My 13 Favorite Games From The Wholesome Direct 2024

When your sister goes missing, it’s up you you to hop into a high-tech van to find her. Whether in the van or on foot, Caravan Sandwitch takes players across a “hopeful” post-apocalyptic open desert filled with color. Solve puzzles in this combat-free experience and help your community using the van’s array of tools, such as a scanner and grapple hook.

I love Picross and welcome any unique spin on the formula. Squeakcross covers those bases by letting you solve puzzles that transform into cheese-shaped furniture to decorate a cute little mouse’s home. With hundreds of decorations and accessories to collect, I look forward to solving tons of Picross puzzles and giving the mouse a better home than I live in. 

The sequel to the 2021 isometric puzzle game dramatically ups the production values with photorealistic dioramas. Like its predecessor, you’ll examine two versions of a densely detailed world to spot their differences in this laid-back scavenger hunt.

We’re all used to passively filling out maps in games, but Map Map makes this the core of its adventure. As a cartographer for a crew of treasure hunters, you explore a series of islands and mark relevant locations on your blank map to help them explore. Uncovering ruins, wildlife, forests, and secret areas requires you to rely on your sense of direction and then notate its precise location on your map using various helpful tools, such as a compass.

On Your Tail aims to prove that even solving mysteries can be relaxing. Set in a scenic seaside village, you control Diana, a curious detective searching for the perfect summer vacation. Unfortunately, a masked thief spoils the good vibes, so you’ll collect clues, chat with residents, and use your deductive skills to unmask the culprit. Or you can spend time cooking food, fishing, and playing arcade games in the city’s leisurely interactive sandbox.

Try to stay with me as I explain this game’s premise: the god of communication has started a war with other gods, triggering an apocalyptic event. It’s up to you, a mail carrier for the gods, to save the world by wielding a mouth-shaped megaphone/vacuum that can suck up characters’ dialogue bubbles and spit them out to solve message-based puzzles. Backed by an equally kooky art direction, this bizarre-looking adventure has me shouting for more.

As Miho, you open a pantry to grab a potato for your grandmother’s soup recipe, only to be pulled into a strange fantasy land. Worst of all, the potato’s been stolen! This 3D adventure sees players explore a bright world filled with strange, talking animals, food-based topography, and other mysteries to retrace the steps of a great traveler who came before. Miho also learns the importance of food and family.

This photography-based adventure unfolds in a hand-drawn world. As Dei, you’ll capture photos while following in the footsteps of your missing mother to solve puzzles and piece together a family mystery. You can read more about it here.

In Discounty, you’ll manage your own supermarket as a local entrepreneur in a quirky town. You’ll set prices, create sales, appease your customers’ varying tastes, and redesign its appearance to turn a failing business into a thriving cash cow. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, as the more successful you become, the more people you’ll encounter that are actively plotting your downfall.

I’m always up for pocket-sized open-world games, and ILA: Frosty Glide fits that bill. As a young witch-in-training, you’ll soar across an island surrounded by snowy mountains atop a skatebroom (that is, a broom ridden like a skateboard). During your journey, you’ll learn new spells, solve platforming puzzles, find collectibles, and uncover secret areas.

Described as an “oddball RPG”, you’ll board a train to the spirit world to chart a path of self-discovery. Meet and befriend troubled spirits with individual goals and motivations, wield telekinesis to help others or yourself, and, most importantly, eat ice cream. Decision-making funnels into determining your personality type, with characters reacting differently towards you based on how you behave.

Backpacking is fun, but it’s also physically challenging and may not be viable, depending on your location. Albatroz translates the fun of backpacking into an RPG where you’ll trek through beautiful landscapes in search of a lost sibling. As you hike towards a mythical mountain, you’ll pass through villages filled with interesting locals, stay prepared through thoughtful inventory management, earn more abilities via a skill tree, and visit locales such as tropical coastal areas and frigid mountain ranges.

Sporting a gorgeous art direction that resembles a living toy set, Littlelands sports some old-school Zelda in its top-down adventure design. You’ll explore dungeons, find treasure, and make new friends who can teach you new skills by helping them with their problems. Though you can fight enemies, you can also chill out and cook dishes, farm berries, catch insects, or go fishing.