A lot of canonical cozy games are easy to uncozy. There might not technically be anything missable, but are you really going to let the season roll from Spring to Summer without a large horde of extra crops? Can you really resist the siren song of min maxing? I will often start a farm sim with the intention of ~taking my time~ but that lasts about as long as seeing the cute little pixelated chickens I could buy once I can build a coop, which means collecting enough hardwood, which means upgrading my axe, which means mining deeper, which means buying a new sword… and on and on.

I found Wylde Flowers to be actually relaxing. The key for me is that you are able to change the seasons whenever you wish, instead of being given the standard 28 in-game days. You can also make the in-game days longer (which I did), which means not having to prioritize what you do in a day. During a long day, you can talk to every NPC, take care of all your crops and animals, fish several times, explore the environment for forageables, and mine a little bit. For those who don’t need the adrenaline of a racing clock, this is a nice option.

As a nearly pathological pre-planner, I enjoyed taking my time to compost dirt and grow carrots before moving the clock along. When villagers made requests of me, I never panicked about whether I’d be able to finish on time. I get that these people are just 1’s and 0’s, but I’m still sensitive to their disappointment. I want to be everyone’s hero, even if all they need from me is a slice of pumpkin pie.

SPOILERS START HERE

One of my favorite things about Wylde Flowers is there are real characters and real motivations that come together in actual storylines. I could ignore the sprites (I’m in the camp of people who think the models for this game are really, really ugly), because there’s full voice acting and actual conflict.

A lot of farming sims rely on an overall communal and friendly vibe to create chill games. There might be grumpy characters, or characters with an undercurrent of tension between them, but mostly there’s a harmonious spirit. Not in this game, where there’s an entire, actual witch hunt propelled by evil spirits possessing the townspeople.

Even outside the overarching, supernatural battle between good and evil, characters have smaller interpersonal conflicts on the basis of race and heritage, faith, gender and sexuality, and social class. Divorcées and blended families have drama. People talk about their struggles as immigrants or descendants of immigrants that feel very rooted in the real world (especially so when the characters claim heritage from real countries, not from fantasy nations that only exist in-game).

Don’t even get me started on how cool it is that one of the marriage candidates can actually betray you after you are married. Of course I had picked him, even though he was red flag central, with his numerous dialogues about drinking alcohol and his self-hating werewolfness. The werewolf thing was fine, but the self-hating thing just doesn’t really work out regardless what for. I just wanted to marry the bookseller, and look at what I would do for imaginary discounted books! He completely betrays the town for a cure to lycanthropy (weak!).

If you want a real, linear storyline with genuine interpersonal conflict in your farming sim, there really may not be anything quite like Wylde Flowers for that. Of course, you can get to a good place with everyone overall, or it wouldn’t be cozy, but it’s refreshing to have actual stakes and goals to work towards to advance the plot.

It’s also nice to have a game that wraps up after one year. You can play for a second year and get some new content if you want, but I’ll admit I struggle with farming sims that roll over the years too often. By the time I’m planting turnips AGAIN for my third Spring, and harvesting all the same berries and mushrooms, I’m usually a little over it. This game is designed to be fresh, while also having lingering content for the masochists who have 10+ year Stardew Valley farms.