video games and watching game shows. One of our pastimes on this day was Big Walk. It’s really lovely and immersive visually and musically, which is a point in the “cozy” column. Another of my favorite features of the game is the character design, which in its goofiness encourages you not to take yourself or the game all that seriously.
Making the game less cozy for us, but not to say un-enjoyable, is its sheer size. We both get overwhelmed kind of easily, and if we have to separate to solve a puzzle, there's a risk of losing each other. At the time of writing, we’re stuck on an early puzzle, and knowing that is keeping us from returning to it because we know we'll need to have a certain amount of brain power that is currently eluding us. I plan to watch some streamers play it, at least up until the point where we are, and maybe we'll return.
I was going to make this an issue all about ‘Cozy’ as a codified concept, and my disinterest in games, developers, and publishers that wear the term as a droopy marketing tool. That’s not what we’ve meant when we’ve used the word ‘cozy’ to describe a video game. When we’ve used it, it’s been subjective, to games that we personally find comfortable. It’s not a stylistic appraisal in any way. I was going to write more on the cynicism of it and how the discourse around what a cozy game should and realized that there’s someone more equipped to care. So Margaret, our ‘cozy correspondent’, is once more here with what she thinks.
Dr. Margaret Downs PhD. on the “””””””””””””””Cozy””””””””””””””” genre
As the proprietor of the cozy corner of this establishment, I was kind of bummed to hear that there seem to be games popping up that claim the “cozy” title but don't actually deliver. It's made me grateful that I kind of live under a rock, and get a lot of my game recommendations from actual humans in my life. I've spoken at length before about games that I've found to be healing and therapeutic and yes, cozy. I'm going to keep using that term even if people try and co-opt it, but I'll be clear about what actually makes a game cozy to me.
There need to be tasks, but there shouldn't be a time pressure on most or all of them. (Events that happen on a specific in-game day are fine, particularly if they rotate on some repeating basis. Basically, I don't want to worry that I'm missing stuff or locking myself out of a story or achievements.) Put another way, you can choose what you want to do when and it's not decreed by some in-game boss or mechanism.
The coziest games for me are ones where the other characters help you (and vice versa), even if there's occasional conflict or tension. For me, there's also a sweet spot when it comes to the size of a game.
I would posit that it's harder to have a cozy mobile game, as overrun as they seem to be with micro-transactions and ads and other trappings of our capitalist hellscape. Even in the absence of those, my impression is that there are games marketed as “cozy” that just sort of feel hollow, like more work. To that I say, soft pastel visuals and light instrumental music do not a cozy game make. I guess it's not a surprise that our capitalist overlords have tried to co-opt this in the same way they have things like “self-care.” But, I won't let that stop me from engaging with the genre, and I hope you don't either.
I’ve spent most of my month watching things instead; 30 Rock for the first time, that’s good. The new Spider-Man, that’s alright. Paint drying, can’t wait for the sequel.
I’m also on a Kim Possible watch, and it’s astonishing that bits from a program that I haven’t seen in ZONKS have burrowed into my brain.
Kim Possible: Revenge of Monkey Fist (Digital Eclipse, 2002, Game Boy Advance) review
This is not the best game you have ever played. It is a beat ‘em up platformer with basic combat. Every boss but the final one (which ends up being a total overwhelmingly hard piss-take, just like the American Dragon game on the GBA) hardly moves on screen at all. The game doesn’t even save data to the cartridge, making the collectables on each level utterly pointless. It has a password system, for Pete’s sake. Pete in this scenario is an especially baffling man.
BUT, it’s been nice, even peaceful, to have on. It’s eight levels, with some challenge to the platforming. I’ve played it watching television, on the bus, and out and about, at a time where I haven’t felt much like playing anything. As a game, it won’t save the world, but it might have saved me this month.
It’s a licensed tie-in, with all of the quality or lack thereof that that entails! I know that! Gosh! I have at times found the platforming genuinely baffling. Yes, it’s precise and asks a lot of you at times, which is good, but there also seem to be bits where you can’t avoid damage; rolling under a pipe and then being unable to break out of the roll before you fall into a bottomless pit and lose a life, leaving you to rely on the invulnerability window after respawning to run through an obstacle. It’s Kim Possible, and Kim Likely, that I am just a great big dum-dum, but I’ve been unable to clear a lot of this on a single life, or even ‘credit’ (you have a limited number of continues per level, and I’ve hit game-over a few times). I also haven’t even beaten it yet, because I’ve gotten to the aforementioned last boss and I think am through struggling with it.
So, a not-brilliant game based on a fun enough television series (and one live action reboot film where they make Drakken say ‘memes’, BUT), and elevated by the relationship to the source material. I don’t know why my brain has glommed onto this game, but I picked it out initially because I wanted something that I could just pick up and that would be simple to control. It’s true that the Game Boy Advance doesn’t have that many buttons, but this game does have some tricky button combinations for the platforming that I’ve found finnicky. For example, there’s a wall jump that you can do, that you have to do at various points where there are two walls in a narrow column, and there’s nowhere to go but up. This has been an intuitive mechanic and done to good effect before in other games, but there was a point in this where I spent twenty minutes staring at the screen, trying to work out how to even do it. It doesn’t help that there is no tutorial, and the game leaves all of the control explanation to an instruction booklet that I do not have. I’ve run out of patience with it.
It’s a faithful tie-in, with levels set at Middleton High, Bueno Nacho, and even Camp Wannaweep. The ‘dialogue’, such as it is when it’s just words on a screen, is authentic to each character. “Does it matter? It’s for CHILDREN!” I think if I’d have played this as a child I would have gone for it about the same as I have this month. It doesn’t offer anything new, just a reliable platforming beat-em-up with a Kim Possible skin, but that is a good idea. There are two more Kim Possible games on the GBA and supposedly they don’t use password systems like this, so we’ll see.
I’m not suggesting that you play this, but the simplicity of playing a sidescroller has been nice for me, cozy. Something to devote to in a strange time.
Finch: Self Care Pet (Mobile, Finch Care PBC, couldn’t find a year of release) first impressions from me, and Margaret’s review as a seasoned user
Right, so for various reasons, illness, the hot summer, I’ve been off-kilter this August, but Margaret has been using this app that turns managing your life into a Pokémon game. Legally speaking, that’s not entirely true, but there is a character called ‘Professor Oat’, just what you like.
You set goals for yourself every day, whether that’s ‘drink water’, ‘get out of bed’, ‘finish work on time’, and/or custom things that you’ve set yourself, and then you check them off to give your pet energy to go off on an adventure and bring back rewards. You have stuff like clothes for your pet, and furniture for a personal space. And sure, you can cheese it by lying to it, but where’s the fun in that? I think this is well done, because you have the classic game loop of thinking about where the next bit of game loot is going to come from, while also being in direct control of that, depending on how well your day is going. The difficulty doesn’t scale up as you go on, and you can simply add preset goals like ‘survive the day’, if you’re having one of those days, and they’re not worth any less energy for your pet.
It feels like something different to what has come before, there’s a subscription that offers... stuff? But Margaret has been a regular user for some weeks now and hasn’t reported feeling the need for it, and just in the day that I’ve spent with Finch, when I received a single notifcation on my phone from it, it’s been an affirmation: ‘you can get through this’. I take it enshittification has yet to come for Finch, but it’s a good app as I write this.
I’ve literally started using this TODAY as I write this sentence, but I like it and will try to keep up with it. I tend to be really bad at sustaining any app or game-based routine that counts up the days and rewards you for your persistence like a lab rat. I remember not getting much out of Duolingo. But I am in a strange position where I don’t feel like up to much, but i’m also self-aware enough to know that I should apply myself to rectifying that. If gamifying my daily routine is how that’s done, then sure, log me in.
It’s cutesy, and you can name your animal and your ‘human name’ rude words, which is my litmus test for any app or video game with online activity. It’s not like Tamogotchi where you can let them die if you don’t keep up with it. It seems like only nice things can happen, with no penalty if you scrap or miss a goal. In fact, we found out that a daily streak is kept just by opening the app, with no minimum commitment or having to complete any goals. It’s much nicer than the way these things usually work.
At a glance, Finch as it exists currently is a solid take on what must be a well worn premise at this point. For now, I’ll say that if you’re feeling as lethargic and DON’T NEED IT about life as I have during this melting August, Finch might be the training wheels that you need to get back into the process of existing. I’m going to do my best to keep on with it.
And this is me from the future saying that I’ve kept up with it for a week as of writing, and I’m enjoying a few more things about it. One is that you can pool in to buy random users the subscription (which, as far as I can tell, lets you send different kinds of ‘vibes’ to people on your friends list, and access more cosmetics), but also that any user can receive one of these subscriptions at random.
I also like that the buddy system is not about accountability partners, but for friends to encourage each other with the above ‘vibes’. You can share goals between each other though.
It’s not Pokémon, not even legally distinct Pokémon. But Pokémon don’t discover books as ‘seeing words’, or discover the difference between hands and wings. Pokémon isn’t this cute. Finch is, tonally, better than Pokémon. The wholesomeness has, and I truly believe will, carry me through my daily goals, Finch is nice. You might like something nice in this particular way in your life.
Margaret has been at it for longer than me, and she’s written about it, so here you are.
As of late June, I live alone for the first time in my entire life. Even around other humans, it's very easy for my living space to become overwhelmingly cluttered and for me to become one with the couch. Friends and folks I follow online have spoken positively about Finch, an app designed to help you stay on top of self-care tasks. I was a bit worried it'd go the same way as so many other habits have for me: I try it, it works for anywhere from a few days to a few months, and then I have a busy week at work or I travel and the whole thing gets blown to hell and I'm back where I started, only with an added dose of shame for my perceived inability to “””””””be an adult””””””.
I’m only a few weeks in, but it has survived a trip (I used the “pause” feature and it started right back up on the assigned date, preserving my self-care streak.) And you know what? I'm more consistent about applying daily sunscreen, tidying my apartment, and reading, just to name a few things that it's historically been really easy for me to get out of the habit of doing. I'm buddied up with Chief Raccoon and a few other friends and finding it helpful. It's wholesome, but not cloying. I think a lot of the key is that the reinforcement is positive, not negative, in that you get rewards for doing tasks but nothing bad happens if you snooze or skip. Between this and having recently adopted a cat, who I guess we could consider the Capitalist Overlord Raccoons mascot, I'm feeling like I've got things pretty well handled.
Also, yes, this is not strictly a game, but it is gamified, so we’re sticking with that as my excuse for covering it.
I got really into The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks, 2009, PC, Xbox Series, multi-platform) for about a week
This is a sprawling fantasy role-playing game, with a narrative and quests and a whole continent to play in, and yet I’ve spent twenty hours plus across an aborted save on Xbox and an ongoing one on PC, sat in a shop making potions, and do you know what, I’m loving it. That’s my kind of cozy.
What I tend to do with big open-world games is do all the side content so that I’m better equipped to take on the main quest, and that’s the case here too. I’ve had to mod out the aggressive level scaling of the monsters (so that the monsters don’t level up with the player, negating the power-fantasy-ness of it all), but now that I’ve done that, I can take my sweet time leveling up in the background before I start on the main quest, and that’s good. The game for me is the set-up before the real thing, that’s cozy to me.
Oblivion itself is not a capital-c Cozy game, it’s full of spooky creatures and creepy crawlies. Tonally, it doesn’t have the softness that “”””””””””Cozy“””””””””” games have. It’s not about imagery, it’s telling a story, which is whatever story you want to play out. That gives it a point, a reason to exist. And yet, I enjoy, very much, just loading up a save and doing nothing of consequence; a couple of Mage Guild quests, casting a Very Easy Lock spell on a door for a bit to level Alteration. I like it, even if the skill levelling basically requires cheesing. Not enough to get massively into it, or perhaps so much that I know I shouldn’t get massively into it, so I won’t.
Technology should not exist
I like Linux. I like alternative operating systems. The gremlin in my head tells me to stop banging on about them. This month, however, has made me want to bin it all off and live in a cave. If you’ve never tried to self-host a media server over docker containers, you have been spared a living hell.
Part of the difficulty I’m having is that my proficiency with technology is several steps above your dad yet several steps beneath a computer science student, which is to say, I don’t know about any of this. I’m lucky to have a friend who actually does know about these things to do the initial set-up and step in and investigate when it all goes pear-shaped. The problem is that my brain breaks and resists information as soon as I start reading about volumes, no matter how much I want to understand them. And yet, even though it makes my brain seep out of my ears trying to understand what my friend has done and how it all works, if corporations at large insist on thrusting us into a digital future, I will trudge through all of this to do TECHNOLOGY on my terms.
This August has been too warm and too full of disease. Most of all, getting in the way of this newsletter has been that there has been an insurmountable problem, in the form of ‘set up a media server’ presented to me, someone who cannot stand an insurmountable problem. I wish my neurodivergence was the kind that allowed me to absorb and understand information rather than the kind that means I hyperfixate on an obstacle until the obstacle no longer exists. The media server obstacle is behind me now, I think.
Under the circumstances, I’ve played video games about as much as has been enjoyable, and nothing more.
Thank you for reading this month’s Capitalist Overlord Raccoons!
And nothing more. Sod your Gamescom.