Gaming

Sims 4 is my comfort game for sure

The last couple of years my comfort games has been Ori and the blind forest and Ori and the will of the wisp.

Gravity Rush 2 for me. I have save I've kept for years now to fly around and explore the city. I already have done everything, but it's still so fun and relaxing to find new landmarks or walk through the different districts. Feels like the kind of game world I'd love to live in (assuming a gravity girl didn't pull me into her orbit and launch me into space)

Harvest Moon 64. Impossible to have negative feelings while playing it.

I‘m on PlayStation and enjoyed games like Knack, Diablo 3, Spider-Man and Ratchet & Clank in those cases, because they keep me busy at all times. All of them are loud and tiring though. Other games like Assassins Creed, Ghost of Tsushima and Red Dead Redemption 2 are calmer, but they give my mind time to wander and think about stuff. Sometimes this suits me better, sometimes that.

Warframe is a nice one, at least once you're past the initial learning curve. I'm at the point where I can just zone out and play casually, no need to farm much of anything. There's so much content, so many weapons and frames to unlock, that once you're in the endgame you can really just jump around and passively collect stuff. Plus making your character look cool is something I enjoy doing in games, I can just spend an hour messing with loadouts like that.

Old arcade are always fun too. And Kirby's Pinball Land on my GBC. There's definitely a charm to a lot of them, lots of unique choices being made before things got a little more standardized within each genre.

Advance Wars 1+2 Reboot on the Switch?

I play Minecraft almost exclusively in creative, just building or terraforming. There's something really contemplative about it, and man is it pretty sometimes. I just turn on a podcast or something and make something beautiful.

Unraveled (Unraveled 2 is great for 2 players, too), and Hue. Then there's always Slayaway Camp. All good on Steam Deck as well.

But those are for the times when I'm not addicted to RL.

Lately it's been Session: Skate Sim, with "hardcore" difficulty settings. I'm pretty terrible, but finally landing something reasonably dope is so satisfying, and just skating around the city is quite relaxing.

Otherwise my go-to is whatever GTA game I've got installed, and just driving around, listening to music, and watching the goofy stuff NPCs do.

I also do love me a good open-world survival craftathon, with a nice, exceedingly outrageous recipe family tree. Hunting down whatever resources I need to craft whatever thing I need in order to be able to craft whatever cool new thing, so that I can unlock more crafting recipes to start the cycle all over again, it's all so cathartic and easy to get lost in.

I could (and have) spent hours in Valhiem just noodling around surviving as a Viking

It has been a while, but there was a time when, if I was feeling really anxious and almost panicky, a quick playthrough of Enter the Gungeon would chill me right out.

Chrono Trigger. Always feels like being home with old friends. A joy every time I playthrough

For me my comfort games are either Satisfactory or Forgotten Hope 2 (WW2 mod for Battlefield 2 which is still maintained)