In praise of games that leave you alone

The best thing a casual game can do is respect that you have a life. Too many of them wire you up with timers and notifications designed to drag you back every few hours. It's exhausting.

Pocket Orchard is the opposite. It never nags. The orchard doesn't wilt if you skip a day, and there's no energy bar rationing your fun. You visit when you feel like it, and that's the whole appeal.

Cozy games work best when the loop is its own reward. Watering trees and chasing a new fruit hybrid is satisfying in the moment, so I don't need a notification to remember it exists.

If a cozy game starts pinging your lock screen, that's usually a red flag. The genuinely relaxing ones trust you to come back.