West of Loathing. The RPG stuff is great and the comedy is great but really the main strength is I just enjoy reading its dialogue. The vocabulary and sentence construction have a real sincerity for the setting contrasted against the silliness of the rest of it that makes both parts hit harder.
Similarly, the first three Monkey Island games which achieve that same injection of the heartfelt into the wacky by way of their gorgeous art and music.
But as far as the joy of just doing something it’s hard to beat the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater games, to just be dropped into a level and be told “do cool stuff for a while”.
Halls Of Torment. It’s a simple game on the surface, but has some surprising depth I wasn’t expecting that I like. Plus when you do a completely broken build and your frame rate drops because of all the damage your causing to the entire screen, it makes me laugh.
Plus killing the skeletons makes the most satisfying crunchy sound. Similar satisfaction to Vampire Survivors when you have enough garlic to “pop” enemies by walking into them.
Probably Civilization V (with the difficulty set below maximum so you’re not too restricted and don’t have to play so sweaty). I like just seeing whatever the Planet Simulator map spits out, putz around with half my brain turned off, trying out niche civs and basically just playing it like solitaire.
I don’t play it even every week anymore, but when I need some distraction and relaxation that’s a comfort game go-to.
I always say that the Mad Max video game is my comfort game, and it's very much true. For me there's just something so relaxing and enjoyable about just driving across the wasteland, going from site to site gathering scrap and taking down camps. It always puts me in a better mood.
Return to Grace! It’s a short AWESOME sci-fi adventure in FPS perspective but no fights, no hard puzzles, the controls are very well explained and quite basic.
I haven’t seen anyone mention Mirror’s Edge yet! The free running (especially in the first game) is such a unique and rewarding experience. A little janky and frustrating sometimes but when it clicks it just feels so good
Heat VR. Not even for the adult content; just staring into the character’s eyes or mussing their hair is incredibly relaxing.
VRChat, too, but since those are all real people you can’t just necessarily go around admiring them up close since it would disrupt their experience. Just as rude IRL, imo.
Townscaper - this is my go-to for just kind of chilling out. Just plonking down buildings and seeing what configurations they make is just so relaxing. There’s no points, no goals, no competition, not even any citizens with needs that must be fulfilled. You just build nice cities.
Slime Rancher - the slimes are cute, and just so happy to be alive. There’s something about a bright pink slime bouncing past, with a massive smile on its face as it cries “wheeeee!” that reminds me there are indeed reasons to live.
Maneater - this is a different kind of happy. A cathartic, violent, murderous happiness, as I pop inflatable unicorns, sink yachts, and launch myself at unsuspecting golfers.
Alba is a really sweet game with a photography mechanic. It's short and usually cheap and well worth the time you'll spend with it if it sends like something you'd like.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon. rouge likes are tough as all fuck, but there’s something about the level of detail in this game, and the way I get to build characters that I find very relaxing
Animal Crossing games for me! Just chilling and catching bugs or fishing or whatever is super relaxing. I also like that nothing feels rushed, you can move at your own pace, and make your town/island look however you want.
Someone else mentioned Skyrim and that’s another one for me. I have it on practically every platform and I drop back into it every so often.
This browser game/toy called Infinite Craft was doing that for me yesterday. It's very neat, you just take different words and combine them to create new things, and then use those to make more things, but its secret is that it uses a low level AI so that if you craft a combination that's never been crafted before it can accommodate that and attributes you as the first discoverer.
You start with the whole basic idea of combining elements like fire and water to make steam and such, but you can relatively quickly end up accidentally creating more complex things, and they dont even have to be objects, they can be named franchises or concepts like Star Wars or Creation.
Eventually I felt like a small kid ripping the limbs off action figures and seeing if the dinosaur head would fit on the Darth vader figure. I ended up first discovering some insane Eldritch shit like Barack Crabwich Vader-car, a part president, part crab, part sandwich, part sith lord cyborg, part car. Or Zombie Muppet Prince Kermie. Or the Jurassic Mecha-Deloreansaur.
It's free and is a ridiculously absurd hoot, I'd recommend it on a PC browser since you get a big space to drag out certain concepts you wanna keep and reuse.
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Aktywne