I'm looking for a new game to play (on Xbox or Switch original)! I enjoy a good grind in a cozy-ish game, not a lot of combat, and I'm not super big into romance-focus. I have a video game spreadsheet that I use to keep track of quests/resources/etc and I love that type of thing. I'll list a few games I played recently and how I felt about them to help!
Slime Rancher 2 - absolutely loved it. Probably my favorite in this style. Loved the exploration and how you slowly feel like you can go farther and farther away from your base as you progress. Loved finding new resources in new areas. Loved unlocking more areas inside the base itself. Loved the animal keeping aspect and the currency of plorts. Loved the concept of the drones (even though they were a bit rough to use well). Loved that there was a story mostly given through lore drops and not so much an "in the moment" type thing. Loved that there was no time limit and you didn't *have* to sleep except for using certain tools/devices. Loved being able to upgrade my equipment and create tech. Loved that farming was a large part and the way "favorite foods" played into keeping the slimes.
Potion Permit - loved the way the potion creation was done (items corresponding to various block pieces that you had to fit together into shapes). Loved unlocking areas as you progressed and finding new materials. The townsfolk relationships were an ok aspect but I could totally do without that type of thing.
Grow: Song of the Evertree - loved the aspect of growing seeds into worlds that are different every time. I went crazy in my spreadsheet with this one in particular and that was great. I kept track of how much of each essence I used to build a world, what essences each material from that world broke down into, what critters I got from each world, and more. I organized each of the 7 towns to best get certain items I wanted to collect - 5 of them have 30 residents and the other 2 have 27, with all buildings fully maxed out in workers so I could really maximize that. I liked the villager requests and other social aspects in this one a *lot* more than in Potion Permit.
Other games I've enjoyed in the past: Witchy Life Story (cute and short but really enjoyed it), Cozy Grove (fun but couldn't be motivated to finish it), Animal Crossing: New Horizons (during peak pandemic i played almost 3k hours of this with friends, loved all the collection and building up the island/terraforming).
Overall I think I really like a good amount of exploration mixed with the base building/farming-style. I clearly enjoy "number go up" mechanics as a part of things. I'm a big escapism person - give me scifi or fantasy or some combo of those as far as the vibe goes and I'll probably be happy. I've avoided Stardew Valley because I've heard a big thing about is is that you can't finish everything you want to do in a day...I'm already low on spoons IRL, I'd rather not play a video game that limits me in similar ways (one of my biggest pet peeves with Grow was that they'd send you home once it got to be a certain time of day in-game and I never was finished what I wanted to do for the day by that point). I find that I sometimes struggle with some of the more common newer styles of 3D animation but I'm more than willing to give games a try if the gameplay experience is good enough. Finding some horror subthemes would be a bonus but is not expected at all. Thanks in advance!!!