Cozy Systems, and Planting Games In The Workday
# Cozy Systems, and Planting Games In The Workday
I didn’t expect a conversation about cozy, non‑combat games to make me rethink the entire shape of the workday, but here we are. Ayla from Cave Bear dropped by the show and we ended up talking about everything from Steam Deck habits to why moving players from phones to PCs might be the most stubborn migration in gaming. Somewhere between my confession about streaming Armored Core to a phone and her dream of a plush, rolling lounge‑chair, we landed on a bigger truth: the next frontier for games might be the eight hours we’ve all treated as off‑limits.
## What we talked about
We started with design taste. Ayla is crystal clear about the kinds of games she wants to make: PC titles for women that are cozy, engaging, and pointedly non‑combat. She loves systems, roguelike loops, RPG depth, and progression, but doesn’t want swords and headshots to be the only way players feel tension. That design thesis sits behind Plantasia, a portion‑of‑screen idle game made to run while you work. It lives at the bottom of your monitor, grows plants on real‑world timers, and waits patiently for you to pop back between tasks. If you’ve ever alt‑tabbed to check a timer, this one meets you halfway.
We compared playstyles too. I’m a controller person for soulslikes, mouse‑and‑keyboard for shooters, and a shameless Steam Link couch goblin. Ayla’s the opposite in places, and we both laughed about relearning controls the moment you switch devices. That bled into a practical question: if the audience she cares about is largely on mobile, what does it mean to build for PC first? She’s willing to learn mobile so she can meet that audience, but her endgame is to tempt those players to try PC without losing the convenience they love.
Then came the business reality. Cave Bear exploded on LinkedIn with the studio’s “by and for juniors” story. It’s a great origin, tied adorably to Ayla’s name from the Clan of the Cave Bear. The attention translated into industry recognition and opportunities, but not one‑to‑one game sales. Thirty thousand followers and a few hundred copies sold is the indie paradox in a single sentence. Devs are supportive, but devs as an audience aren’t necessarily the players who will buy your cozy idle during a busy Tuesday.
On the business side, visibility isn’t demand. The LinkedIn boom helped Cave Bear become a known entity, form partnerships, and attract collaborators. It did not magically mint customers. That separation matters for studios like mine. If your social audience is mostly peers, treat it as talent and trust capital, not as a sales channel. Build a parallel path to players where they actually hang out. That could be niche Discords, cozy‑game streamers, TikTok booktok‑adjacent spaces, or even the workplace technology crowd that already loves timers and trackers. Sell the context first, the game second.
Leadership wise, Ayla reminded me that being the final decision maker doesn’t mean you’re above the team. It means you’re accountable for creating the conditions for honest disagreement. When someone pushes back, assume there’s a personal stake hiding under the feature opinion. Surface it, address it, and preserve the relationship. That’s not just soft skills. That’s schedule risk management. Fewer silent resentments, fewer surprise reversals. In a volunteer team especially, respect is your currency.
## My closing thoughts
I left this conversation feeling bullish on weird little games that respect your life. The idea that games can share the screen with spreadsheets without shame feels like a shift worth chasing. It also made me look at my own project with fresh eyes. If I say I want our game to be there for people who don’t have two hours to spare, the design needs to embody that. Short loops, graceful pauses, progress you can see when you come back from a meeting. And if I want players beyond my dev friends to care, I have to meet them where they actually are, even if that means learning platforms I don’t love.
Ayla’s story is also a quiet argument for momentum over permission. She didn’t wait for the perfect job posting. She gathered a team, built in public, and shipped a thing that taught them more than any thread could. That mindset translates. Whether you’re wrangling a tiny indie or a small business, move, learn, ship, adjust. The market is slow to reward you, but the compounding happens in your skill set and your network long before it hits your sales chart.
So yes, I’m still a controller loyalist for anything with parries, and yes, I’ll keep streaming PC games to my phone like a gremlin. But I’m also paying closer attention to the bottom edge of my screen. There’s room there for something gentle, persistent, and surprisingly ambitious. If the workday is finally getting human again, maybe our games can help it along.
Episode Info
We also drifted into platforms. There’s the love‑hate relationship with Apple, the practical cost of getting a Mac build properly notarized, and the quiet reality that a lot of women game on Switch or phone for very normal reasons: comfort, convenience, context. Not everybody wants to live at a desk. The Switch, the tablet on the couch, the five‑minute window before a meeting starts, those are real play spaces. Plantasia’s design leans into that by refusing to hog your attention. Sometimes it literally asks you to go do something else and come back later. That’s a bold move.
Finally, we talked teams and leadership. Plantasia was a volunteer effort with a clear creative target and a flexible definition of success. The point wasn’t revenue first. It was learning: publishing, shipping, teaching a community by building in public. Ayla’s teacher background showed up in how she leads. Meet people where they are. Communicate like you’re talking to different learning styles. Protect the vision without forgetting the human behind the task. When tension pops up, look for the personal reason under the professional argument and solve for that.
## What stood out / lessons learned
The first thing that hit me was genre reframing. We’ve collectively accepted combat as the default tension mechanic. Ayla’s thesis is “keep the depth, ditch the damage numbers.” That’s harder than it sounds. You still need risk and reward, friction and payoff, and you need progression that feels earned. The trick is to use time, planning, and resource orchestration as your verbs. Plantasia shows one way in. Real‑time growth, batch decisions, deliberate idleness. If you’re building something similar, design for the moments between tasks, not the moments of peak focus. Make the waiting meaningful.
Next, audience migration is not a campaign, it’s a product decision. You can market all day, but if your player’s life is oriented around a phone or a Switch, your PC game has to literally invite their habits in. That might be cross‑progression, cloud save that actually works, a controller‑first UX, or a UI that scales to a window without feeling cramped. The more you honor their context, the more likely they’ll try your platform. I keep thinking about Ayla planning a future mobile project, not because she wants to be a mobile studio, but because she wants to understand the ergonomics well enough to bridge players to PC.
Another thing that stood out was the “workday window” as a design space. Most software fights for attention. The interesting opportunity is software that coordinates with attention. If a game can lower cognitive load, punctuate the day, and provide a tiny sense of progress without guilt, it becomes a companion, not a distraction. That’s an accessibility frame too. Neurodivergent brains benefit from structured breaks and small, low‑stakes wins. Designing a game to be intentionally ignorable at times is counter‑cultural inside games, but perfectly natural if you think like a productivity app with soul.
