I'm reading The Aesthetic of Play by Brian Upton, which so far is pretty interesting, and one thing that jumped out to me was a description of sensory pleasures as being distinct from the game (rules), but adding a lot to it. This connected with some stuff in that Cozy Games paper, and it made me think about smell, particularly, but also touch and temperature.
Little popups could show up near your character when they entered an area / encountered a change in their sensory environment
They would just pop up and go away on their own, no need to interact or click through, and give you a little sensory prompting. I've been playing Subnautica, and I notice they do this with the fish you can cook. Each fish type has a little description about what it's like to eat it. Very brief but gives some sensory details. I noticed that I paid way more attention to this than to the in-game nutritional value of the fish.
This connects to another idea in The Aesthetic of Play about how the game mostly takes part inside the players head - sure the game enforces some constraints, but players quickly internalize these and much of the fun is in interacting with the internalized game, and then seeing how that plays out.
So getting players to internalize these sensory cues, could have a big impact on choices players make. If a food is described in a way that makes you feel good when your character eats it, that's going to be a motivator that's deeper than just "fills up the HP". It's going to feel good to eat good food, and bad to eat bad food.
I suspect that these kinds of sensory cues can bring the world to life. I don't know if little "in world thought bubble" or "notifications" is the right way to do it, but I do think that integrating smell, touch, and "body feel" (wind, temperature, chills) is a great goal.
