Fresh, juicy strawberries. Busy nature-loving cottage-witches. Ginger cats on rustic roofs. If any or all of these things (they could be a few of your favourite things) made you go ‘ooo’, then this September you’re in luck, my friend. Fiammingo Games, a small Italian publisher, has taken note of the burgeoning market in cozy games and is heading to Kickstarter with something they’re calling The Cozy Bundle. It’s not one game, but three, launched together under a single banner. That’s a whole lot o’ cozy. It is, in fact, a “plump cushions and knitted throw and pet on your lap and steaming cup of tea” amount of cozy.
It’s also a bold move. Most publishers save their big swings for one campaign at a time. What we have here is not a trio of vaguely-linked mini-games, but three fully developed board games with a shared aura. You’d expect them to be separate releases. Fiammingo is betting that they can convince you otherwise: that a witch’s forest, a strawberry festival, and a cottage full of good intentions are stronger as a trio than as three separate entities. I sat down with the designers and artists behind all three to find out why, and to ask what “cozy gaming” actually means…
The Bundle at a glance
So Happy You’re Here! is the softest entry point of the three. Designed by Valeria Cavasin with art by Victoria Osorio, it’s a whimsical, cottagecore-flavored game built around positive interaction. Every turn is as much about brightening someone else’s board as building your own. Quick to learn, quicker to set up, this is perfect for when a lighter evening is needed.
The Witches’ Road is the heavier sibling. Designed by Edoardo Eibenstein, with art from Outrider Creative, it drops players into the role of gentle witches carving a safe path through a mystical forest. Players gather arcane knowledge in city libraries, brew potions, tend cottage gardens, and befriend the local wildlife along the way. It’s semi-cooperative, which sets it apart from the other two, and it’s pitched as a Eurogame dressed in cozy clothing: short- and long-term strategic choices sit underneath the charm.
Nemi: The Strawberry Festival sits in the middle. It’s a gateway game co-designed by Cavasin and Eibenstein, with illustrations by Simone Grünewald. Set in a sun-drenched Italian village mid-festival, players gather ingredients, bake treats, and decorate the town in garlands. Its cutesy looks belie the strategic possibilities beneath.
Why bundle three games?
Launching three games at once is a confident move from an upstart publisher. It’s also, on paper, a lot of work: three sets of components, three rulebooks, three sets of stretch goals to juggle, and a big commitment for backers to take. ‘The Cozy Bundle was really born from a shared design philosophy,’ says Valeria. ‘These three games explore coziness in different ways – aesthetically, mechanically, socially, and emotionally – but they all began with the same question: How do we want people to feel while playing? The answer was: cozy.’
The launch tactic made sense to the team “The Cozy Bundle is not simply three products packaged together. It’s an exploration of what cozy gaming can be, seen from three different perspectives.”
Cavasin and Eibenstein co-designed Nemi together, then each went off and solo-designed one of the other two. Cavasin took on the tender, cottage-core So Happy You’re Here!, and Eibenstein handled the more strategic The Witches’ Road. Valeria says, “Designing Nemi together was a wonderful way to discover how differently – and sometimes surprisingly similarly – our creative minds work. It also taught us that designing a game together is an excellent way to discover exactly how many opinions two people can have about a single cardboard tile!
“After Nemi, we gave each other the freedom to explore our own interpretations of what cozy gaming could be. Edoardo is a heavy Eurogamer and naturally gravitates toward systems, strategic depth and layered decision-making, which led him toward the light Euro-style experience of The Witches’ Road. Valeria is more of an artsy soul and a themer, so with So Happy You’re Here! she was particularly interested in exploring the emotional side of coziness: how the game could encourage connection, kindness and the feeling of being welcomed at the table.
“There are even little examples of how our perspectives influenced each other’s games. It was Edoardo’s idea to make the garden tiles in So Happy You’re Here! one-sided, turning them into a light spatial puzzle and adding a pleasant mental challenge. And it was Valeria’s idea to introduce the gentle, collaborative gardening mechanics into The Witches’ Road.”
The three games aren’t in a shared universe, “but,” says Valeria, “there is a shared philosophy behind them. The games are designed around principles that we want to carry forward into Fiammingo Games as a studio: clear and well-written rulebooks, easy setup and cleanup, games that are easy to learn while still offering meaningful decisions, high-quality components, beautiful human-made artwork and a strong commitment to reducing plastic wherever possible.”
Defining ‘cozy’
According to Valeria, “The word ‘cozy’ is being used to describe a very wide range of experiences, from a visual aesthetic to particular themes or even games with little or no player interaction. For example, a game can be aesthetically cozy, non-confrontational or cooperative. These aren’t necessarily the same thing. “For us, cozy mechanics can take many forms. They can mean an abundance of resources, a variety of meaningful choices without overwhelming analysis paralysis, positive interactions between players, rewards, competition without ‘take-that’ mechanics or deliberately nasty interactions, semi-cooperative elements and shared objectives.”
Most importantly for the team, “coziness is inherently social. It is about being with other people, strengthening friendships, meeting someone new, most of all feeling welcomed and accepted around the table. We also don’t believe that cozy should mean easy in the sense of being shallow. Our goal is to make games that are easy to learn, easy to follow and pleasurable to play, while still offering layered mechanics, strategic choices and replayability. We like to think of it as being on a pleasant river cruise while still holding the steering wheel. You can relax and enjoy the scenery, but you’re still deciding where the boat goes. We never wanted players to simply sit in the back while the game drives itself on autopilot.”
That distinction matters most in The Witches’ Road, the one title in the bundle that isn’t a straightforward competitive gateway game. I asked what made semi-co-op the right call for a game about witches walking together through the woods. “The Witches’ Road uses semi-cooperation as a natural extension of its theme. The idea of gentle witches helping the nearby human communities while protecting the integrity of their magical woods suggests that the players should have a reason to work together.”
So Happy You’re Here! takes the opposite approach, building its entire identity around helping other players on their turn. “At its heart, So Happy You’re Here! is about a group of people who want to spend time together and enjoy one another’s company – much like we do in real life. There is still a winner at the end of the game… but the way you interact with other players is fundamentally positive and emotionally safe. You can give them cups of tea and slices of cake, offer words of encouragement through the positive affirmation cards and work toward shared friendship objectives. We wanted to explore the idea that competition doesn’t have to mean making someone else’s experience worse in order to improve your own.”
Three artists, one tone
If the designers built the bones of the Cozy Bundle, the three illustrators — Victoria Osorio, Outrider Creative, and Simone Grünewald — are the reason it reads as a single collection rather than three unrelated boxes that happen to share a marketing page. I asked how involved Cavasin and Eibenstein were in matching artist to game. “Valeria was the art director for the project, and […] she wanted the artwork to carry the same emotional mood as the gameplay. To her, a board game should be beautiful to look at, but the artwork should also do more than simply decorate the box. Choosing the right artist for each game was therefore extremely important. She selected each of them because they had a unique ability to convey the specific feeling she was looking for.
“She also provided detailed art direction throughout the process, including sketches, mood boards, technical specifications and extensive references. One of the challenges was bridging the artwork with the graphic design: making sure that the illustrations remained beautiful while also working seamlessly with icons, symbols, gameplay information and production requirements. We also wanted the games to be color-blind friendly, so palettes and shapes were discussed carefully with every artist.
“The three artists have very different visual languages, and we think that is one of the strengths of the Cozy Bundle.”
Outrider Creative, The Witches’ Road
Witchcraft in most visual media reads as spooky, sinister, or mysterious. Outrider Creative was tasked with drawing witches as approachable rather than eerie. “When Valeria first sent her visual direction for this game, she included a whole folder of references to various fauvist paintings. This was an art movement that focused on rough brushwork and using bright colors that might not exactly match what you’d see with your eyes – for example, using bright red straight from the tube to paint a tree. The whole focus was on this wild, emotional connection and that’s what I tried to bring to the world of this game. Witchcraft isn’t necessarily sinister. Here it’s about a connection to nature.”
I also asked for one board or component they’re proudest of, and what visual problem it solved. “This game has a lot of components that all work together and interact visually. There’s the tiles on the board that line up with the road and flip as the road is improved. There are the spellbook pages, which are divided into left and right sections. Even getting the witches’ cottages and buildings to all read visually was a challenge in a world that’s already so bright and colorful.
“Out of all of these, the biggest challenge as an illustrator was the interconnected garden cards. You have four visually distinct garden types – a pink rose garden, a green watery lilypad garden, and so on. But each garden card is divided into two garden types and when you collect them, the different cards align seamlessly as if they form one continuous garden with different-colored sections. It was an extreme amount of visual problem-solving but the end result is STUNNING.”
The crowdfunding campaign
Launching via Kickstarter is a risky choice, but the team are confident it’s the right avenue for the project. “We’re a young indie studio, and we have invested our own savings into bringing this project to life. A traditional retail release would have required an even bigger upfront investment, as well as an international distribution network, warehousing, logistics and many other structures that are difficult for a small studio to build from scratch.
“The three games are already fully developed and extensively prototyped, so our Kickstarter project isn’t about funding an unfinished idea. It’s about giving us the resources to manufacture the games at the quality we envision and bring them to players around the world.”
The appetite for cozy games seems to be growing, but where’s the ceiling? “I love seeing the board game audience expand beyond the traditional image of the hobby,” says Valeria. “We’re seeing more casual players, families, women, and people who may never have considered themselves “gamers” now discovering modern board games. I think that diversity is one of the healthiest things happening in the hobby.
“As for where the ceiling is, I don’t think there necessarily has to be one. Every trend runs the risk of becoming a label that is applied too broadly and eventually losing its meaning. That’s something I hope we can avoid with cozy gaming.”
I also asked who they picture opening the box for the first time: a returning hobbyist rediscovering the table, or someone who’s never played a modern board game at all. “Honestly, both! The three games are designed to be accessible and offer different entry points into the hobby, but they all have enough depth to reward experienced players as well.
“The Cozy Bundle is also intentionally diverse in its experiences. Someone might come to it because they love cottagecore aesthetics, someone else because they are an experienced Eurogamer wanting to invite a loved one to the table, and someone else because they simply want a beautiful game to play with their family or friends. We hope all of them can find something that speaks to them.”
Whatever the answer, The Cozy Bundle is betting that the warmest way into this hobby isn’t one game asking for your attention: it’s three.
The Cozy Bundle launches on Kickstarter on 8th September 2026. So Happy You’re Here!, The Witches’ Road, and Nemi: The Strawberry Festival are published by Fiammingo Games.
