What game do you play to just chill?

Nowadays I find a lot of games feel like too much work and/or anxiety when I just want to relax for like, 30 minutes to an hour after a long day. On the other hand, the games specifically designed to help you unwind just feel boring imo.

In the past I’ve felt like Outer Wilds scratched this itch, cause the whole experience was engaging but generally relaxed. There was a mystery that kept me hooked and the exploration and movement was fun in and of itself. I also felt like Subnautica filled this role since it was very much at my own pace, with anxiety producing portions which could for the most part be avoided or minimized, and also there was a clear objective to fulfill, get off the planet.

So what games do you play when you just wanna relax?

dansity,

OpenTTD

msage,

Hey, this is a classic.

Just turn off vehicle breakdowns, as they can cause huge congestions everywhere. And that’s very stressful.

I love trains

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Oxygen Not Included. - !oxygennotincluded

Just started a new colony yesterday because an update was released with new tools and content. The colony I was playing up until that point was almost 3000 cycles old.

DashboTreeFrog,

It’s on sale on Steam in my region, I’ve heard a lot of good things before so gonna check it out!

Bishma,
@Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Nice.

ONI’s one of those games with a lot of layers of game mechanics. Expect your first few colonies to go bad while you get a handle on things.

I’m lurking in the lemmy.world community I linked to above, and I’ll be happy to help you out there if you get stuck on something.

Here’s your first tip: Geyzers and Vents are one of the main sources of renewable resources in the game. They all have to be “tamed” in some way before you can collect their goodies. They also all have the same Achilles Heel that will keep them from erupting while you’re building around them; if there’s a natural tile 2 rows from the bottom and 2 rows from left it will always think its over-pressure and eruptions will be suppressed.

Untamed natural gas geyzer

LinkOpensChest_wav,
@LinkOpensChest_wav@lemmy.one avatar

Skyrim was my chill game for years, but now I’d say Elder Scrolls Online. Everyone I know who plays ESO is super non-competitive and chill. It’s just got a great vibe.

Arsinoe,

This was my vote, too. There are so many things to do that don’t involve combat/mechanics/etc., you’re bound to find something that sounds fun. Some days I log in and just work on surveys or treasure maps or antiquities with a cocktail and a podcast on in the background.

pan_troglodytes,

civ 5 - random everything & just do whatever.

stevedidWHAT,
@stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world avatar

Stacklands, inscription, forza.

Stacklands was surprisingly addicting

Inscription was fun and challenging but not too crazy if you get creative ;)

Forza - I mean really any game where I can drive around. Fun to try to hit some corners sharp or do some tricks in gta.

Nunya,

You should check out Stardew Valley. Super chill game that evolves at your own pace.

Don’t like to fish on the game? Don’t fish.

Don’t like to go in the mines and fight stuff? Don’t go in the caves.

Play on a PC and want to spend hours just modding the hell out of the game? Go for it.

nieceandtows,

I couldn’t get into it. Felt very stressful to me. Like I had to do something productive every day before night. It’s probably more my fault than the game’s fault though.

slazer2au,

The game is like that for the first game month. When you get to summer you tend to relax a bit more so after your tool upgrades.

DashboTreeFrog,

I get like this in any sort of “real time passes” games, with some exceptions. If you have a limited amount of time to do a limited amount of things in game, my mind starts min/maxing what I should be doing every moment in game. In Outer Wilds the passage of time matters less cause you always start back at zero, what you gain each run is just knowledge, you don’t lose out and fall behind on any resources, points or whatever cause you didn’t do certain things that day.

Quetzalcutlass,

I 100% agree. There’s just so much to do and too much of your day is spent as a time tax maintaining what you already have. There are several unlocks to reduce this, but they come far too late in a playthrough in my opinion.

I find a time control/clock-stopping on demand mod almost mandatory for me to be able to play without stressing, especially when playing with expansion mods that more than double the amount of content in the game.

PandaPikachu,

I love these types of games, and I’ve tried to get into it multiple times… But everything feels like it’s on such a strict timer. I just want to chill and farm/explore/talk to people without worrying if I spent too much time enjoying myself doing any one particular thing. If it had some kind of sandbox mode or if you could slow down the time, I’d give it another go.

Pr0v3n,

You should defs try My Time At Sandrock then, with friends or the story alone. Absolutely great for exactly what you want, without the overbearing timer having really any effect on gameplay.

solivine,
@solivine@sopuli.xyz avatar

Stardew valley is way too stressful to me, I have to make the most of each day and if I’m not I’m wasting it

kratoz29,

You mentioned things you might not like to do, I wonder what you like to do in Stardew Valley (my knowledge on that game is very little).

penquin,

Genshin impact on PC is a masterpiece. The colors on my 4k monitor are just out of this world. I don’t even do hard missions, I just go around the wild collect foods and stuff. So relaxing.

TheMinions,

What would you define as a hard mission?

davidgro,

They could be low level. I certainly remember when a Ruin Guard was a big scary monster that could kill my whole party.

And later when I was playing pretty seriously I still stayed out of Abyss Floor 12 because it wasn’t worth the effort (literally - I never got enough stars to get a reward from it even when I technically defeated it)

penquin,

There are challenges where you have like 45 seconds to defeat a bunch of creatures to just open a chest. I hate those

penquin,

Man, those “into the frey” fights where you have 45 seconds to defeat 69474783748 creatures are so stressful. Also, those big ass monsters are very hard to beat. That’s stressful. That’s why I just go around the wild to collect foods and stuff. Lol

davidgro,

And even more casual than that is their latest game, Honkai: Star Rail. The combat is turn based, so you can just look away and come back later as you wish and don’t need gamer reflexes at all*

I love it.

(* There’s one minor exception - an Ultimate move can be launched after your turn, but before the enemy’s turn or between two enemies’ turns, which does require some speed. It’s not usually important though.)

penquin,

They have another game? Damn, I’ll need to check it out. Thanks for bringing it up.

GRENADE_MAGNET,

I’m going to go with Satisfactory.

DashboTreeFrog,

I hear a lot about this one and it does interest me, but whenever I look at the Steam page I just don’t end up feeling it. What is it about the game that keeps you personally coming back to it?

JAWNEHBOY,

It’s all about how you play in my experience. If you want to get a basic factory up and go slug hunting, super chill. If you want to sink your spreadsheet teeth into optimizing every resource available and build a non-spaghettified factory, plenty of room to go hard core.

Also the graphics are fantastic for all the massive machinery

Floufym,
@Floufym@lemmy.world avatar

On this kind of games, I have a preference to Factorio (and the game is released, not in beta). They propose a free demo. So you can rest and see if you have the good feeling. It is definitely not a game for everyone, but it is one of my favourite.

BastingChemina,

Factorio for me, the interesting part is that I usually want tonlay the game after a day of mindless tasks at work.

On the other hand if I’ve been busy at work and had to solve a lot of issues I’m prefer other games.

It’s my brain gym

nerdschleife,

Skyrim. Meme mods aside, the vibe and soundtrack are just…chef’s kiss

variants_of_concern,

Oblivion for me

Bigtiddygothgrany,

Damn, was gonna say subnautica but you already put that

popekingjoe,
@popekingjoe@lemmy.world avatar

Solitaire oddly enough. Just sit there, throw up a YouTube playlist on my second monitor, open up the game on my main, and just unwind.

penquin,

Absolutely. I have a ton of games and solitaire is one of the ones I play to chill.

tetris11,
@tetris11@lemmy.ml avatar

To be fair though, you can get same relaxation by doing any mindless task with music.

Hell, one of the highlights of my week is putting on a history podcast and then just cleaning the hell out of the bathroom, bedroom, mopping the floors, etc.

Its a relaxing personal moment where you’re lost in your own world, you learn something new, and your apartment looks great at the end.

iheartneopets,

Similarly, nonogram/picross puzzles. I have one on my phone that’s called Hungry Cat Nonogram that I really like. It mixes up the formula by introducing different colored pixels into each row and columns. It’s hard to explain, but very fun. It’s the only game I keep on my phone

AlexWIWA,

Solitaire is a 10/10 game tbh. I got a little too good at the iPod Video version of the game because it was addicting.

dm_me_your_boobs,

Sounds like somebody else grew up with windows 3.1.

Suck_on_my_Presence,

Freecell for me :B

Tugboater203,
@Tugboater203@lemmy.world avatar

Honestly, I fire up the Xbox and play the original Halo on easy difficulty. It’s like hanging out with an old friend.

Quetzalcutlass,

Same, either Halo and the Silent Cartographer or Halo 2 and Metropolis. Those two levels are my video game comfort food.

kratoz29,

It’s like hanging out with an old friend.

Interesting analogy, as this can be taken as an anxiety trigger as well.

AlexWIWA,

Halo on easy is so fun. I love fucking around in Halo 3

qooqie,

RuneScape, really hard to beat how chill it is

Guster,

Hope you mean OSRS

qooqie,

I do lol, but I R3 can be a gateway drug too

tegs_terry,

Nah, you gotta move with the times a bit man.

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