Horse game klaxon: Palia is adding breedable, rideable horses and they look way more realistic than most MMO mounts Life sim MMO Palia's next free expansion is just three weeks away and it's giving me the ranching update that Red Dead Online refused to.

RDO never gave me the ranching job I wanted, but I'll take it in Palia

Got yelled at by a shrub, would recommend.

The ethically-sourced wizard school life sim I've been waiting for finally has a playable demo and launches this year Seven years in the making, the developers of Eastshade are finally ready for us to play a tiny first taste of their cozy witch school life sim Songs of Glimmerwick.

Songs of Glimmerwick feels like the anti-HP of wizard school games. An entire setting that confronts a society newly escaping 40 years of regressive faux-populist politics.

Serious as that sounds, Glimmerwick is SO funny and lighthearted. Excited to see the story continue in the full game.

Wish the gif would come through in the article card because man I love the physicality of all the clovers bending away from my mouse as I search.

Oh you think you know hidden object games? Then go find a four-leaf clover One In A Thousand is a mesmerizing replication of real life's most notorious hidden object challenge.

Can't stop staring at this ridiculous four-leaf clover hidden object game made by a guy who actually likes looking for real four leaf clovers.

We're in a golden era of game demos We're spoiled for choice in an unending tide of free game trials.

@morganpark.bsky.social was celebrating the return of game demos back in 2021: www.pcgamer.com/game-demos-a...

And I was thrilled to see that it had become a real golden era for game demos 2 years ago: www.pcgamer.com/were-in-a-go...

Every year I'm (pleasantly) surprised that the trend chugs on.

Our cozy games of April list is looking so chilled out that there isn't even a single farm sim on it Don't get a spring in your step just yet because this month's cozy game launches are all so cozy you might want to stay bundled up.

Month 3 of compiling PC Gamer's cozy game releases calendar and it's wild how many games have persistent demos available these days. Especially in the cozy games space, having a demo is almost an expectation now.

'I took those files and deleted them': Former Sims 4 developer says he totally rewrote the sims' AI in the middle of development and 'that was a scary thing to do' The Sims 4's original lead AI programmer says he pitched the entire AI system not long before alpha and rewrote it from scratch.

First of a couple stories coming from a great conversation I had at GDC with The Sims 4's original AI programmer.

dungeons are cozy

Thanks for sharing Alice! Eventually I'll get the chance to actually quote you on one of the horse games, since you're connected to them all now 😆

Related, my personal horse girl bestie was super into the Hoofprint Bay demo from last week!

I should do the work keyboard to play keyboard evening swap intentionally more often, it's a fun mode switch

this is the most cozy gamer coded I've looked on a Friday night in a while

I'm genuinely having a great time with it! But also I've hit a progress-blocking quest bug and don't know yet if it's going to require restarting my save so...it's got good bones and rough edges 😅

Roach is wonderful! Witcher 3 is definitely one of those games with a loveable companion but just isn't really /about/ horses so the depth of Horse Stuff is pretty minimal. This one's got both!

Finally someone has threaded the needle between survival game and horse girl sim The Legend of Khiimori is a surprisingly detailed horse courier sim that I'm actually loving more than just in solidarity with my horse girl gamer friends.

I think Khiimori might finally be the horse girl game I can wholeheartedly get behind. Once it makes it out of early access, anyway.

in The Legend of Khiimori you can lead a horse to water and you CAN make her drink and I think that's beautiful 👩‍🍳🤌

He's just ✨ a (very big) little guy ✨

My new indie darling is this crafting game with hand-sculpted creatures OddFauna's handmade critters are absolute catnip for my crafting game brain.

OddFauna demo is good. Hand-sculpted game characters are so stinkin cool. Look at my biggo goofy whale house boy.

Going to start using my government name on AO3 just to prove I know ball.

I almost missed these 4 excellent cozy games launching in February February is surprisingly light on cozy game launches but we're looking forward to these chill picks you shouldn't miss

who's that on the cover? 👀

www.pcgamer.com/games/new-co...

I am a Sims luddite who keeps everything locally and never uploads to the gallery 💀 this is what I deserve

Over half The Sims development team is working on 'the next evolution' Here we are again trying to divine the future of The Sims from an announcement about the future of The Sims.

I beg of you to know when you see this one floating around the internet that she is my own personal Nina Caliente glow up redesign that was tragically lost to my latest Windows reinstall back in December.

The Sims 4's most notorious sex mod gets launched 400,000 times a day, which is more people than I realized were even playing The Sims every day One of The Sims 4's biggest mods is putting up numbers a triple-A game would be jealous of.

Reddit seemed to like this, but mostly I'm just proud of spending the extra half hour to go stage original screenshots in The Sims 4 for a lot of our stories. Small joys.

I said what I said!!!

Finally some good buyout news: A writer just bought back the game she co-created from a blockchain company so it 'doesn’t end up being turned into AI slop' Novelist and game writer Naomi Alderman has bought back the rights to the Zombies, Run! exercise app she's been writing episodes of for more than a decade.

A little games industry buyout win, as a treat.

"I think the best strategy in the age of AI is: bet on yourself," Alderman told me.

www.pcgamer.com/gaming-indus...

Like going to the office in Animal Crossing: my most productive work-from-home experience this year was spending all day online in this virtual co-working game Body-doubling is now 100% cozier.

I'm working I promise

The 'Stardew Valley-like' genre desperately needs a real name and I have the perfect answer We can't keep calling them Stardew-like, farmlife without a farm, and "basically Animal Crossing" forever.

It's 2025 and I'm trying to make "fetch" happen.

www.pcgamer.com/games/life-s...

Inzoi screenshot of a character that looks like Billie Eilish with green hair streaks and a credit to the player IngridBee for the Zoi Canvas template.

Inzoi screenshot of a character that looks like Billie EIlish with black and red hair and an image credit to Drewlagged for creating the Zoi Canvas teamplate.

Ditto for the Billie Eilish ones I've taken that I guarantee you've also seen on other sites lol. Less fussed about that, it ain't my face, but I make sure to credit the players who create the templates and other folks definitely do not.

Take your own screenshots, nerds!

Hah not worried about cash or credit that much I just wish people would either use official screenshots or take their own. A lot of us at PCG spend a ton of time taking original screenshots in games. Plus just...that's my face guys!

Screenshot of a Zoi character with my face, showing the Steam screenshots interface and a taken date of August 21, 2024.

Took a screenshot of my Inzoi self months ago during the character studio beta and now other gaming websites and also youtubers are using it for their coverage?

Immensely odd seeing my face just doing the rounds because, presumably, people think it's just a generic screenshot they can lift 🫠