Gaming

Lately, Battle Brothers. It's god damn brutal but I love min maxing my bros and carefully playing essentially battle-chess with them before dying horribly and restarting my save.

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

Project Zomboid for me. It's kind of strange since the game can be super stressful at times, but once you get past the initial stage of the game and have a good base setup, you can spend a lot of time just surviving. Farming, reading books you've found, cooking things, it can be a very relaxing and meditative experience.

Outside of that, I guess a more typical response would be just about any JRPG, particularly the Final Fantasy series. Some of my most comforting memories are just me getting back from work, sitting back in my chair and slowly playing through Final Fantasy X or XII.

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.

For me, for some strange reason, any resource management/city building game really soothes me. There is something about making thing ‘balanced’ and ‘streamlined’ that really puts my mind at ease and can distract me from just about anything.

I have had a rough week, so I bought poly bridge 3. In 2 days I have over 6 hours, which for me is a lot!
There is something about this chill guitar music in the background that just keeps me going, trying to build the most efficient bridge.

For Me, Minecraft and Diablo

Minecraft - creative mode is like so therapeutic, you just create and create and create, then also the adventure mode is so fun because you can just roam and roam and be surprised at what you find. there is no goal really aside from staying alive, so there is no stress whatsoever (if you disregard the endgame goal).

Diablo, - like Minecraft adventure mode. If you skip the campaign, there is literally no goal, you can just roam and roam and smash enemies, and you can even lower the difficulty so you can smash those enemies HARD!, It's just so satisfying, and then you get surprise loot as a side benefit.

Football Manager is weirdly comforting to me, there's just something about losing hours upon hours to what is really just a very good spreadsheet.