My favourite Steam Next Fest game, Cozy Desktop Konbini, combines my love for shopping management sims and desktop idlers

Lately, there’s been a bit of a desktop idler wave engulfing the PC Gamer team. It all started with Ropuka’s Idle Island, but after I’d put 20 hours into this little game, I started looking for a new idle game. Luckily, I found my match while scouring through all the Steam Next Fest demos.

Cozy Desktop Konbini does pretty much what it says on the tin—while you’re working or getting on with other tasks, you can also manage a little convenience store on your desktop. Within the first few minutes, I realised that this was going to be my forever idle game, mostly because I love management sims like TCG Card Shop Simulator.

At first, all you have is a lone checkout, which a tiny mouse manages for you, so you have to start filling your store with shelves and products as quickly as possible to start making some money. To help give you a bit of a bump in cash, the game will give you a few missions to complete, like building a shelf or a refrigeration unit, placing some decorations, and buying a computer. Every time you tick something off the list, you get a big wad of cash as a reward, which you can then put towards buying your next piece of furniture.

At first, all I could afford was a couple of shelves, which I stocked with ramen, a toothbrush, and some toothpaste. But after a while, I earned enough money to buy a fridge, which I stocked with coffee and a basic bento box, as well as purchasing a few more types of ramen for the shelves.

Like most idle games, Cozy Desktop Konbini is a slow game. Most of the furniture and items cost quite a bit of money. A fridge costs 100,000 yen, a furniture computer (which allows you to buy new items) costs 200,000 yen, and a coffee machine is 150,000 yen. You can also buy more products to sell in the store after purchasing a different computer for 100,000 yen. Instead of unlocking new stock to sell with cash, you use ‘ideas’ that you earn from customers who have a happy experience in your store.

Building up enough money to actually start getting everything will take a few hours of just sitting around and distracting yourself with something else. But thanks to the chill lo-fi music that plays in the background, Cozy Desktop Konbini is great even when you’re not playing the game. If you don’t like the music, you can also switch it out for some ambient noise, like falling rain or just the background bustle of shoppers wandering in off the street.

After you finally master the basics, like buying all the stock you can for your store, you can move on to my favourite part: decorating it. My konbini currently has a coffee area with a couple of tables topped with flowers for shoppers who want to take a moment to rest. There is also an adjoining area with bigger tables for groups of people who may want to sit, chat, and eat their food together.

Cozy Desktop Konbini is already a fantastic idle game—it’s relaxing, engaging, and the perfect thing to have on in the background, ticking away. The only limiting factor right now is that you can’t unlock any of the new areas, as this is still just a demo. But I will be waiting eagerly to expand my cafe and convenience store—I have big plans.