Content note: mentions of death.

Another month, another flare. I’ve written before about turning to video games as an escape when I’m flaring up and unable to do much else, but only some titles make good “flare up games”. For example, I (finally) began my first playthrough of Red Dead Redemption 2 at the start of this year but I just haven’t had the capacity to play it regularly since then. In fact, the only game I’ve been playing consistently, the only game that’s even appealed to me over the past couple of months, is Cozy Grove, my most favourite flare up game.

In Cozy Grove, you play a Spirit Scout stranded on an island haunted by ghost bears. You must help the bears, your new friends, by gathering resources and crafting useful items. The game’s been described as similar to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which it kind of is but more structured and morbid. Every day, you’ll be given new quests from your spectral neighbours, and occasionally visitors will drop by with new wares to purchase or side quests to complete. While the game is played in real time, Cozy Grove only registers a new in-game day when you next log in on a different day. This means that you can go several days (or weeks) without logging into the game and you won’t miss content or need to feel guilty like, uh, some of us might with Animal Crossing.

Cozy Grove is a gentle game that expects very little of me. The controls are simple, there’s no need to rush around, and the game tracks ongoing quests so I can’t lose track of what to do next, even if my brain fog is bad. There’s no mashing buttons or having to remember complex mechanics, which helps when I’m having a bad hand pain day. It’s a game that requires just enough thinking from me to feel like I’m doing something but not enough to worsen my fatigue or pain, or to feel frustrating if I’m foggy. Cozy Grove has been the only game I’ve had the spoons to play, the only game I’ve wanted to play over the last couple of months, knowing I can prop it up in front of my face with some film or show on in the background. It helps me to feel a sense of progression and connection as I feel increasingly left behind by an ableist world.

I’ve found Cozy Grove’s gently gothic tone particularly cathartic as it matches my own headspace most days. As the player character, you work to help your ghost bear friends by releasing them from this uncertain space they’re in between life and death. The game does not shy away from discussing mortality, with many of the bears struggling to deal with traumatic deaths—either their own or those of loved ones. As you help each bear, you learn more about their backstory and what happened during their lives that they feel unable to let go of. You help them piece together the truth so they can finally embrace the afterlife. Many of these stories are about grief, some are about personal failures or failing your community, and almost all of them are about the fears each bear had in life that now haunt them (sorry) in death.

At first glance, Cozy Grove seems like another cute game in the vein of Animal Crossing, just slightly weirder. As you play, though, you begin to uncover themes of fear, trauma, heartbreak. These bears acknowledge that life is hard sometimes and that acknowledgement isn’t cynical or pessimistic or bleak, it’s just the truth. At times over the last year, I’ve felt more seen and understood by these pixelised bears than by most real human people. My bear friends have acknowledged my loneliness and my pain, I have turned to them to help cope with deaths in my own life, to hear that my sadness and hurt are legitimate, a reasonable reaction to a violent and difficult world.

And now, I’m at a point in the game where I’m required to learn to let go myself. After all, as a Spirit Scout, my goal is to release all the bear spirits by helping them accept the hardships they faced—and felt—in life. As a result, I need to start saying goodbye to my bear friends, the little beings who have provided me with a lifeline during such a difficult time. After months of playing this game as a way to escape reality, there’s something powerful in suddenly being pushed to confront difficult feelings. It’s almost like practising for my return to the real world, where despair so easily takes over. I’m not great at letting go and there’s a particular, weighty pain in having to say goodbye to my bear friends. But Cozy Grove makes me feel safe to sit with those feelings as I play, because it so fully recognises my whole life: my loss and grief, my anger and despair, and my hope. Cozy Grove tells me that yes, life is hard sometimes. It is rational and fair to feel angry, hurt, alone, sad, and scared in a world that hates you. But the game also tells me that I need to let go and accept wherever I’m at now. While each bear wrestles with some flaw, some failing, or some tragedy from their life, they also tell us about the good in their lives: their communities, the relationships that were so special to them, their passions. They tell us what made them feel safe and free, and it’s a reminder that there are always those moments alongside the rest.

Cozy Grove understands that more hardship and sadness will come—because it always does. But there will also always be people around to help you, people who want to care for you. There’ll always be something beautiful to find, like playing a compassionate video game when you’re too sick to stand. Holding appreciation for the good in my life while acknowledging and respecting the rough stuff is work I always need to do. It’s work I choose to return to, over and over. It’s too easy to slip into hopelessness for weeks or, conversely, to downplay my experiences of oppression and isolation to make others feel more comfortable or less complicit. I’m thankful to Cozy Grove for reminding me of my capacity to hold pain and then to release it, to keep moving forward into the uncertain, knowing only that there’ll be both hardship and love.

stuff I did this month

I edited this excellent piece by Natalia Lopes on watching playthroughs of the Silent Hill series. As someone who loves horror but super duper cannot play horror games, I really appreciated Natalia’s account of experiencing horror games through other people’s gameplay. I recently watched the Scary Game Squad’s Silent Hill 2 playthrough but now I think it’s time to add the rest of the series to my list.

stuff I liked this month

As Israel attacks Gaza and Palestinians during Ramadan (yet again), I recommend watching this interview with Afro-Palestinian community leader, Ali Jiddah. Filmed in 2004, it’s unfortunately still relevant. Afterwards, go read this piece on the harassment and racism that Afro-Palestinians continue to experience from both Israelis and other Palestinians.

After the release of Horizon Zero Dawn, developer Guerilla Games totally dismissed criticisms of cultural appropriation from Indigenous gamers. Given the extremely (settler) colonial premise of its sequel, Horizon Zero West, I’m unsurprised to learn that the series’s appropriation and handling of race and ethnicity has only got worse.

I felt vindicated reading this piece by Rosa Cartagena about the new West Side Story, which fails to decentre white people and whiteness any more than the wildly racist original. I watched the 1961 version for the first time last year and seriously, I still can’t believe I experienced over twenty years of finger-snapping pop culture references but absolutely no mention ever that the original film features brownface.

Heavy Machinery is written by Zainabb Hull and powered by bear friends and bagels.

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