Often at the centre of a wholesome life-sim is a small business, where life slows down and you can enjoy the simple life while integrating yourself with a charming, tight knit community. Cafés and coffee shops symbolise the pinnacle of cosiness, and Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim looks to be a warm hug against the bitter chill of winter, as you run a cafe with an array of appropriately rotund fluffy critters.

As Steam Animal Fest begins, Coffee Beans Dev has announced that Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim will be launching on Steam January 21, 2026. According to the press release, you’ll be able to beat the blues by customising your pixel-art cafe across multiple rooms with “hundreds of customisation items”, brew a variety of coffees, and create latte art.

Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim has no fail state and is “designed to be stress-free”. Casually work toward objectives and bond with the locals in a pixel-art environment that looks like it oozes that latte smell. To remove objectives completely, a sandbox mode will be available so your creativity can flourish.

Speaking of creativity, there will also be mod support and user-created characters to play with - broadening the possibilities alongside your coffee-making skills.

“Got a fuzzy friend of your own you’d like to see in the game? Want to turn yourself or your pet into an in-game character? Import custom characters and turn them into visitors for your cafe.”

I’d like to imagine a world in which these mods won’t take your cozy little cafe and turn it into a fuzzy NSFW theme park, but hey, each to their own - the motto of mods is ‘why not?’ after all.

If you want to try Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim out, you’re in luck! The demo is available to play on Steam now.

Best cozy games: Relaxed gamingBest anime games: Animation-inspiredBest JRPGs: Classics and beyondBest cyberpunk games: Techno futuresBest gacha games: Freemium fanatics

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