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What's your video game comfort food?
What's your video game(s) that is like comfort food to you? The ones you can always play no matter what kind of mood you're in?
What's your video game(s) that is like comfort food to you? The ones you can always play no matter what kind of mood you're in?
Simon Tatham's Puzzles. Maybe can't always play it for a long time but if I'm not in a mental headspace to actually focus on something serious, doing the quasi-minesweeper or draw the rectangles ones don't take much brainpower and help pass the time.
First thing I make sure is installed on every phone and tablet.
Hardspace Shipbreaker is surprisingly chill once you've gotten the hang of things.
Kirby and the Crystal Shards on the N64. I do still have my N64 plugged in, though I don't play it often. I'm aware that my feelings for this game are 1000% nostalgia for a kids game that I played as a kid.
Never played that one but I've played other Kirby games and I think the series as a whole definitely qualifies!
22 years later and I still play the original Majesty whenever I need to wind down at the end of a long day.
I do play some simpler and older games too but I tend to only play those when I'm sick and cant focus on anything more complex.
Man, I might need to do another playthrough of Majesty. It does have something special about it that is just a joy to play.
Do you have a favorite temple?
I try to give all the temples a chance but Agrela is usually the most useful. The healers can stall enemies for a long time if they have to fight but otherwise they keep other heroes alive long enough to get leveled up and it unlocks Paladins which are powerful and loyal units.
They aren't always the best if you get rushed really early though, sometimes going straight for wizards or Krypta will be better at keeping dragons down early.
Borderlands 2, I dont even like FPSs much. But I know the game well, the gunplay and the movements felt very natural and satisfying to me.
Haven't played the game in sometime, but I always come back to it.
Super Mario 64
A time long ago when I had enough time to play MMOs, I would play Super Mario 64 when doing more idle-heavy gameplay stuff. I got to the point that I can do all 120 stars in a bit under three hours.
That is short enough that I can do it once or twice a year as an afternoon lazy event but long enough to be fulfilling when I finish and not really desire to keep playing anything.
MaBoShi (DS/Wii) on my iPhone
Endless Sky. It’s a pretty faithful remake of the old Ambrosia Software game series called Escape Velocity. I’ve got probably five thousand hours plunged into the series and remake since about 1996. I’ll go sometimes years between plays and then play constantly for anywhere from a day to every night for weeks on end. There’s just something about it that makes my brain calm. The longest period I went without playing was about ten years, from when I last had a Mac that could play Escape Velocity Nova to when I found Endless Sky.
Other than that, it’s mostly solitaire card games, Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, and Minecraft. (Edit to fix Summon -> Simon)
I guess the sort of "default" answer is to just list off nostalgic childhood games I know well and replay from time to time like Super Mario RPG or Super Mario World on SNES, or Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon on N64, but I think that's the less interesting angle to answer the question with.
Instead, I also want to say that without the nostalgia factor, games with sort of non-materialistic particle effect-y visuals (I've sometimes described them as "graphical fireworks shows") and any type of gameplay that has a high chance to make me settle into flow state easily can play the role of gaming "comfort food" because of how capable they are of blanking my mind of my problems and worries.
I don't know how to categorically describe games like this cause they can be in any genre, but the two games that make me want to call this a category are Geometry Wars and Tetris Effect and so naturally the upcoming next thing will be Lumines Arise. I've thought about making a thread here to try to take suggestions on other games that fit the bill, but I don't want to go around replying to people saying what I think is or isn't a fit to try to "fine-tune" a vibes based idea because if I say no to things and can't clearly define why, it'll just discourage further replies. You can tell how wrong it will go by googling for games that look or have vibes like those and seeing a million suggestions that are just too far away from the mark. Occasionally someone will recommend something like Mixolumia or Thumper or Rez which fit, but the vast majority of recommendations will be like Waves (I'm mixed on whether this one fits or not, Waves 2 looks a little more "right") if you ask about Geometry Wars, or completely off topic stuff like Ori and Celeste. Of course the bottom line is that there's not that many games that actually fit.
Animal Crossing. Specifically the home design like Happy Home Designer for 3DS or the Happy Home Paradise DLC. I really like decorating houses in-game, and I can match it to my moods pretty well.
Doom: Simple, engaging, short (like <10 minutes for a "hard" level usually), know it well so I don't need to think about it. It's like my warm blanket game when I just wanna have some fun for a bit and can't think of anything else.
Balatro is a recent entrant: Simple, kinda need to think, fully expect to lose so I only get a little tilted if I come up like 15 points short. A good session is maybe 30 minutes to get to the highest stake, but I don't need to worry about large-scale investments or anything.
Deckbuilders without a meta-narrative are fun for me: Balatro (already mentioned), Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers, Slay the Spire: games I fully expect to lose, so I can only go up on. They're hard in the sense that you need to think about what you do strategically, but not stressfully/physically engaging beyond the moment you go "Fuck, I'm not gonna make it past this round" when the math is done, or the win you get by the hair of your butt, until that first win. I got into this genre recently but it's been pretty great, but I'm pretty picky about what I play because there's a certain vibe I want: Don't make me change contexts (Tainted Grail), don't have too much story (Across the Obelisk), just throw me into a run, give me a path of decisions to select, and let me cook and get my dopamine.
An aside for funky arcade-style builders: Dungeon Clawler is one I go back to for fun vibes, basically a claw machine deckbuilder with fun synergies.
Similarly, modern roguelikes/lites: Hades has been great because I won't win. I start from there, and keep going until I lose to Megaera. Binding of Isaac is great for the same reason, even if it's not one I play a lot. Others that come to mind are Spelunky (1/2), Rogue Legacy (1/2), Conversely, traditional roguelikes tend to be higher-stakes, with multi-hour runs that you then lose, so they don't have that same comfort feel, which kinda caused me to drift away, I don't wanna be eight hours in and lose to something through RNG that I simply have no tools to get past.
I also get the itch to go on solitaire binges. Aislriot (on all platforms) is simply the best.
Yeah I love Slay the Spire and thought picking up Across the Obelisk would be a great multiplayer game similar to that but the cliff I hit when starting the game of having to go through all the inventory setup and figure out the story is such a mental drain. I just wanted to have a few choices to make each round and not feel like I've screwed it up from the start every time.
Minecraft. Whether vanilla or modded, on a server or single player depends on the mood, but there's something magical about the early hours of Minecraft that always has a great effect on my mood
In the last few years Noita has become the game I play to relax. I think it transports me into a flow state, feels great to play, and that just has a calming effect on me.
In the early 2000s Quake 3 Arena felt similar to me, but these days it would probably be too stressful, too hectic.
e: oh, and Factorio of course. I'm currently playing a Pyanodons run and it's also a great way to relax.