I love a good cozy game. A year or so ago I got into Dave the Diver; before that came A Short Hike, Spiritfarer, and Stardew Valley, all of which I played on my Nintendo Switch. I missed the Animal Crossing boat during the pandemic because I was too busy playing Hades, which I’d argue is cozy in its own pet the three-headed dog between runs through the underworld sort of way. 

If that paragraph doesn’t make much sense to you, Reuters has you covered with an explainer about what cozy games are, and how researchers have found they have real mental health benefits. But they didn’t just write a story about them: they turned the story into a cozy game of its own. 

Open the page, and you’ll be introduced to your character — an anthropomorphized radish who lives in a town called Rootersville — that you’ll be able to customize and take on a journey as you scroll. The idea was pitched by writer Tiana McGee, and developed by a large team of collaborators on the Reuters graphics team. 

“One of the things I love about this team is that we’re always looking for the maximalist approach,” Julia Wolfe, who was one of the editors and developers on the story, told me. “In this case it was to make a whole game, but it could be sort of anything. My boss really does dream of us doing a game in Minecraft.” 

Nobody on the team had developed a game before, Wolfe told me, but everyone was up for the challenge. The team started working on the game in earnest in late November, and team members learned how to make pixel art and 8-bit-style music to fit the theme. Wolfe spent hours and hours playing through the game as it developed, and her toddler became obsessed with the radish, which he started calling “the little guy.” 

“We all just sort of fell in love with the radish,” Wolfe said. And working on the story had one additional benefit: Wolfe would put on cozy game music as she worked on the cozy game about cozy games, and she could feel her own stress and anxiety ebb away. 

If you decide to play the game and have some indecision about how to decorate your little radish’s room at the end, Wolfe sent me a picture of her setup, which she jokingly described as the optimal version: