In modern society, it seems like, as the great philosopher REM said, “it’s the end of the world as we know it.” Extreme weather conditions, wars, political turmoil, and a deadly pandemic have many waiting for the Great Programmer to do a system reboot. The End Times has been a trope in video games for decades, with such games as the Fallout franchise and Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding exploring the days after civilization’s collapse.

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While the apocalypse is a source of doom and gloom, faiths across the globe see it as a new beginning, a time of renewal and hope. Increasingly prevalent are video games that explore the cozy post-apocalypse, providing good vibes in bad times. Some games don’t appear post-apocalyptic at first glance, but under the cutesy surface lies a dark past contrasting with a brighter future. These games are the coziest of the post-apocalyptic games.

7 Adventure Time: Hey, Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage?

Anyone who loves Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time will find a mathematical experience in Adventure Time: Hey, Ice King! Why’d You Steal Our Garbage? Human boy Finn, along with the shapeshifting, talking dog Jake, go on a platforming quest across the Land of Ooo, inspired by The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventures of Link.

The game gives off cozy fantasy vibes with its bright colors and simplistic art style that looks as if it was from a five-year-old’s imagination. The Land of Ooo, however, is not all sunshine and lollipops, though. The Adventure Time cartoon is set on planet Earth, roughly 1000 years after the Great Mushroom War. The mushrooms referred to aren’t the edible kind, but rather, the giant, radioactive kind that come from nuclear bombs.

6 Sonic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers borrows a lot from Nintendo’s open-air adventure, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It provides five large islands with plenty of room to run around. They are also home to cute, tiny, stone creatures called Kocos. Unfortunately, the Chaos are sitting this one out.

Running around at the speed of sound and hanging out with Sonic’s friends is bound to put a smile on anyone’s face. Amid all the cute rocks and talking animals, though, is a blanket of melancholy. The islands are mostly empty, save for some ruins scattered around, and robotic enemies that want a piece of the Blue Blur. Visions from the Kocos reveal an advanced civilization that was torn apart by war with heavy losses. Essentially, Sonic is running around on a graveyard.

5 Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion

Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a bright, cutesy game about a sentient root in danger of losing his greenhouse because the property taxes are overdue. This sends him on a Zelda-like adventure where he fights mutated animals and performs fetch quests for other intelligent vegetables.

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What looks like a silly, heart-warming game turns into a dark, twisted version of VeggieTales. The environments that serve as the game’s dungeons have artifacts referencing human civilization around the same time of recent events, hinting at a catastrophe occurring soon after. Turnip Boy will eventually find swamps where mutated vegetables rise from radioactive muck, along with an underground doomsday shelter.

4 Journey

Journey can be labeled a mere “walking simulator,” but it needs to be experienced to be truly understood. A cloaked figure is in the middle of a vast desert, and must make a harrowing quest to reach a single glowing point on a distant mountain.

Along the way, the traveler will find ruins of the civilization that came before. Its elders will send the lone wanderer visions of its history. It was once prosperous, but eventually, it tore itself apart through a war over precious resources. So many years later, it is still a game worth playing.

3 Pikmin 3

The Pikmin franchise first graced the Nintendo GameCube back in 2001. The franchise has only received the commercial attention it deserves thanks to Pikmin 4 on the Nintendo Switch. The overarching premise of the franchise follows tiny humanoid aliens coming to planet PNF-404 on expeditions aided by the planet’s native sentient plants, the Pikmin.

Exploring PNF-404 is both joyous and eerie. The Pikmin are cute, and the ecology of the planet is varied and beautiful. However, evidence in the lore indicates that PNF-404 is actually planet Earth in the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe. In the first Pikmin title, Captain Olimar’s Geiger counter detects trace amounts of radiation on the planet. Relics common on Earth, including cell phones and batteries, can be found while exploring the environment, especially in Pikmin 2.

2 The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is essentially a soft reboot of the Zelda franchise. It goes back to the series’ exploratory roots, and provides a beautiful, diverse landscape to explore, solve puzzles, and tackle all kinds of challenges.

Breath of the Wild is also post-apocalyptic. It takes place 100 years after the Great Calamity, an event in which Ganon nearly destroyed all of Hyrule. When Link awakes from his long slumber, with no memory of previous events, he finds a Hyrule that was laid to waste. Simultaneously, it shows signs of healing, with varied wildlife frolicking the terrain and small villages going about their daily lives.

1 Terra Nil

Humankind has left an indelible mark on the natural world, largely for the worst. Terra Nil examines the full scale of this, in a game where one is tasked with restoring nature and beauty to the landscape.

Rebuilding scorched ecosystems is a comforting experience, with calming music and beautiful visuals. Little by little, as new biomes grow, animals start returning. After each challenge in the game is complete, one is free to just sit and appreciate all the creatures that have made the environment their home.

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