Euro Truck Simulator 2 / American Truck Simulator for me.
Sometimes slowroads is pretty chill. Sometimes subway surfers. Idk
It was Ark for awhile. Anything in the souls series hits for me. But LATELY, it’s been wolfenstein 2.
Train Sim World, currently 5 but TSW updates are like FIFA or Madden so its not that different from previous versions. At least it was a free update.
Just driving a train around, especially if its somewhere I know is really relaxing. Really looking forward to the first Japanese route dropping sometime this year (hopefully).
I do like that you can chose to enable safety systems or not depending on if you want to play on easy mode or very easy mode. It has even less pressure than your average relaxed building game if you ignore the clock.
Downsides, steam engines are pretty bad in the game, I just don’t bother with them. Dovetail are pretty useless. Brand new routes are usually overpriced. Some of the routes are bad, really bad, or just plain boring. Very important to read reviews. Everything is DLC.
Upsides, there are frequent sales so if you stay away from the latest content it can be pretty cheap in comparison. If you get a route you like it has a fair amount of repeatability. Some of the DLC overlays nicely with other DLC.
Hearts of Iron III
I’d have to say Dark Souls, honestly any of them. Once you know what you are doing, where you’re going, it’s easy to just get lost in playing
I guess Overwatch. Im one of those fans.
I think most of all the history of passionate stories drew me in and kept me. But most of all I like these games to challenge me to stay focused on the current game and what I can do and keeping my tilt in check.
Honestly feels like a mental practice to stay chill even in the most frustrating losing streaks.
But to super chillout maybe sims 4 or stardew valley. :)
Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age.
Minecraft is the one I keep coming back to year after year. Throw in a massive automation based mod pack and I’m set for months until the save lags to the point of unplayability.
Factorio
The factory must grow.
Dwarf Fortress and Settler 2. It’s quite comforting seeing everything working and the dwarfs/romans going forth and Back.
Also Kingdoms and Castles works here well too.
I like the “Wuselfaktor” like they say in german
Do you know widelands.org ? Should be right up your alley.
I know it. But never got a grip like Settlers 2. But maybe i’ll give it another try.
Thanks for the reminder :)
The binding of isaac
City skylines and factorio.
Id say Long Drive. It’s fun to drive and listen to the radio, find weird stuff, and laugh at the hilarious glitches
Rimworld. It’s like having a fishtank, but with really sociopathic fish. Only game I can think of where the #1 enemy you struggle with, that which shapes your core strategy and approach to every problem, is its single threaded performance.
I really don’t mean this as a dunk on Rimworld, but as is tradition with most things in Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress did it first. “FPS Death” was a common end condition for resilient forts. If natural dangers or greed didn’t kill you first, boredom would as your FPS crawled down into the single digits or, if you were really dedicated, this could become seconds per frame.
Rimworld has kind of done it’s own thing now with the third or fourth DLC expansion but for a majority of its lifespan so far it could charitably be called a DF clone with a readable UI. Now DF has its own readable UI and Rimworld has cybernetics and psychic magic so they’ve sort of both become individual titans of their own genre.
Er… isn’t DF multithreaded (now)?
But anyways: while Dwarf Fortress isn’t quite Zork I in terms of influence, there’s a good reason people are pushing to have it added to the game canon. Tynan has never denied that Tam Adams was an inspiration, or tried to hide the influence DF had on Rimworld’s development (hell, the highest difficulty in Rimworld has always been called ‘losing is fun’). And while the two games are clearly similar, the core design philosophy is pretty different. Rimworld’s goal has always been a compelling story through fairly structured gameplay, where DF has always emphasized emergent gameplay and adherence to the simulation. I’ve played both since pretty much they came out (oh fuck I’m old…), but rimworld’s gameplay loop, core modability and not-awful-UI really won me over for casual gameplay. In their current incarnations, both are amazing games, but the question was “comfort game”, and this is my answer.
Nitpick
I really don’t mean this as a dunk on Rimworld, but
(slightly-patronizingly-phrased linguistic tip: including the ‘but’ there is an implied contradiction that severely undercuts the sincerity of the preceding sentiment. I believe your sincerity, many people just don’t know about that weird semantic quirk.)
(And in a ‘hey dude’ moment, FPS death was a thing way way before DF. I remember it killing my cities in SimCity 2000, for example.)
Heavily modded Kerbal Space Program. It’s so relaxing building rockets and going on complex interplanetary missions for science
I love that there are people like you who have the kerbal science down. I still try to get into orbit by strapping more solid fuel rockets on and smashing that space bar. I recently became quite skilled at getting up to 12 people into orbit and back down again because, goddamnit, it pays the bills for all the failed missions to the other side of the planet to take thermometer readings.
