Starfield is better when you play it as a cozy game

Starfield is designed to be a million different things at the same time. It’s a sci-fi adventure story about searching the galaxy for alien artifacts, and it’s also a weird western where you can foil bank robbers and become a space sheriff. There are dogfights with space pirates, gun battles with dinosaurs, and terrifying axe battles with robot dogs. If I need some quick cash, I can board and loot enemy ships, do a little bounty hunting, or try my hand at drug-smuggling. 

That probably sounds pretty awesome—and for the most part, it is—but I’ve discovered that I have way more fun with Starfield when I treat it as a cozy game.

There’s nothing wrong with Starfield’s story, but it feels more exciting when it’s at its most mundane. Plenty of games let me shoot at aliens with guns, but how often do I get to travel the galaxy to pick up special sauce for a fast food restaurant, or grab a futuristic cup of coffee for a friendly janitor? These slice-of-life side quests can be a little silly, but they set Starfield apart from your standard open world RPG.

Even when I’m not running errands for strangers, I’m doing things that wouldn’t feel out of place in a game like Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing. Every time I spot an abandoned building, I search it from top to bottom looking for home decor pieces I can display at my outpost, like a cactus or a teddy bear. I love filling my inventory with ingredients I can potentially use to make tasty meals. I could easily spend hours exploring planets and scanning every plant and animal I see.

Parts of Starfield can be tedious, but after I embraced the most relaxing aspects of the game, all my frustrations melted away. I was constantly running out of ammo during gunfights, but once I boosted my persuasion skill and started talking my way out of problems, I had bullets to spare. Starfield’s menus are a little clunky, but once I stopped trying to rush through the game, it was easy to find what I was looking for.

Starfield has thousands of planets, ranging from bright, tropical paradises to barren hunks of rock. Some of them can be a little empty, but once I got into things like basebuilding and botany, all that blank space felt like an opportunity. Greenhouses and animal husbandry facilities take up a lot of room. Once I started planning a big building project, I wanted to make sure I had space for everything I wanted to create.

All that emptiness can also be really tranquil. They say that in space, no one can hear you scream, but it’s also a nice place to go when you need some peace and quiet. I loved zoning and wandering around planets while I looked for new objects to scan. Sure, it’s basically No Man’s Sky, but No Man’s Sky is pretty peaceful too.

You don’t have to focus on the chiller aspects of Starfield if that’s not your kind of thing, but it’s better if you don’t go into it with any expectations. There are hundreds of ways to play Starfield, and there are hundreds of gameplay elements you can totally ignore. It makes a really awesome cozy game, but if you’re in the mood for something else, it can probably offer that too.

It can be a creepy horror game where you jump to desolate galaxies and explore every abandoned spaceship that you find. It can be a sweet slice-of-life game where you take on odd jobs so that you can send credits to your folks back home. If you don’t mind paying off a giant mortgage, it can be a sci-fi dream home decorator. It can be a weird cultist simulator where you constantly jump to honor a giant snake.

Starfield definitely isn’t perfect, but I love that I can adapt the game to what I want it to be. Right now, it’s basically my go-to cozy game, but if I’m in the mood for some undercover detective work, or if I want to roleplay as an administrative assistant on a seedy cyberpunk planet, I can do that too. Starfield is a game that can change with your mood, and that’s what makes it worth playing.

Check back for my full review of Starfield on TapTap later this week. And if you’ve been checking the game out, let me know how you’re playing it in the comments.