February 2025 Roundup: Cozy Games, Pokémon news, and so many demos!

Blood Bar Tycoon has potential, but the cons outweigh the pros. I liked the premise. Unfortunately, building wasn’t intuitive and without goals or a direction to know when my bar would advance, I was left feeling like I had a bugged game. 

Ropuka’s Idle Island is, at its core, an idling game. It’s, also, an upgrading game. It overachieves at idling, but the upgrading part is slow which means progression is slow. I wouldn’t call the pacing stagnant, but you will be waiting around hours to make a small dent in stats.

I really enjoyed playing Hydroponics Farm and Store Simulator. As far as simulators go, this is a top-notch one. And, as far as games (in general) go, I feel like this is a pretty solid option since it caters to more hands-on players and the idle gamer.

Pekoe is cozy, but it seems to advance like molasses. There were many times when I was simply sitting on the main map waiting to see the notification that someone had shown up for me to attend to.

Instants is an adorable scrapbooking game with a puzzle element involved. You play as someone whose family comes to them for help in scrapbooking memories. You’ll get requests from multiple people in your family tree asking you to beautify a set of pictures from a favorite time period or specific memory.

In Spray Paint Simulator, you play as someone who takes odd paint jobs. The demo only shows two scenarios, but they couldn’t be more different. In the first mission, you’re painting a car and in the second, you’re painting kitchen cabinets. You can’t just dive into painting, though. You have to mask off everything you don’t want to paint and remove fixtures like handles.

Isle of Isvenness is part pet collector and part idle game. It brings us another desktop idler with a twist. Instead of one little box, there are several that float around your screen. There are three main islands for your pets to exist on and sometimes they’ll have enemies to fight that will drop treasure chests.

Cash Cleaner Simulator puts an interesting spin on money laundering. Not only are you moving cash illegally for people, but you’re literally cleaning the cash. Sometimes, you’ll get crisp bills to move along. Other times you’ll get money coming in that is soaked that needs to go into a dryer or caked in dirt and mud that needs to be run through a washing machine.

Out and About is an adorable crafting and exploration game that will take you through nature to forage plants. Not only will you be able to craft things with your findings, but you’ll be able to learn about them as well! Every plant that you see in Out and About correlates to a real-world plant. With over 100 plants and fungi in the game, you’ll be kept busy!