Playing cards. With no devices and screens. Multi-player. Lots of fun.
If it must be computer, then I go for good old Microsoft games - sweekend puzzle, motorbike madness or midtown madness (I have a Win7 PC with no internet). I also enjoy driving around with Forza and enjoying the scenery of the country side.
I can't even dare to look at the title imagery of these new games on xbox while scrolling through list of games on app store. It's gory, weirdness and insanity being portrayed as high quality.
I guess, humanity in the West craved for some excitement in their lives, due to post-war peace time being devoid of any survival struggle. And the media - movies, music, internet - kept on dumping loads of it. Even the music, which is supposed to flow with soft, pleasant and melodious tunes and beats, has turned into a cacophony of loud shouting and hysteric expressions and acts of the artists.
Similar to how a military band is designed to dispense alert and agility, western music appear to have evolved to dispense fear and anxiety which was missing in their daily lives.
Not only that. Lack of such frantic craziness is seen as boring (I never heard of this word boring in my childhood). Slow life in general is being viewed as socially unacceptable. We are frogs in a boiling pot.
You don't have to join the mad crowd running around ferociously. Just sit back, power on your old computer, pull out the internet cable, enjoy the slow, old games.
You’re referring to a lot of mainstream games, but it’s not hard to find relaxing (cozy) games.
Also, many of Nintendo’s first party titles still have the same charm as their old school titles.
I’m not a fan of a lot of the gory, hyper, crazy games you’re referring to, either, but there are no shortage of games that stick to the traditional charm, and I can always find something to enjoy.
I’m playing through Unicorn Overlords right now, and while I wouldn’t consider it “cozy”, it’s none of the adjectives you use, and reminds me a lot of Ogre Battle on SNES, or Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1.
Having said that, I’m also a huge fan of breaking out a deck of cards or board game and enjoying a quiet game with family/friends.
Heck, I’ll even spend a couple days playing through a solo game of 1862. [1]
The Reuters article might be conflating some game design philosophies (relaxed, unrushed, non-competitive, no penalty for failure) with some game themes (farming, building, social relationships).
Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley - yeah for sure these are some of the original and most iconic "cozy games" out there.
But personally my favorite game in that genre is Graveyard Keeper, mechanics feel reminiscent of Stardew Valley, but when you're not burying bodies you're out looking for booze to keep a talking skull inebriated.
And frankly the coziest game experience I have these days is with a title that no one ever would have associated with that term a few years ago: World of Warcraft. Nostalgia probably has something to do with it but they've now added a solo player mode (Delves) which is relaxed, unrushed, non-competitive etc. You can die five or six times before you fail, and penalties are light, but frankly, they're not very hard. If you have a spare half hour you can just Delves'n'chill by yourself and come out with a gear upgrade or two.
So, I think it is not the theme, not even the mechanics but a set of game design principles that makes a game cozy. What were not cozy were the competitive FPSes and fighting games I played when I was younger, where we were all screaming at each other - that stuff can be fun but these days my emotional energy is directed elsewhere and I game to recharge.
> Even the music, which is supposed to flow with soft, pleasant and melodious tunes and beats
There's quite a lot of research that our music exposure between roughly 13 and 16 creates our formative taste.
Everyone has a first time hearing (e.g.) Beethoven's 5th, Autumn Leaves, Bohemian Rhapsody, Killing in the Name, and Blank Space. Their reactions will be different depending on their age, taste, emotional state, musical interests, social context, and so on.
Nintendo has the Animal Crossing series which are certainly relaxing (cozy) games and it's latest one is multiplayer.
I don't know if Pikman counts. Feels a little stressful to me. But of course there's several 3rd party games, the obvious one being Stardew Valley. Lots of other non-streesful games.
> Lack of such frantic craziness is seen as boring (I never heard of this word boring in my childhood). Slow life in general is being viewed as socially unacceptable. We are frogs in a boiling pot.
Reminds me of this clip of Jeff Bezos being a total dick to William Shatner.
In defense of gory games - blood and gore can be framed in different ways. Some of my favorite early PC games were quite "gory", but the violence had a funny element to it. Carmageddon 1 and 2 are still pretty hilarious today because the poor pedestrians can meet such outlandish and ridiculous fates. Half Life also makes me chuckle with its low poly gibs. Gore can be quite silly.
And that's a good thing? Sure, these games ease anxiety. So do opiates. Every minute spent playing addictive drivel like Candy Crush is a minute spent not exercising, learning, or bonding with fellow humans.
I think we'll eventually realize that this line of thought is the same as tobacco company apologetics. Napping isn't A/B tested for maximum addictiveness.
One of the things I enjoy about many (albeit, not all) cozy games is the ability to step into them, step out of the game five minutes later, then pick them up several days later. Sure, some developers are going to do A/B testing to monetize every last second of game play. That said, I doubt that many of those games would fit into a realistic definition of cozy games simply because most of them exploit the player's emotional state.
I think the rise of cozy games is kind of a counter-response to exactly the overload you're talking about. Not everything in gaming today is high-octane chaos or gritty realism
I would suggest you start looking into independent games.
Just this month Blue Prince came out, a puzzle game à la mist but mixed with elements from modern rogue-lite games like Binding of Isaac. It is designed and directed by one guy, Tonda Ros, and it is thoughtful and rewards playing slowly and taking plenty of notes.
>I can't even dare to look at the title imagery of these new games on xbox while scrolling through list of games on app store. It's gory, weirdness and insanity being portrayed as high quality.
>I guess, humanity in the West craved for some excitement in their lives, due to post-war peace time being devoid of any survival struggle. And the media - movies, music, internet - kept on dumping loads of it. Even the music, which is supposed to flow with soft, pleasant and melodious tunes and beats, has turned into a cacophony of loud shouting and hysteric expressions and acts of the artists.
This is just plain wrong, and a sign you are not looking good enough. Never in the history of the world have we been producing the amount much art and culture as we are doing right now, the only problem is that the good stuff will not passively reach you, you will have to take initiative and seek it out.
> I can't even dare to look at the title imagery of these new games on xbox while scrolling through list of games on app store. It's gory, weirdness and insanity being portrayed as high quality.
What an absolutely stupid generalisation. Play what you want but don't be ignorant. I actually love a good gory or "insane" game but the last 5 played games on my Steam list are Factorio, Overcooked 2, Planet Coaster 2, Pico Park 2 and F1 2023. It's absolutely fine if you don't like video games but to class every mainstream video game as "gory, weirdness and insanity" is ignorant.
I have heard two theories on how to treat anxiety:
1) Paul Gilbert's theory that the brain's 'threat system' is overdeveloped and the 'soothing system' underdeveloped, and the right treatment is to stimulate the 'soothing system'.
2) Steven Quartz' theory that the brain's evaluation of risk has become distorted, and that the right treatment is any form of 'risky play' that you can tolerate; with an emphasis on being able to feel you've achieved something after taking (reasonable) risks.
(Both of these are about how you reduce anxiety in the long term, not how you cope with it if you're overwhelmed in the moment).
Video games could in theory work for either - but not the same ones. Under the second theory, coziness may work in the moment, but seeking coziness could inhibit long term reduction of anxiety.
I don't know which theory has the more evidence. ( Also I'm not an expert and the consensus theory might be something else entirely. )
I haven’t seen those theories before. The first one seems intuitively apt.
If you are overwhelmed the first thing that goes is your leisure and creativity. Say if you used to play piano or did any hobby, and you stopped, it means you lacking bandwidth to relax. After that, and you don’t correct your brain starts changing until it breaks : a burn out, or even further along : PTSD.
So to counter it, is to bring back leisure and your hobbies.
If someone burns out right next to you (I have had that happen to a colleague) is a couple of things : you can ask them if possible to focus on deep breaths, or ask them to call out the name of objects and ask them to describe them. Another strategy is deprive them of sensory overload. Have them put the hands on their face and hunch over so they are in their own cocoon. Stay with them and soothe them until you get a professional over.
I am not sure if this is the most current view, but this is from my direct experience.
This is good advice. One thing to note is that deep breathing needs to be slow. If you over oxygenate you may get weird sensations which can cause more anxiety. The standard advice seems to be 'square breathing': In for count of four, hold count of four, out for count of four, hold again for four.
Sensory overload sounds specific to some neuro divergent conditions, might not help with other people.
But, parallel to this political phenomenon, we observe the disappearance of free time. Free space and free time are now just memories. The free time in question is not leisure as commonly understood. Apparent leisure still exists, and even this apparent leisure defends itself and becomes more widespread through legal measures and mechanical improvements against the conquest of hours by activity.
Workdays are measured and their hours counted by law. But I say that inner leisure, which is something entirely different from chronometric leisure, is being lost. We are losing that essential peace in the depths of our being, that priceless absence, during which the most delicate elements of life refresh and comfort themselves, during which being, in a way, cleanses itself of past and future, of present consciousness, of suspended obligations and ambushed expectations. No worry, no tomorrow, no internal pressure; but a kind of rest in absence, a beneficial vacancy, which returns the mind to its own freedom. It then concerns itself only with itself. It is freed from its duties toward practical knowledge and unburdened from the care of immediate things: it can produce pure formations like crystals. But now the rigor, tension, and rush of our modern existence disturb or squander this precious rest. Look within yourself and around you! The progress of insomnia is remarkable and follows exactly all other forms of progress.
How many people in the world now sleep only with synthetic sleep, and provide themselves with nothingness from the learned industry of organic chemistry! Perhaps new arrangements of more or less barbituric molecules will give us the meditation that existence increasingly forbids us from obtaining naturally. Pharmacology will someday offer us depth. But, in the meantime, fatigue and mental confusion are sometimes such that one naively finds oneself longing for Tahitis, paradises of simplicity and laziness, lives of slow and inexact form that we have never known. Primitives are unaware of the necessity of finely divided time.
There were no minutes or seconds for the ancients. Artists like Stevenson, like Gauguin, fled Europe and went to islands without clocks. Neither mail nor telephone harassed Plato. The train schedule did not rush Virgil. Descartes could lose himself in thought on the quays of Amsterdam. But our movements today are regulated by exact fractions of time. Even the twentieth of a second is beginning to be no longer negligible in certain domains of practice.
No doubt, the organism is admirable in its flexibility. It has so far resisted increasingly inhuman treatments, but, ultimately, will it always sustain this constraint.
Nah not at all, spending time alone is crucially important to me for managing anxiety. Solo dinner is great. Being surrounded by people constantly is a way for my anxiety to greatly increase.
It is important to make a distinction between close friends and people you don't know. Also, being alone may feel good but it is not a lasting solution as ultimately humans evolved as social creatures, and you can't rationalize that away.
Try spending e.g. a weekend or a week with close friends or family (if you have a good relationship with them), and see what it does for your anxiety.
Yes but my main point is that it's very easy to get stuck in a local optimum without ever realizing that there can be a significant social component to one's anxiety issues that can be easily explored.
This is very interesting! I enjoy playing Gran Turismo 7 and often find it very calming; especially when I'm in a flow state and can get through a tricky part of the track very quickly without any mistakes.
I wonder if this is a case where both theories apply - the rhythmic, controlled driving stimulates the 'soothing system' while the challenge of maintaining control at high speeds provides that 'risky play' element.
One of my favorite games is A Short Hike. It's not the same kind of game as Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, etc, but the writing is brilliant and it always makes me content whenever I play it.
Alba, Little Kitty Big City, Lil Gator Game, Haven Park, Time on Frog Island, Little Wings Deliveries , The Kind Chamomile, Smushi Come Home, Petit Island, Luna's Fishing Garden, ...
Another game that gave me similar vibes to A Short Hike was Lil Gator Game.
For me though, a game doesn't have to have cozy aesthetics to put me in a more cozy or calm mood, and I've never really gotten into games like Stardew Valley or AC. Beauty in a sense is probably important. Celeste comes to mind, though it can also be quite challenging. My own favorite game even for destressing purposes is Dark Souls... And then you have things like classic solitaire/klondike, or recently I played through the entire SNES Populous conquest mode, where they're almost more meditative than anything.
I generally play http://slither.io/ to relax. I find the visuals when the snakes explode very relaxing for some reason. Play some slither, pop on an interesting audiobook = chill out bliss for me.
I know slither is played by a lot of kids, sometimes I wonder if I am the only adult on there. Curious if anyone on HN has ever played it or heard of it. I know it's popular with kids because one time I was in Party City getting some party supplies and in the kids birthday supply aisle there was an entire "slither" party section with graphics and themed stuff from the game.
Just a note if anyone from here checks it out it's WAY better if you install the chrome zoom mod, it becomes 1000x more fun after that.
I've played slither quite a bit, and I find it very stressful, it's hard to survive and very frustrating when you die, but I do think it's a brilliant little game.
If you get the mod so you can zoom out it gets a LOT easier! I play on the Pacific Servers a lot, if you see me on there I am LARGE MARGE. That's funny you find it stressful whereas I find it relaxing.
Absolutely love A Short Hike. Perfect to relax in bed or on the couch on the Deck and just relax. I have fallen asleep playing it multiple times. Just wandering and soaring and climbing.
Well for me on the other hand, when I was working in tech on backend data services that needed constant maintenance and optimization, I loved nothing more than coming home and…
…Optimizing my Factorio base supply chain until two in the morning.
Going in the complete opposite direction, getting through Elden Ring two summers ago really helped me through what was the worst heartbreak of my life, an undoubtably stressful and anxious time for me.
There’s something about getting into a flow state with the game in a From Soft title that is relaxing to me as well. Even dying a dozen times in a row.
I don't think I ever made it into flow state once in Elden Ring even though I beat it. I just grinded until I was high level enough that it didn't matter that I didn't time any of the bosses right.
Throw in renowned ashes and party. Or get poise breaking and the mimic tear. So many ways to absolutely stomp Elden Ring if that’s what you want to do.
There's a meme in the FromSoft communities about how "Dark Souls cured my depression" that I think gets unfairly clowned on. So many people have posted anecdotes like that and been made fun of, but I think there is actually something there. Overcoming difficult challenges in a video game can, I'm convinced, help when your brain is stuck in a learned helplessness mode.
There is a reason there are elaborate stories, rituals, prayers, pilgrimages etc etc in all religions. Its not an accident. All these practices, with the prime feature being Repetition, allows for a mental shift to happen/different parts of the brain are kept repeatedly activated, compared to the ones constantly responding to source of depression/stress/anxiety. This opens the door for a focus shift.
The key point is, it might have an effect on people positively, but doesn't change the environment (and the triggers) people return too.
Therefore at best these are coping mechanisms, until we have holistic approaches, where the people and the environment they are in or return too are both being looked at. Not just one or the other and hoping for the best.
That is one possible explanation. However i have a different theory why difficult games like this can help.
I notice that when i get in a bad head space, i trend to become less active.
It then becomes more difficult to start doing anything.
Playing a game like dark souls gives you two things:
1. Its stimulating, and gives you instant feedback.
2. It allows you to fail, and have to retry.
So instead of passively drowning my self in algorithmic content, im actively working towards a goal. This then makes it easier to actually pick something up in the real word.
breaking out of the initial cycle of running away from the world is the most difficult part of getting out of a bad headspace (for me). So anything that breaks open those initial steps can be very helpful.
The great thing about FromSoft games is that I know I'm not being coddled. The game isn't trying to hold my hand (or against me), it's giving me fair, intense challenges.
If I win, that's a testament to my skill. I earned that win, I learned the boss movesets and improvedy reaction time. There is no Minimap, or compass, or sound effects that tell you when to perform x action.
Even the weakest mob can trash me if I get arrogant or greedy, no matter how high level you are.
Fairness and difficulty are orthogonal to each other, no one said the game is unfair. But it is definitely very challenging, and that’s not marketing as far as I know - I have yet to see a trailer etc for the game that says anything about difficulty. Dark Souls did that a lot more with their "prepare to die edition" or the opening of DS2.
Same in terms of quelling anxiety, but I think the commenter was referencing the fact that, in contrast to the original post mentioning 'cozy' games, this commenter is talking about a highly 'un-cozy' game.
During a layoff eons ago, I did something similar albeit with Shin Megami Tensei. The repetition, grinding, and lore aspect that come with those kinds of RPGs definetly help reduce stress.
Breath of the Wild felt this way for me. Sure, you can fight stuff, but it’s often optional and most of the game is walking around in nature and exploring the world. I hadn’t played anything of note in over a decade, and then probably spent over 1,000 hours in BotW.
I unwind with about 2-3 hours of BotW each weekend. I'm years behind the gaming community and TotK is still in my backlog, but I don't care. You only get to play through for the first time once and I'm enjoying it immensely.
My only regret is the game is not designed for the player still roaming the world and finishing various quests after the main story ends, like in the various Marios. If you want to keep playing, you have to keep Ganon alive and get the regular Blood Moon reminder here and there.
That's always how I've played games. Once I see the ending the game is "done" and I can't get myself to play it anymore, so I always do the final boss last
This is the exact reason why I haven't killed Ganon yet, in spite of putting 400+ hours into the game. Now I look forward to starting all over again - this time in 4K and with hopefully better performance, once I get my Switch 2.
Don’t do it. I replayed Botw before Totk came out on a higher res tv. The wold felt a lot more empty than the first time and totk felt even more repetitive. I decided to be a lot morecareful with replays these days.
Weirdly enough, I started playing it just yesterday. I'm a gamer and I died about 10 times in the first 2 hours. I always read it's newbie friendly etc, but am wondering how, as the game doesn't seem to have handhelding at all :D
Once you’ve grabbed your initial set of abilities from the opening area and stocked up on some weapons it becomes much easier. Shifting your mindset to “combat is almost entirely optional” also changes how hard the game feels.
Newbies tend to be really afraid of the monsters early in the game. Maybe you are used to games that puts enemies there for players to kill. You’re supposed to sneak around enemies in the early game (you just woke up weak after a 100 years…)
With that being said I don’t think it is newbie friendly though. The controls uses all buttons and many with different modes. It’s can be quite overwhelming imho.
I love BotW and TotK. Definitely two of my favorite games, and two of the best games. And agreed that much of the exploration aspects are chill.
But both games definitely have some frustrating elements, especially if you’re not going out of your way to avoid them. The constantly breaking weapons, to name one. Some of the battles are definitely intense, too. Some of the temples have some bizarre puzzles, particularly some of the dexterity puzzles — and even more so in BotW, which almost felt buggy (TotK seemed to “fix” this).
Again, loved both games, and also spent probably around that much time playing each of them.
But they’re not the first games that came to my mind when I see “cozy video games that can quell stress and anxiety”.
100%. The blood moon's appearance and the scary piano music when you encounter a guardian, always gives me anxiety. I wish I could skip the blood moon's cutscene reliably.
> But they’re not the first games that came to my mind when I see “cozy video games that can quell stress and anxiety”.
I think what quells stress is the lighting, a game which is mostly outdoor sunny is relaxing in my experience compared to mostly dark games. I had that experience with rocket league of all games
Haven't played BotW though, so this was my impression from gameplay videos
That's why I am playing TotK without durability, it was such an annoyance that ruined everything else for me. Might make some things easier but I am not there for the challenge.
I feel similarly about, uh, Horizon Zero Dawn or Far Cry 3+. Mostly it's about exploring the beautiful world. (With FC in particular, the plot kind of gets in the way of that.)
During the worst of my depression, all I could play was House Flipper. Cleaning virtual homes helped a bit when I didn’t have the energy to clean mine. Also, watching calm videos about nature on YouTube. Taught me that most of my mental issues are due to living in a city and unable to recharge by being in contact with Mother Nature (something about fractals vs the right angles of man-made objects)
The fact that cozy games are all the “rage” these days says a lot about our society and the mental state of our youth.
Though depression has lessened, I don’t have the appetite for big gaming experiences any more. My zen retreat these days is TrackMania and nothing comes close to it to the sense of peace, silence and flow I get while playing that game, even if I suck. Strongly recommended to any squirrel brained, over-stressed knowledge worker.
I have long lamented the over use of combat in games, not for pacifist ideology, it's just a cop-out as a game mechanic for a lot of games. The medium can represent a chasm of possibilities but usually all the focus goes of AAA titles goes into combat.
Which is to say the indie game and cozy game niches respectively have a lot of scope, because their possible gameplay is "everything that isn't combat", and I welcome the variety and creativity.
One of the things I like about Minecraft is that it isn’t structurally adversarial. Most conventional multiplayer games are fundamentally about outperforming another player.
Even when a game is not explicitly violent, I think there is a compelling argument to be made that it continues to shape the player’s perspective as to how the world is and ought to be. Mario Kart is no different from Call of Duty in this regard; both share triumph over others as their win state, whereas Minecraft offers at least the possibility of a (practically) infinite world that is purely cooperative.
I often like to think that the afterlife is something like a big Minecraft server, where our wills have been perfected such that the idea of competitive strife never even crosses one’s mind, and all there is to do is expand into a horizon of possibility. Naturally this makes me very unpopular at LAN parties.
My first answer is that one of the most amazing mechanics ever designed is health points, I believe invented by Dungeons and Dragons. Almost every non-health win condition feels more arbitrary than health. Whether it's shooting balls in hoops, crossing a finish line first, or collecting victory points they are all less intuitive and feel more contrived than "you have this many points, at 0 you die."
The second is that many game designs are essentially about conflict, whether with other players or game agents. The ultimate conflict is life or death violence, aka combat. So it's a quicky and easy way to raise the metaphorical stakes. If you take an olympic fencing game and instead make them use real swords and no armor then it's a lot more dramatic with no change in the game mechanics.
Making non-violent games is not undesirable, it's just harder to do well when combat fits so naturally. You end with non-violent games being worse on average, non-dramatic low stakes metaphors and contrived win conditions.
I touched on this in my own reply to the grandparent comment [0]. I realized a while ago that lots of competitive games I played regularly were making me feel animosity towards the people I was playing them with, and it led me to think about this issue for quite a while.
Competition is such a default in game design that a game not based on it often isn’t recognized as a game at all. There are cooperative games, but aside from Minecraft, none of them are particularly popular. It’s arguable that this a reflection of the human condition; living things are always fighting for resources, so games attempt to emulate this competition.
It’s odd that this ended up being the paradigm, though; digital worlds can provide us with a space to explore what we would conventionally consider to be impossible - infinite worlds which obviate the need for competition in the first place. There’s maybe a commentary on human nature to be made that even in a game like Minecraft, so many players’ first inclination is to start fighting each other.
It horribly breaks the stories of many games. The obvious modern example is Last of Us 2 where sparing a single life seems pretty meaningless given the mass murder spree you’ve been on to get there.
Surprised not to see Tiny Glade mentioned as a reference game in the comments here… it’s truly the definition of cozy. For anyone not familiar, we really need more games hyper focused on cozy/relaxing: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade/
I think it would be cool if there were games that get slower and calmer over time, like it it could make you walk and talk and perform things slower gradually
Gotta say, Animal Crossing during Covid was a god send. I spent a lot of time in that game just putzing around and taking in the world. I'm not traditionally a person who enjoys those types of games, but the routine of hopping in every morning while I had coffee and every evening while I was winding down really lowered my stress level during an exceptionally stressful time in everyone's lives.
Warzone became my friend groups defacto 3rd space during covid, and I don't love shooters but the game loop had considerable down time where you were just exploring the massive map with friends while preparing, and able to chat like you were at a cafe or a pub. We had lockdowns here, so that social interaction was so important.
After the lockdowns people slowly drifted back into normality, full time work etc, and we all stopped playing together.
As much as it was a meme, I really did see a split in what folks enjoyed between Doom and Animal Crossing during covid, and they basically boiled down to the same thing: yeah, this game is so relaxing, I just turn my brain off and play.
Doom: all flow state, no thoughts, just execution.
Animal Crossing: cozy, comfortable, routine.
Funny how both accomplish similar things despite being so different on the surface.
I think coziness is an underrated aspect of gaming, maybe because gaming is commonly depicted as fast-paced and frenetic. In fact, coziness was also an underrated reason that World of Warcraft was very popular. Unless you were in a top raiding guild or PvP, most gameplay matched at least one of the aspects listed in TFA; some flavor of "tidying up" and "community" all the while not being too challenging.
A couple of other aspects of coziness were those of exploration and social interaction, glossed over in the article but a big part of MMOs. Exploration and solo questing were almost meditative in nature. You could mix and match socialization, questing and exploration to find your preferred flavor of coziness.
> You could mix and match socialization, questing and exploration to find your preferred flavor of coziness.
For sure. I think one of the big reasons successful MMOs were successful and were such comfortable places to exist in for a lot of people was the broad internal variance of intensity of activities - even if you were in a top raiding guild or a big PvPer or whatever, odds were you probably still spent a solid amount of time running around a meadow picking flowers, enchanting other players' gear, or just trying to jump onto the head of the statue outside the bank while chatting with friends. When you just felt like taking it easy, the game had plenty of things for you to do that matched that vibe, just as there was plenty of challenge on offer for when that was what you were after. I feel like a big part of what theme-park MMOs miss out on, and why they often feel so hollow and unsatisfying, is insufficiently fleshed-out low-intensity activities.
Up-thread, someone was wondering about how a Fromsoft game could ever be considered "cozy" - I think contrast helps engender coziness; Majula or Firelink are definitely cozy, if admittedly a somewhat wistful variety of it. That dynamic of contrasting intensity allows coziness to exist in a game where you're also saving the world on a weekly basis.
Yes, to this day I create a low level character in wow classic and quest in Elwin forest and Westfall. The music is just relaxing, the setting/landscape, sound effects…
As someone who's put an embarrassing number of hours into Stardew Valley, this all really resonates. Cozy games give you this weirdly powerful illusion of control and calm - your farm, your pace, your little pixelated life that somehow feels safer than the real one. It's not just escapism - it's like a reset button for your brain. I love that the article highlights how these games aren't necessarily "easy," just low-stress. They let you engage deeply without the constant threat-response loop that most traditional games (or life) tend to trigger.
It does feel a bit similar to sitting down with a good book and taking things ahead at your own pace, quite zen.
I will say that personally even the more action/goal oriented games can be quite enjoyable as long as they’re not too difficult, it’s the online PvP ones that get the most stressful for me. I don't really play many of those anymore, it feels like other players are just better and I don't want to have to be on the edge all the time.
This was difficult to read in Firefox without reader mode. No mention of that tiny town building game I've been looking for again (non-gridded, very adaptive, kind of medieval), which is shame because I completely forgot its name.
Are point-and-click games considered “cozy”? They often provide a relaxing experience—similar to reading a book, but with an added sense of agency in the narrative. Classic examples include the Broken Sword series, Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango. More recent titles like Disco Elysium might also fit.
This video does a good job exploring what makes the genre so appealing. [0]
Some P&C can sustain a cozy atmosphere even with some moderately heavy themes or light comedy. However, it depends a lot on the game. For instance, I would not consider The Longest Journey cozy, even though it is one of my favorite adventure games. Nor my absolute favorite, the Blackwell series.
But I would definitely consider Monkey Island, Broken Sword and Kathy Rain cozy. Why? It is very hard for me to articulate. Besides the obvious (beautiful graphics and sound that is not too "challenging") it is something about the narrative working in a well-defined sandbox without too many surprises, but not in absolute monotony either. And the plot and story not being too heavy, while not being a complete farce either.
My goto for relaxing is "Lonely Mountains Downhill" for the Switch.
It's so relaxing, you can hear the nature and there's no background music.
It's a third-person biking game.
Interesting that you mention this! I like this game a lot, but would rather describe it as hectic and fast-paced (due to the many attempts to optimize race times or find shortcuts). But I do agree that the nature sounds and landscapes are lovely on their own.
Maybe games do have something special because you have to be more actively engaged and empathizing with coziness part puts us in a calming mood. But it seems obvious to me that anything that you can engage with has a similar effect and games are just one type of media. Books, movies, music can do the same thing too, you just have to know how to get in on it and not suffer through it if it doesn’t click the first time. I don’t think it’s only the cozy part that brings the benefits but rather what effects that media or genre has on you at that moment in time. Over time what bring me calm and comfort has drifted somewhat.
I highly recommend Dragon Quest Builders to anyone who enjoys (or might enjoy) Minecraft even a little bit. It can reliably make me feel like a kid with a new Lego set for hundreds of consecutive hours.
Killer Feature #1 is the room system, which can be a great source of inspiration if you don't know what you want to build. Killer Feature #2 is the overall charm you would expect from a modern Dragon Quest game, especially the NPCs. DQB1 has the better story mode (in my opinion), while DQB2 gives you much more freedom to build.
I enjoyed both games. My kids are obsessed with DQB2. There’s stuff I really like about the storyline in 2 e.g. the “now save the monsters as well” ending. It’s a crying shame no-one’s making anything like it since.
For me Mutatzione[0] was incredible and appeared at a time in my life where I was in a very dark place. I discovered one saturday morning, bought it and played it the whole day. It's short, it's sweet, the art is beautiful. It's not super cozy in the traditional sense, but it has a lot of calm, serenity and it was exactly what I needed that day.
I'd love to read the article but it doesn't want me to
On the subject of cozy games I personally like Viscera Cleanup Detail a lot. I've seen people criticize some of the (arguably) annoying design decisions like bucket dispensers sometimes sending out organs and severed limbs. The way I see it: I'm playing this game for the express purpose of cleaning spaceships and sci-fi laboratories. The game is just giving me more stuff to clean, good!
When there is some meta-progression (unlocks, dialogue trees, etc.) I find myself getting stressed over what I can unlock next, or which dialogue tree I have yet to clear. In that way, VCD is perfect because you just pick a map and go. More games should make all of their content available to the player from the start.
It's funny, I fit that description perfectly and played all the way through KCD1. But when I saw the trailers for KCD2, it looked like it was so fighting and confrontation focused, maybe even more than the first one. The main title art seems to reinforce this: https://www.reddit.com/r/kingdomcome/comments/1etv380/offici...
But I'd love to hear if it's reasonably "cozy" for a lot of the time.
Same. At 40 I simply can't expend any of my limited time or energy with games, when I could be doing something productive/wholesome (which for me is lifting weights, reading and learning). It's a shame as I used to love playing RPGs and FPSs.
I have no issue playing games at nearly 40. After having been on a productivity grind since childhood, and having faced my mortality, I now appreciate having stepped back to smell the roses.
That’s because jobs steal too much time from our lives and we don’t have it anymore to sink into something meaningful. We are forced to find meaning in jobs.
Its also chores that have an end, that you can have mastery over, that makes for only a small amount of variation compared to all of life.
Then you also know that you don't need to do things as fast as possible, you can always let things chill. Sometimes you can use it to practice not caring about everything - like "this run, I don't fish until year 2 - just farming for me."
When I started stardew I didn't know how to play so I would spend days waking up walking around and then go back to sleep repeating until my parsnips grew, but when I introduced my SO to the game, we ended up trying to learn how to actually play and then ended up with spreadsheets to track all the seasons, grow cycles, relationships and whatever else lol
Came here to post this. There’s just something so comforting to the soul about that world. There are no politics, crime, religion, homelessness, war, or disease. Just melons. Melons, pumpkins, turnips, corn, rice, and potatoes. Visiting that place is like pure heroin for people with anxiety.
I hear your point, but there's literally a homeless NPC and an NPC suffering from combat PTSD. Another way of looking at it might be that you're empowered to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those people which feels good.
Not only does that second NPC suffer from PTSD, he's absent from the village for the first year, serving in the military that's actively fighting a war.
Maybe politics, but it isn’t necessarily fighting “against”. You can play the Jojo path, get different perks, and the shopkeep doesn’t become unemployed.
Plus the intro of the game is the player moving to the farm to escape a soul-crushing corporate job, only to find that same sort of culture taking root in their pastoral sanctuary.
I love pretty much every system of progression it has, but I do respect that the game doesn’t really force you to engage with the parts that you don’t enjoy.
I guess I never noticed that. I actually never paid attention to the story or characters at all. Just spent hundreds of hours growing increasingly large quantities and qualities of produce.
I really like potion craft, it really hits the optimization part of my brain without feeling grindy or stressful.
The gaming loop is about using the right subpaths using resources to reach a destination while avoiding obstacles, and slowly improving your resources options and quantity, at the end of the game it looks a bit like the traveling salesman problem. Also liked this series on YouTube: https://youtu.be/d_JfzuJzUFE?si=pifLxMFo4itOihdK
I'd say the increase in cozy games is more easily attributable to Stardew Valley in 2016. So many of the clones that came out directly resemble SV in progression, style and content.
When TV shows go to Japan and interview people at pachinko parlors and ask why the patrons go there they all say it’s to relieve stress.
Pachinko parlors are noisy, with loud music blasting from speakers in the ceiling being drowned by music blazing from each individual machine, competing with the sound of metal marbles falling.
It’s not what you think of as a relaxing environment.
I don’t think it is cozy video games that quell stress, I think it is the escape that helps manage it. I played a lot of Tetris when I was going through a phase with a lot of stress. It’s pretty intense at the high levels, but it was nice for me at the time. Now that I’m not stressed, I actually find it kinda overwhelming…
I initially stopped playing when I had kids. As they got older though we started gaming together on weekends while my wife has a break. We have an absolute blast together building a world or questing in Minecraft or squadding up and getting a victory royale in Fortnite. I know it probably won't last as they get into their teens but for now it's something both me and them look forward to every week.
Not sure I would call it cozy, but Magic the Gathering (Arena) has played this role for me for a long time. It is probably about the retreat to familiar that helps most of all to supress stress and anxiety, regardless of the type of the game.
Wow, what an interesting piece of journalism, in regards to the presentation. It reminded me of when I saw the NYT’s Snow Fall piece for the first time. At the time, it was an amazing display of cutting edge UI skills that exhibited both skill and restraint. Great storytelling to boot.
A tried A Short Hike. Games like this make me anxious, actually, because they make me feel like I'm wasting time. But I'm not anxious in general. I guess, it depends on the person.
I noticed I need high reflexes games to make my brain rest after work, so I don't agree.
It's really hard to shutdown after a day that required a lot of brain power, but high reflexes games do the trick (nine sols, hollow knight come to mind)
I think all games can do that, the type of game you enjoy is highly personal. Not sure why they focus on "cozy" games. Probably because bloody games are still a bit controversial.
Personally I'm relaxed by city/empire builder games. But my bother plays Doom to wind down.
Yes. I never enjoyed "cozy" games. Whenever I see them, I recognize that I'm supposed to feel coziness, but I don't. They're just boring, nothing happens. They remind me of places where I have to behave, which makes me stressed out.
Violent games, on the other hand, will take my attention, and have me stop thinking about the real-world stress. I really miss the craze of violent and edgy games of 2000's. Any recommendations?
I guess the bottom line is "people relax when doing hobbies" which is not a revolutionary take.
But you should also try new releases that were made thinking of the classics of the past. There's ton of crap, and develoepers that don't really understand what they are doing, but I recommend these:
I recently played Dead Space Remake and it is fantastic - from the limb-separating game mechanics to the out-in-space eerie atmosphere, there is nothing quite like it.
I found Eternal different enough to 2016 that I just bounced off it. The glory kill system was expanded in Eternal and you have to keep doing it to acquire resources. The mobility is a huge step up though.
Dark Ages' combat seems closer to 2016, with much larger areas.
The way I put it is that Doom (2016) is more balls-out heavy metal, whereas Doom Eternal is more of a "concept album".
See, it turns out that in Doom (1993), there was sort of this refined balance between the enemies and the weapons you carried, such that while all of the enemies could in principle be taken out with any weapon, there were generally one or two really effective ways to kill them. Demons (pinkies) for instance, lacked a ranged attack, so it was possible to kill even a pack of them with the chainsaw while taking minimal to zero damage. And the cacodemon was large, moved slowly, and had a high chance to stun, so a rapid-fire weapon like the chain gun or, better yet, the plasma rifle would make short work of one while affording it little opportunity to counterattack.
For Doom Eternal, the developers decided to really lean in to this idea, calling it the "Doom Dance", and craft the enemies in such a way that they were specifically vulnerable to specific attacks from specific weapons. Again, using the example of the cacodemon, it's a real bullet sponge but if you pop a grenade into its mouth, it's an insta-stun letting you do a glory kill. The Mancubus and Arachnotron have weapons that can be disabled or weakened with specific attacks. And, annoyingly, there was one enemy (the Marauder) that can only be killed via a sort of quick-time event.
This expands to resource management too. There are fewer pickups, which means you have to top up on health with glory kills, ammo with the chainsaw, and armor with the Flame Belch as you clear an area of enemies. The emphasis is on "using the right attack at the right time", which is what the developers were deliberately aiming for. The campaign was also much more story-driven which only adds to the concept-album feel, as it's a very eurocomic-ish story that delves into the connection between the demons and the angelic aliens known as Maykrs, rather than just thrusting you into hell and telling you to murder every demon in sight. They definitely wanted you to get the most out of the game by experiencing it a certain way.
For these reasons I liked it less than I liked Doom (2016). I can see what they were going for, but it's just not my thing. For Doom: The Dark Ages they appear to be changing the combat system yet again, with more emphasis on tanking, and dealing out, massive amounts of damage from/to hordes of enemies, as well as use of a throwable shield and a more flexible glory kill system. I think they realized that they kind of veered from the Doominess of the combat with Eternal and are attempting to course-correct. Props to them for trying something different.
As someone who didn’t play many video games but grew up somewhat adjacent to them, I’m just amazed at how much more relaxed I am having gone through that article (experience?) compared to before.
For me it was going deer hunting in the woods in Oblivion. Maybe it's just something about open world games that allows you to find a quiet corner to yourself.
Myst and Riven are surely the poster children for this. They’re practically ASMR and you can just chill on any screen and enjoy it without fear of anything happening.
Machinarium did it for me. Immensely atmospheric and relaxing. The soundtrack is John Williams level quality in my opinion. Introduced me to the musician Floex, whos songs I played at my wedding.
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
While I fully understand, and try hard to refrain from making such comments, given that the actual point of this article is about stress-relief, but it leverages design patterns which are genuinely awful for accessibility and positive, consistent experiences on the web, it does actually feel topical to me.
Put another way, I do not believe this is about a “tangential” annoyance.
Right. It's front and center; kind of the most obvious talking point about the article. It arguably generates a much stronger visceral reaction than the actual contents. That's why it's such a bad pattern.
I don't understand how it is harming anyone—unlike web designers who actively design inaccessible websites—and while I suppose I could offer a reason, I don't particularly feel the need to explain myself.
I am sorry that this seems to have struck a nerve for you. And, as I genuinely mean to convey every time, I wish you…
Right now I’m playing Sail Forth and it hits that stress reducer for me. It does have combat but totally optional and the exploration and fishing and discovery is so relaxing.
Is it just me that finds exploration open world games frustrating? It makes me feel awful having to walk around endlessly to gather resources etc. I prefer linear experiences that don't feel like I'm back to work.
Open World games were an interesting experiment, but the result is clear: the good ones are good despite the open world, not because of it. Not a single one managed to not feel like the developers copy-pasted content in a desperate attempt to fill the empty game world. At that point maybe don’t make such a huge world?
And replayability suffers too, because replaying the game means working through a list of things to collect before the actual game can start.
That said exploring the world in Elden Ring was probably the best time I ever had in a video game. The repetitive dungeons not so much.
Yeah, I like gathering/crafting mechanics but it has to be a focused experience, either I'm out on an adventure and happen to pick up some useful things on the way, or the whole point of the adventure is to pick up one or more things I need. Either way, the movement still has to be slick enough to not be boring, and the world has to be engaging enough to warrant caring about moving through it.
Hollow Knight is a great game. That's not the kind of game I meant though. I think the older I get the simpler, easier to get into games I'd rather play. I have 1 hour to play, I'd rather spend it entertaining myself rather than going through a tutorial or having to grind.
Is this really so much of a shocker? Video games are awesome. They're one of the best things about living in the information age. In an overcrowded, unequal and stressful time to be alive, it's awesome to have an escape - a portal to another universe that is far more engaging than any other forms of escape that came before it. And far more economical, too.
I had an "incomplete" spinal cord injury back in 2020. Its left me with permanent pain and symptoms, this pain and these symptoms leaves within me a significant amount of ongoing stress.
As dumb as this sounds potentially, because in real life, i'm not that huge on it, I have found a big help is this VR game I play, walkabout minigolf. Once every few days, usually when pain levels etc are peaking, I play a slow 18 holes and something about the landscapes, the visuals etc...its like a zen garden for my mind. It just soothes me.
It's funnily enough the opposite for me, people always give me weird looks when I say that Lovecraft is my favorite author to read when I'm anxious or stressed but there's something cathartic and honest about it.
"Cozy games" actually always unnerve me, they give me this uncanny valley feeling of "what are they trying to hide from me here, what am I not supposed to think about", like can I actually go and walk out from the farm or is this a Never Let me Go or Truman Show situation. Granted maybe this is a lesson of not having your kids grow up on Lovecraft but I've always found it hilarious how it makes me feel the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do
I'm absolutely with you. It's the pointlessness of cozy games that gets me. It's just clicking around and a weird attempt at making you feel like you've accomplished something (instead of running on a hamster wheel).
Far Cry 4, half life 2, or fallout new Vegas are my go to destress games.
I also love Lovecraft and The King in Yellow when I need to space out and relax.
i have always kind of thought that videogames are bad for young adults but the other day i realized that people exposed to certain videogames growing up are much more sophisticated. same with movies. if we could take the violence out of games and movies then they would be a very useful way to supercharge the education and development of young people. if we had movies that werent filled with harmful misinformation… its a great way to augment life experience. a lot of kids would have trouble sitting down to read for two unbroken hours… and the bitrate of movies is much higher
> if we could take the violence out of games and movies then they would be a very useful way to supercharge the education and development of young people.
No thanks. Violent video games led me to my career and passion. Non violent games exist, you are free to choose them. No need to enforce your choices onto others.
Wow. I was not expecting that at all. I wish there were more reporting like this.
I am wondering if an LLM helped put this together for the journalist ? And if yes, how were they able to display all that in a single page, without access to servers, etc?
There is no escaping stress or anxiety. Life is a nightmare, and the best you can do is accept it as an objective fact and try to make it better for others, since you will never be able to make it better for yourself.
"[E]verything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
—Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
"Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances."
"Another common use of brackets is when you want to capitalize the first letter of a quotation that is not capitalized in the original. As long as the part of the sentence you’re using is not a sentence fragment, you can use brackets around the first letter to capitalize it."
hey -- I'm not sure what's got you thinking this, but I'd encourage you to consider that the way things seem when we're in emotional states (even long-lasting ones) aren't always reflective of the way things are.
Somewhere in the world right now, someone is suffering immensely, unjustly, and with no hope of relief. This is always true at any given moment. How can we sit back and be happy when these forgotten people die daily? And statistics indicate they're probably living next door to each one of us. The status quo is not good. Do what you will, but I'm not going to pretend this life is a paradise.
My response was not "life is paradise", but rather a reminder that emotional states can vary your perception of how nightmarish/paradise-ish life actually is.
"I said ... that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. . . . Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection."
I've seen this in some other communities... the idea that any suffering outweighs all the joys of life. That life is a nightmare because pain and suffering exist.
I'm personally more inclined to the idea that the joy one experiences can make all the suffering fade away into meaninglessness. Perhaps my wife or child will die before me, and it'll be painful. But still, better they were than were not, and I would smile when thinking of them.
I don't know if one approach can be considered 'correct' over the other... but I know which approach I'd recommend. It may be very difficult to change, though.
Having empathy for the suffering in both other people and yourself does not close the door on still finding at least some amount of inner joy or peace. If you can only have any amount of joy when every other living being in the universe is totally free of suffering, then you are doomed to never have even an ounce of happiness.
> I'm not going to pretend this life is a paradise
You can't improve your situation. Others can, but you can't, even by influencing others to, precisely because it would sitll be you trying to improve yours. You can only improve theirs.
No problems inherently cause horror. It's when we feel unloved that the smallest problem can seem like a nightmare. Almost no one in the world truly has genuine, selfless love. So countless people's problems seem insurmountable to themselves. When someone is willing to lift some of your burden, or at least share in it, this is the only proof of genuine love, and even when it doesn't truly solve the problems, it reduces or even removes the horror from them. But it has to be someone other than you, because love must be given and received from an other, and we are not an "other" to ourselves, even if in brokenness we often seem so. I think this is probably best exemplified by Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus Christ carry his cross.
I mean, that's just physical work, Jesus could have carried his own damn cross if he'd been super-strong like Samson. (Possible bible fanfic idea? Make Jesus basically Samson, see how it pans out.)
But you're saying we can't quell our own anxieties. No auto-quelling. This is an interesting insight, although I think you overstate it because some auto-quelling seems to be possible. I am not very social, nor very anxious, but I suppose I take comfort in the output of others.
In fact you can see video games that way: an opportunity to accept other people (game creators) making your life better, relieving your stress and anxiety.
In the entire Passion, Jesus represented every individual person, the weakest, the most vulnerable, the guilty, the poor, the abandoned. However you treat them is how you treat him in that moment. So you can try to make that argument for him in context, but then you'd have to make the same argument for every instance where you could help someone but try to argue that you shouldn't have to. If an old lady falls and breaks a bone, will you call the hospital or blame her for not taking better care of her bone health? If you find a child crying in an alley, will you bring it to the authorities, or leave it there so you can look for the mom and find a way to blame her? People are meant to be helped, not victim-blamed. That's a very large point of Jesus and the Crucifixion. Whatever you do to him, you do to others, and whatever you do to the least in the world, you do to Him.
Well nobody deserves blame for being a scrawny little weakling. However it's still technically possible to get stronger, which puts a hole in your assertion that it's impossible to improve one's own situation. It might very well be better if we help one another rather than trying exclusively to help ourselves (consider what Adam Smith had to say about the division of labor). But self-help and self-reliance still exist, when it comes down to it.
Don't worry about downvotes here, they don't matter.
Giving up is never the right answer. Life is hard, but if nothing else, this fact becomes an opportunity to make it less hard for others, which in itself is a very worthwhile goal.
I still think video games are a net negative on society. How come so few women play - their lives are so much more balanced and successful - are games a symptom or a cause?
Isn't it a myth that women don't play as much? If I recall correctly, they just don't play the same games.
Much like women-dominated professions, their choices tend to end up labeled "not real games". Cozy games, social games, mobile arcade à la Candy Crush, etc. You need that exclusionary lens applied to what is a game to then get a tally where women comparatively don't play.
Women make up just about 50% of all gamers, and in many cases they make up the vast majority when you include mobile related games. This has been the case since about 2015.
It's leisure. I don't see how they are worse than movies or watching sports.
There are bad actors out there with gambling mechanics or addiction exploitation but the article is not about those. (and sports have their variant of it with sports betting)
I feel like you really need to update your priors here? It's 2025, not 2000, and games are immensely popular for both men and women. Almost all women I know play at least some games these days.
Playing cards. With no devices and screens. Multi-player. Lots of fun.
If it must be computer, then I go for good old Microsoft games - sweekend puzzle, motorbike madness or midtown madness (I have a Win7 PC with no internet). I also enjoy driving around with Forza and enjoying the scenery of the country side.
I can't even dare to look at the title imagery of these new games on xbox while scrolling through list of games on app store. It's gory, weirdness and insanity being portrayed as high quality.
I guess, humanity in the West craved for some excitement in their lives, due to post-war peace time being devoid of any survival struggle. And the media - movies, music, internet - kept on dumping loads of it. Even the music, which is supposed to flow with soft, pleasant and melodious tunes and beats, has turned into a cacophony of loud shouting and hysteric expressions and acts of the artists.
Similar to how a military band is designed to dispense alert and agility, western music appear to have evolved to dispense fear and anxiety which was missing in their daily lives.
Not only that. Lack of such frantic craziness is seen as boring (I never heard of this word boring in my childhood). Slow life in general is being viewed as socially unacceptable. We are frogs in a boiling pot.
You don't have to join the mad crowd running around ferociously. Just sit back, power on your old computer, pull out the internet cable, enjoy the slow, old games.
You’re referring to a lot of mainstream games, but it’s not hard to find relaxing (cozy) games.
Also, many of Nintendo’s first party titles still have the same charm as their old school titles.
I’m not a fan of a lot of the gory, hyper, crazy games you’re referring to, either, but there are no shortage of games that stick to the traditional charm, and I can always find something to enjoy.
I’m playing through Unicorn Overlords right now, and while I wouldn’t consider it “cozy”, it’s none of the adjectives you use, and reminds me a lot of Ogre Battle on SNES, or Final Fantasy Tactics on PS1.
Having said that, I’m also a huge fan of breaking out a deck of cards or board game and enjoying a quiet game with family/friends.
Heck, I’ll even spend a couple days playing through a solo game of 1862. [1]
[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/66837
The Reuters article might be conflating some game design philosophies (relaxed, unrushed, non-competitive, no penalty for failure) with some game themes (farming, building, social relationships).
Animal Crossing, Harvest Moon, Stardew Valley - yeah for sure these are some of the original and most iconic "cozy games" out there.
But personally my favorite game in that genre is Graveyard Keeper, mechanics feel reminiscent of Stardew Valley, but when you're not burying bodies you're out looking for booze to keep a talking skull inebriated.
And frankly the coziest game experience I have these days is with a title that no one ever would have associated with that term a few years ago: World of Warcraft. Nostalgia probably has something to do with it but they've now added a solo player mode (Delves) which is relaxed, unrushed, non-competitive etc. You can die five or six times before you fail, and penalties are light, but frankly, they're not very hard. If you have a spare half hour you can just Delves'n'chill by yourself and come out with a gear upgrade or two.
So, I think it is not the theme, not even the mechanics but a set of game design principles that makes a game cozy. What were not cozy were the competitive FPSes and fighting games I played when I was younger, where we were all screaming at each other - that stuff can be fun but these days my emotional energy is directed elsewhere and I game to recharge.
> music, which is supposed to flow with soft, pleasant and melodious tunes and beats…
This is very subjective.
And as you earlier say, e.g. military band music is supposed to do the opposite.
> …has turned into a cacophony of loud shouting and hysteric expressions and acts of the artists.
Chill music is actually very popular these days, especially on streaming media and youtube but it’s also accessible via traditional media.
He must find Beethoven scandalous.
Yeah Lofi is huge!
That's just like, your opinion, man.
There's something incredibly cathartic about ripping heads off of demons to the cacophony of heavy metal (Doom).
Mick Gordon music makes me ride my bike faster. In the same vein: https://davdralleon.bandcamp.com/album/street-krvzader
Yeah… but if you had to rip heads off of demons in your day job you might not feel that way.
> Even the music, which is supposed to flow with soft, pleasant and melodious tunes and beats
There's quite a lot of research that our music exposure between roughly 13 and 16 creates our formative taste.
Everyone has a first time hearing (e.g.) Beethoven's 5th, Autumn Leaves, Bohemian Rhapsody, Killing in the Name, and Blank Space. Their reactions will be different depending on their age, taste, emotional state, musical interests, social context, and so on.
I had a dinner with a friend which is a doctor and one which is a dentist.
They famously consume movies/series that perfectly fit your description.
They told me after a full day being kind and empathetic while also spending a lot of time standing, you just want to see the world burn.
Very enlighting, especially since most of our society works in services
Nintendo has the Animal Crossing series which are certainly relaxing (cozy) games and it's latest one is multiplayer.
I don't know if Pikman counts. Feels a little stressful to me. But of course there's several 3rd party games, the obvious one being Stardew Valley. Lots of other non-streesful games.
> Lack of such frantic craziness is seen as boring (I never heard of this word boring in my childhood). Slow life in general is being viewed as socially unacceptable. We are frogs in a boiling pot.
Reminds me of this clip of Jeff Bezos being a total dick to William Shatner.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GQoHIBDogU
Shatner later realized that 11 minutes in space wasn't really anything to write home about and that billionaires are assholes.
In defense of gory games - blood and gore can be framed in different ways. Some of my favorite early PC games were quite "gory", but the violence had a funny element to it. Carmageddon 1 and 2 are still pretty hilarious today because the poor pedestrians can meet such outlandish and ridiculous fates. Half Life also makes me chuckle with its low poly gibs. Gore can be quite silly.
I agree but you're exaggerating.
Millions if not billions are playing cozy "boring" games like Candy Crush.
And that's a good thing? Sure, these games ease anxiety. So do opiates. Every minute spent playing addictive drivel like Candy Crush is a minute spent not exercising, learning, or bonding with fellow humans.
Most animals have down time. Spending it on candy crush is no worse than spending it reading agony aunt magazines or napping.
I think we'll eventually realize that this line of thought is the same as tobacco company apologetics. Napping isn't A/B tested for maximum addictiveness.
One of the things I enjoy about many (albeit, not all) cozy games is the ability to step into them, step out of the game five minutes later, then pick them up several days later. Sure, some developers are going to do A/B testing to monetize every last second of game play. That said, I doubt that many of those games would fit into a realistic definition of cozy games simply because most of them exploit the player's emotional state.
That's a funny way of looking at it... we finally have peace, and most the guys I know spend their free time rehearsing killing!
I think the rise of cozy games is kind of a counter-response to exactly the overload you're talking about. Not everything in gaming today is high-octane chaos or gritty realism
I've come to resent the frenetic pace demanded of everything now. Why does everything must keep accelerating? Slow down and fix things I say.
I would suggest you start looking into independent games.
Just this month Blue Prince came out, a puzzle game à la mist but mixed with elements from modern rogue-lite games like Binding of Isaac. It is designed and directed by one guy, Tonda Ros, and it is thoughtful and rewards playing slowly and taking plenty of notes.
>I can't even dare to look at the title imagery of these new games on xbox while scrolling through list of games on app store. It's gory, weirdness and insanity being portrayed as high quality.
>I guess, humanity in the West craved for some excitement in their lives, due to post-war peace time being devoid of any survival struggle. And the media - movies, music, internet - kept on dumping loads of it. Even the music, which is supposed to flow with soft, pleasant and melodious tunes and beats, has turned into a cacophony of loud shouting and hysteric expressions and acts of the artists.
This is just plain wrong, and a sign you are not looking good enough. Never in the history of the world have we been producing the amount much art and culture as we are doing right now, the only problem is that the good stuff will not passively reach you, you will have to take initiative and seek it out.
> I can't even dare to look at the title imagery of these new games on xbox while scrolling through list of games on app store. It's gory, weirdness and insanity being portrayed as high quality.
What an absolutely stupid generalisation. Play what you want but don't be ignorant. I actually love a good gory or "insane" game but the last 5 played games on my Steam list are Factorio, Overcooked 2, Planet Coaster 2, Pico Park 2 and F1 2023. It's absolutely fine if you don't like video games but to class every mainstream video game as "gory, weirdness and insanity" is ignorant.
Ah come on. While you have a point, it’s been bread and games, public executions, and sad classical music in D minor for hundreds of years.
Hundreds? The bread and games thing is literally a quote from the Roman Empire, and I’m sure they didn’t invent it themselves either.
Yes but "hundreds" is the selector that applies for all three of my examples, whereas "thousands" merely applies to two ;)
Pretty sure the romans had public executions too
Yes! I’m always wanting to play with my wife, but she finds it really boring. I find it super fun. Haha
Which Forza would you recommend for doing that?
For me at least, Forza Horizon 4 especially with Lego Valley.
I have heard two theories on how to treat anxiety:
1) Paul Gilbert's theory that the brain's 'threat system' is overdeveloped and the 'soothing system' underdeveloped, and the right treatment is to stimulate the 'soothing system'.
2) Steven Quartz' theory that the brain's evaluation of risk has become distorted, and that the right treatment is any form of 'risky play' that you can tolerate; with an emphasis on being able to feel you've achieved something after taking (reasonable) risks.
(Both of these are about how you reduce anxiety in the long term, not how you cope with it if you're overwhelmed in the moment).
Video games could in theory work for either - but not the same ones. Under the second theory, coziness may work in the moment, but seeking coziness could inhibit long term reduction of anxiety.
I don't know which theory has the more evidence. ( Also I'm not an expert and the consensus theory might be something else entirely. )
I haven’t seen those theories before. The first one seems intuitively apt.
If you are overwhelmed the first thing that goes is your leisure and creativity. Say if you used to play piano or did any hobby, and you stopped, it means you lacking bandwidth to relax. After that, and you don’t correct your brain starts changing until it breaks : a burn out, or even further along : PTSD.
So to counter it, is to bring back leisure and your hobbies.
If someone burns out right next to you (I have had that happen to a colleague) is a couple of things : you can ask them if possible to focus on deep breaths, or ask them to call out the name of objects and ask them to describe them. Another strategy is deprive them of sensory overload. Have them put the hands on their face and hunch over so they are in their own cocoon. Stay with them and soothe them until you get a professional over.
I am not sure if this is the most current view, but this is from my direct experience.
This is good advice. One thing to note is that deep breathing needs to be slow. If you over oxygenate you may get weird sensations which can cause more anxiety. The standard advice seems to be 'square breathing': In for count of four, hold count of four, out for count of four, hold again for four.
Sensory overload sounds specific to some neuro divergent conditions, might not help with other people.
This excerpt has resonated deeply:
But, parallel to this political phenomenon, we observe the disappearance of free time. Free space and free time are now just memories. The free time in question is not leisure as commonly understood. Apparent leisure still exists, and even this apparent leisure defends itself and becomes more widespread through legal measures and mechanical improvements against the conquest of hours by activity.
Workdays are measured and their hours counted by law. But I say that inner leisure, which is something entirely different from chronometric leisure, is being lost. We are losing that essential peace in the depths of our being, that priceless absence, during which the most delicate elements of life refresh and comfort themselves, during which being, in a way, cleanses itself of past and future, of present consciousness, of suspended obligations and ambushed expectations. No worry, no tomorrow, no internal pressure; but a kind of rest in absence, a beneficial vacancy, which returns the mind to its own freedom. It then concerns itself only with itself. It is freed from its duties toward practical knowledge and unburdened from the care of immediate things: it can produce pure formations like crystals. But now the rigor, tension, and rush of our modern existence disturb or squander this precious rest. Look within yourself and around you! The progress of insomnia is remarkable and follows exactly all other forms of progress.
How many people in the world now sleep only with synthetic sleep, and provide themselves with nothingness from the learned industry of organic chemistry! Perhaps new arrangements of more or less barbituric molecules will give us the meditation that existence increasingly forbids us from obtaining naturally. Pharmacology will someday offer us depth. But, in the meantime, fatigue and mental confusion are sometimes such that one naively finds oneself longing for Tahitis, paradises of simplicity and laziness, lives of slow and inexact form that we have never known. Primitives are unaware of the necessity of finely divided time.
There were no minutes or seconds for the ancients. Artists like Stevenson, like Gauguin, fled Europe and went to islands without clocks. Neither mail nor telephone harassed Plato. The train schedule did not rush Virgil. Descartes could lose himself in thought on the quays of Amsterdam. But our movements today are regulated by exact fractions of time. Even the twentieth of a second is beginning to be no longer negligible in certain domains of practice.
No doubt, the organism is admirable in its flexibility. It has so far resisted increasingly inhuman treatments, but, ultimately, will it always sustain this constraint.
- Le bilan de l'intelligence, Paul Valéry, 1935
I have a third approach for you:
3) spend time with friends, drastically reduce screen time, have people around you most of the time, never have dinner alone, etc.
Nah not at all, spending time alone is crucially important to me for managing anxiety. Solo dinner is great. Being surrounded by people constantly is a way for my anxiety to greatly increase.
It is important to make a distinction between close friends and people you don't know. Also, being alone may feel good but it is not a lasting solution as ultimately humans evolved as social creatures, and you can't rationalize that away.
Try spending e.g. a weekend or a week with close friends or family (if you have a good relationship with them), and see what it does for your anxiety.
> and see what it does for your anxiety.
It typically ramps it up after a day or two. Then I need some alone time to relax again.
Everyone has a different equilibrium there, and different tolerances and abilities for dealing with social friction.
The important thing is having a balance. Never being comfortable alone can be an issue just as spending all of your time alone can be.
Yes but my main point is that it's very easy to get stuck in a local optimum without ever realizing that there can be a significant social component to one's anxiety issues that can be easily explored.
The social component of anxiety cuts deeply in both directions
This is very interesting! I enjoy playing Gran Turismo 7 and often find it very calming; especially when I'm in a flow state and can get through a tricky part of the track very quickly without any mistakes.
I wonder if this is a case where both theories apply - the rhythmic, controlled driving stimulates the 'soothing system' while the challenge of maintaining control at high speeds provides that 'risky play' element.
One of my favorite games is A Short Hike. It's not the same kind of game as Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, etc, but the writing is brilliant and it always makes me content whenever I play it.
I really wish more games like it existed.
There are tons of games like A Short Hike.
Alba, Little Kitty Big City, Lil Gator Game, Haven Park, Time on Frog Island, Little Wings Deliveries , The Kind Chamomile, Smushi Come Home, Petit Island, Luna's Fishing Garden, ...
Little Kitty Big City is a gem.
Thanks for that list. I had no idea.
Although, sadly, most of those game appear to not have done very well :(
Another game that gave me similar vibes to A Short Hike was Lil Gator Game.
For me though, a game doesn't have to have cozy aesthetics to put me in a more cozy or calm mood, and I've never really gotten into games like Stardew Valley or AC. Beauty in a sense is probably important. Celeste comes to mind, though it can also be quite challenging. My own favorite game even for destressing purposes is Dark Souls... And then you have things like classic solitaire/klondike, or recently I played through the entire SNES Populous conquest mode, where they're almost more meditative than anything.
Sometimes it's less about the genre and more about how the game makes you feel
Thank you for the recommendation!
I generally play http://slither.io/ to relax. I find the visuals when the snakes explode very relaxing for some reason. Play some slither, pop on an interesting audiobook = chill out bliss for me.
I know slither is played by a lot of kids, sometimes I wonder if I am the only adult on there. Curious if anyone on HN has ever played it or heard of it. I know it's popular with kids because one time I was in Party City getting some party supplies and in the kids birthday supply aisle there was an entire "slither" party section with graphics and themed stuff from the game.
Just a note if anyone from here checks it out it's WAY better if you install the chrome zoom mod, it becomes 1000x more fun after that.
I've played slither quite a bit, and I find it very stressful, it's hard to survive and very frustrating when you die, but I do think it's a brilliant little game.
If you get the mod so you can zoom out it gets a LOT easier! I play on the Pacific Servers a lot, if you see me on there I am LARGE MARGE. That's funny you find it stressful whereas I find it relaxing.
Absolutely love A Short Hike. Perfect to relax in bed or on the couch on the Deck and just relax. I have fallen asleep playing it multiple times. Just wandering and soaring and climbing.
A friend gifted me A Short Hike after my cat died suddenly during covid, and it really did make me feel better. It’s a lovey game.
A Short Hike is such a gem. It nails that cozy feeling without trying too hard
Spilled! is a short game about cleaning up oil with a similar vibe.
I recommend all 3 installments of Frog Detective. They are all short plays and zero challenges, just really fun writing and adorable characters.
Smushi come home if the most similar I've played
Thank you!
Well for me on the other hand, when I was working in tech on backend data services that needed constant maintenance and optimization, I loved nothing more than coming home and…
…Optimizing my Factorio base supply chain until two in the morning.
There’s something about doing the same thing with a tighter feedback loop, higher immediate reward.
And without management breathing down your neck.
Truck drivers going home and playing truck simulator.
Going in the complete opposite direction, getting through Elden Ring two summers ago really helped me through what was the worst heartbreak of my life, an undoubtably stressful and anxious time for me.
There’s something about getting into a flow state with the game in a From Soft title that is relaxing to me as well. Even dying a dozen times in a row.
I don't think I ever made it into flow state once in Elden Ring even though I beat it. I just grinded until I was high level enough that it didn't matter that I didn't time any of the bosses right.
Pump strength and bonk with a giant sword was my approach.
Bleed build for me
I really need to do a more challenging run through of Elden Ring. I just played as a wizard and blasted everything.
Less than double my height? You get rocks. More than double my height? Beam.
Throw in renowned ashes and party. Or get poise breaking and the mimic tear. So many ways to absolutely stomp Elden Ring if that’s what you want to do.
There's a meme in the FromSoft communities about how "Dark Souls cured my depression" that I think gets unfairly clowned on. So many people have posted anecdotes like that and been made fun of, but I think there is actually something there. Overcoming difficult challenges in a video game can, I'm convinced, help when your brain is stuck in a learned helplessness mode.
Same thing can be said about any religion.
There is a reason there are elaborate stories, rituals, prayers, pilgrimages etc etc in all religions. Its not an accident. All these practices, with the prime feature being Repetition, allows for a mental shift to happen/different parts of the brain are kept repeatedly activated, compared to the ones constantly responding to source of depression/stress/anxiety. This opens the door for a focus shift.
The key point is, it might have an effect on people positively, but doesn't change the environment (and the triggers) people return too.
Therefore at best these are coping mechanisms, until we have holistic approaches, where the people and the environment they are in or return too are both being looked at. Not just one or the other and hoping for the best.
That is one possible explanation. However i have a different theory why difficult games like this can help.
I notice that when i get in a bad head space, i trend to become less active. It then becomes more difficult to start doing anything.
Playing a game like dark souls gives you two things: 1. Its stimulating, and gives you instant feedback. 2. It allows you to fail, and have to retry.
So instead of passively drowning my self in algorithmic content, im actively working towards a goal. This then makes it easier to actually pick something up in the real word.
breaking out of the initial cycle of running away from the world is the most difficult part of getting out of a bad headspace (for me). So anything that breaks open those initial steps can be very helpful.
The great thing about FromSoft games is that I know I'm not being coddled. The game isn't trying to hold my hand (or against me), it's giving me fair, intense challenges.
If I win, that's a testament to my skill. I earned that win, I learned the boss movesets and improvedy reaction time. There is no Minimap, or compass, or sound effects that tell you when to perform x action.
Even the weakest mob can trash me if I get arrogant or greedy, no matter how high level you are.
Yes! My partner teases me for this, but From games are what I tend to gravitate towards when I need to relax.
My go to is Cyberpunk 2077, something about wandering aimlessly around the dystopic city let's me disconnect, I don't even do the missions or combat.
Going in the exact same direction?
Opposite the "cozy" part of the game. OP's game is infamously challenging.
That's just marketing. It actually has one of the most fair difficulties of all "challenging" video games.
Fairness and difficulty are orthogonal to each other, no one said the game is unfair. But it is definitely very challenging, and that’s not marketing as far as I know - I have yet to see a trailer etc for the game that says anything about difficulty. Dark Souls did that a lot more with their "prepare to die edition" or the opening of DS2.
Same in terms of quelling anxiety, but I think the commenter was referencing the fact that, in contrast to the original post mentioning 'cozy' games, this commenter is talking about a highly 'un-cozy' game.
You think of Elden Ring as cozy?
During a layoff eons ago, I did something similar albeit with Shin Megami Tensei. The repetition, grinding, and lore aspect that come with those kinds of RPGs definetly help reduce stress.
Breath of the Wild felt this way for me. Sure, you can fight stuff, but it’s often optional and most of the game is walking around in nature and exploring the world. I hadn’t played anything of note in over a decade, and then probably spent over 1,000 hours in BotW.
I unwind with about 2-3 hours of BotW each weekend. I'm years behind the gaming community and TotK is still in my backlog, but I don't care. You only get to play through for the first time once and I'm enjoying it immensely.
My only regret is the game is not designed for the player still roaming the world and finishing various quests after the main story ends, like in the various Marios. If you want to keep playing, you have to keep Ganon alive and get the regular Blood Moon reminder here and there.
That's always how I've played games. Once I see the ending the game is "done" and I can't get myself to play it anymore, so I always do the final boss last
This is the exact reason why I haven't killed Ganon yet, in spite of putting 400+ hours into the game. Now I look forward to starting all over again - this time in 4K and with hopefully better performance, once I get my Switch 2.
Don’t do it. I replayed Botw before Totk came out on a higher res tv. The wold felt a lot more empty than the first time and totk felt even more repetitive. I decided to be a lot morecareful with replays these days.
Weirdly enough, I started playing it just yesterday. I'm a gamer and I died about 10 times in the first 2 hours. I always read it's newbie friendly etc, but am wondering how, as the game doesn't seem to have handhelding at all :D
Once you’ve grabbed your initial set of abilities from the opening area and stocked up on some weapons it becomes much easier. Shifting your mindset to “combat is almost entirely optional” also changes how hard the game feels.
I rage quit the game several times before it finally clicked.
The realisation was that "wait, Link is a coward!". I then avoided most battle encounters and spent most of my time just exploring.
Newbies tend to be really afraid of the monsters early in the game. Maybe you are used to games that puts enemies there for players to kill. You’re supposed to sneak around enemies in the early game (you just woke up weak after a 100 years…)
With that being said I don’t think it is newbie friendly though. The controls uses all buttons and many with different modes. It’s can be quite overwhelming imho.
I love BotW and TotK. Definitely two of my favorite games, and two of the best games. And agreed that much of the exploration aspects are chill.
But both games definitely have some frustrating elements, especially if you’re not going out of your way to avoid them. The constantly breaking weapons, to name one. Some of the battles are definitely intense, too. Some of the temples have some bizarre puzzles, particularly some of the dexterity puzzles — and even more so in BotW, which almost felt buggy (TotK seemed to “fix” this).
Again, loved both games, and also spent probably around that much time playing each of them.
But they’re not the first games that came to my mind when I see “cozy video games that can quell stress and anxiety”.
100%. The blood moon's appearance and the scary piano music when you encounter a guardian, always gives me anxiety. I wish I could skip the blood moon's cutscene reliably.
> But they’re not the first games that came to my mind when I see “cozy video games that can quell stress and anxiety”.
I think what quells stress is the lighting, a game which is mostly outdoor sunny is relaxing in my experience compared to mostly dark games. I had that experience with rocket league of all games
Haven't played BotW though, so this was my impression from gameplay videos
That's why I am playing TotK without durability, it was such an annoyance that ruined everything else for me. Might make some things easier but I am not there for the challenge.
Next, try windwaker. Older game, but the remake is great. Similar feeling in a different style - less walking, more sailing and exploring islands.
I feel similarly about, uh, Horizon Zero Dawn or Far Cry 3+. Mostly it's about exploring the beautiful world. (With FC in particular, the plot kind of gets in the way of that.)
For me it's also mostly the exploring angle. Do you know any more BOTW style exploration games ?
I came here to leave this same comment about BotW
During the worst of my depression, all I could play was House Flipper. Cleaning virtual homes helped a bit when I didn’t have the energy to clean mine. Also, watching calm videos about nature on YouTube. Taught me that most of my mental issues are due to living in a city and unable to recharge by being in contact with Mother Nature (something about fractals vs the right angles of man-made objects)
The fact that cozy games are all the “rage” these days says a lot about our society and the mental state of our youth.
Though depression has lessened, I don’t have the appetite for big gaming experiences any more. My zen retreat these days is TrackMania and nothing comes close to it to the sense of peace, silence and flow I get while playing that game, even if I suck. Strongly recommended to any squirrel brained, over-stressed knowledge worker.
It's wild how something as simple as cleaning a virtual house or zoning out to nature videos can become lifelines when everything else feels too heavy
My cozy recommendation: Creating landscapes out of tiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorfromantik
Was going to post this if someone hadn’t already.
The first game that came to my mind.
Not only is the gameplay chill, but the music and sound effects, on their own, relax me. You could sleep to the OST:
https://youtu.be/h5gOAJl-7ZE
+1, Dorfromantik is great!
I have long lamented the over use of combat in games, not for pacifist ideology, it's just a cop-out as a game mechanic for a lot of games. The medium can represent a chasm of possibilities but usually all the focus goes of AAA titles goes into combat.
Which is to say the indie game and cozy game niches respectively have a lot of scope, because their possible gameplay is "everything that isn't combat", and I welcome the variety and creativity.
> pacifist ideology
One of the things I like about Minecraft is that it isn’t structurally adversarial. Most conventional multiplayer games are fundamentally about outperforming another player.
Even when a game is not explicitly violent, I think there is a compelling argument to be made that it continues to shape the player’s perspective as to how the world is and ought to be. Mario Kart is no different from Call of Duty in this regard; both share triumph over others as their win state, whereas Minecraft offers at least the possibility of a (practically) infinite world that is purely cooperative.
I often like to think that the afterlife is something like a big Minecraft server, where our wills have been perfected such that the idea of competitive strife never even crosses one’s mind, and all there is to do is expand into a horizon of possibility. Naturally this makes me very unpopular at LAN parties.
I've thought about this a lot as a game designer.
My first answer is that one of the most amazing mechanics ever designed is health points, I believe invented by Dungeons and Dragons. Almost every non-health win condition feels more arbitrary than health. Whether it's shooting balls in hoops, crossing a finish line first, or collecting victory points they are all less intuitive and feel more contrived than "you have this many points, at 0 you die."
The second is that many game designs are essentially about conflict, whether with other players or game agents. The ultimate conflict is life or death violence, aka combat. So it's a quicky and easy way to raise the metaphorical stakes. If you take an olympic fencing game and instead make them use real swords and no armor then it's a lot more dramatic with no change in the game mechanics.
Making non-violent games is not undesirable, it's just harder to do well when combat fits so naturally. You end with non-violent games being worse on average, non-dramatic low stakes metaphors and contrived win conditions.
I touched on this in my own reply to the grandparent comment [0]. I realized a while ago that lots of competitive games I played regularly were making me feel animosity towards the people I was playing them with, and it led me to think about this issue for quite a while.
Competition is such a default in game design that a game not based on it often isn’t recognized as a game at all. There are cooperative games, but aside from Minecraft, none of them are particularly popular. It’s arguable that this a reflection of the human condition; living things are always fighting for resources, so games attempt to emulate this competition.
It’s odd that this ended up being the paradigm, though; digital worlds can provide us with a space to explore what we would conventionally consider to be impossible - infinite worlds which obviate the need for competition in the first place. There’s maybe a commentary on human nature to be made that even in a game like Minecraft, so many players’ first inclination is to start fighting each other.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43736674
It horribly breaks the stories of many games. The obvious modern example is Last of Us 2 where sparing a single life seems pretty meaningless given the mass murder spree you’ve been on to get there.
I think you'd greatly enjoy Undertale, it's a great 4-5h game exploring the combat/pacifist side of RPGs.
You do know that sports games exist, right? Football, rugger, snowboarding, skateboarding, rally, street racing, circuit racing,...
That's just combat but with stronger rules
I'm intrigued by the notion of a chasm of possibilities. Can you explain further?
that caught me too, and now I can't stop trying to imagine what it might be.
I'd say Death Stranding was a AAA effort at a game which didn't have combat at its core (though it did still have combat).
The systems of that game were very impressive in terms of using game systems to support themselves.
I may have to revisit it. It was pretty zen unless it rains but I got a bit bored of the Norman reedus walking simulator after a while.
Surprised not to see Tiny Glade mentioned as a reference game in the comments here… it’s truly the definition of cozy. For anyone not familiar, we really need more games hyper focused on cozy/relaxing: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade/
I think it would be cool if there were games that get slower and calmer over time, like it it could make you walk and talk and perform things slower gradually
Another one is summer house https://store.steampowered.com/app/2533960/SUMMERHOUSE/
Lushfoil Photography Sim should also be in the conversation. It's very chill and very beautiful. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1749860/Lushfoil_Photogra...
Gotta say, Animal Crossing during Covid was a god send. I spent a lot of time in that game just putzing around and taking in the world. I'm not traditionally a person who enjoys those types of games, but the routine of hopping in every morning while I had coffee and every evening while I was winding down really lowered my stress level during an exceptionally stressful time in everyone's lives.
Warzone became my friend groups defacto 3rd space during covid, and I don't love shooters but the game loop had considerable down time where you were just exploring the massive map with friends while preparing, and able to chat like you were at a cafe or a pub. We had lockdowns here, so that social interaction was so important.
After the lockdowns people slowly drifted back into normality, full time work etc, and we all stopped playing together.
As much as it was a meme, I really did see a split in what folks enjoyed between Doom and Animal Crossing during covid, and they basically boiled down to the same thing: yeah, this game is so relaxing, I just turn my brain off and play.
Doom: all flow state, no thoughts, just execution.
Animal Crossing: cozy, comfortable, routine.
Funny how both accomplish similar things despite being so different on the surface.
I think coziness is an underrated aspect of gaming, maybe because gaming is commonly depicted as fast-paced and frenetic. In fact, coziness was also an underrated reason that World of Warcraft was very popular. Unless you were in a top raiding guild or PvP, most gameplay matched at least one of the aspects listed in TFA; some flavor of "tidying up" and "community" all the while not being too challenging.
A couple of other aspects of coziness were those of exploration and social interaction, glossed over in the article but a big part of MMOs. Exploration and solo questing were almost meditative in nature. You could mix and match socialization, questing and exploration to find your preferred flavor of coziness.
> You could mix and match socialization, questing and exploration to find your preferred flavor of coziness.
For sure. I think one of the big reasons successful MMOs were successful and were such comfortable places to exist in for a lot of people was the broad internal variance of intensity of activities - even if you were in a top raiding guild or a big PvPer or whatever, odds were you probably still spent a solid amount of time running around a meadow picking flowers, enchanting other players' gear, or just trying to jump onto the head of the statue outside the bank while chatting with friends. When you just felt like taking it easy, the game had plenty of things for you to do that matched that vibe, just as there was plenty of challenge on offer for when that was what you were after. I feel like a big part of what theme-park MMOs miss out on, and why they often feel so hollow and unsatisfying, is insufficiently fleshed-out low-intensity activities.
Up-thread, someone was wondering about how a Fromsoft game could ever be considered "cozy" - I think contrast helps engender coziness; Majula or Firelink are definitely cozy, if admittedly a somewhat wistful variety of it. That dynamic of contrasting intensity allows coziness to exist in a game where you're also saving the world on a weekly basis.
Yes, to this day I create a low level character in wow classic and quest in Elwin forest and Westfall. The music is just relaxing, the setting/landscape, sound effects…
As someone who's put an embarrassing number of hours into Stardew Valley, this all really resonates. Cozy games give you this weirdly powerful illusion of control and calm - your farm, your pace, your little pixelated life that somehow feels safer than the real one. It's not just escapism - it's like a reset button for your brain. I love that the article highlights how these games aren't necessarily "easy," just low-stress. They let you engage deeply without the constant threat-response loop that most traditional games (or life) tend to trigger.
It does feel a bit similar to sitting down with a good book and taking things ahead at your own pace, quite zen.
I will say that personally even the more action/goal oriented games can be quite enjoyable as long as they’re not too difficult, it’s the online PvP ones that get the most stressful for me. I don't really play many of those anymore, it feels like other players are just better and I don't want to have to be on the edge all the time.
Oh also it’s a really nice site!
I fully agree!
... and then you try your hand at Stardew Valley fishing and all sorts of weird frustrations bubble up inside you haha.
Stardew has always been stressful for me. What crop to plant on which day, whose birthday is coming up, the energy economy ...
I've NEVER been able to really get into it because of the constant feeling that I was missing something or wasting energy/time on the wrong things.
This was difficult to read in Firefox without reader mode. No mention of that tiny town building game I've been looking for again (non-gridded, very adaptive, kind of medieval), which is shame because I completely forgot its name.
EDIT: It's tiny glade
Are point-and-click games considered “cozy”? They often provide a relaxing experience—similar to reading a book, but with an added sense of agency in the narrative. Classic examples include the Broken Sword series, Monkey Island, and Grim Fandango. More recent titles like Disco Elysium might also fit.
This video does a good job exploring what makes the genre so appealing. [0]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUso3zWbDfE
Some P&C can sustain a cozy atmosphere even with some moderately heavy themes or light comedy. However, it depends a lot on the game. For instance, I would not consider The Longest Journey cozy, even though it is one of my favorite adventure games. Nor my absolute favorite, the Blackwell series.
But I would definitely consider Monkey Island, Broken Sword and Kathy Rain cozy. Why? It is very hard for me to articulate. Besides the obvious (beautiful graphics and sound that is not too "challenging") it is something about the narrative working in a well-defined sandbox without too many surprises, but not in absolute monotony either. And the plot and story not being too heavy, while not being a complete farce either.
Let's not forget Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
This was fantastic, and I didn’t even realise at first I was on a news website. Unfortunately, that became very obvious at the bottom:
> MORE FROM REUTERS GRAPHICS
> Inside North Korea’s vast operation to help Russia’s war on Ukraine
> The Most Daunting Hole at Augusta
> How South Korea's largest and deadliest wildfire spread
> The list of proposed US tariffs
After a whole article about quelling anxiety, perhaps don’t end with links to anxiety-inducing themes?
If you're into this kind of music, I highly recommend checking out the genre "Comfy synth" or "Dungeonsynth".
Some artists include "Grandma's Cottage", "Shire Oak", "Mushroom Grandpa" etc.
My goto for relaxing is "Lonely Mountains Downhill" for the Switch. It's so relaxing, you can hear the nature and there's no background music. It's a third-person biking game.
Interesting that you mention this! I like this game a lot, but would rather describe it as hectic and fast-paced (due to the many attempts to optimize race times or find shortcuts). But I do agree that the nature sounds and landscapes are lovely on their own.
Maybe games do have something special because you have to be more actively engaged and empathizing with coziness part puts us in a calming mood. But it seems obvious to me that anything that you can engage with has a similar effect and games are just one type of media. Books, movies, music can do the same thing too, you just have to know how to get in on it and not suffer through it if it doesn’t click the first time. I don’t think it’s only the cozy part that brings the benefits but rather what effects that media or genre has on you at that moment in time. Over time what bring me calm and comfort has drifted somewhat.
I highly recommend Dragon Quest Builders to anyone who enjoys (or might enjoy) Minecraft even a little bit. It can reliably make me feel like a kid with a new Lego set for hundreds of consecutive hours.
Killer Feature #1 is the room system, which can be a great source of inspiration if you don't know what you want to build. Killer Feature #2 is the overall charm you would expect from a modern Dragon Quest game, especially the NPCs. DQB1 has the better story mode (in my opinion), while DQB2 gives you much more freedom to build.
I enjoyed both games. My kids are obsessed with DQB2. There’s stuff I really like about the storyline in 2 e.g. the “now save the monsters as well” ending. It’s a crying shame no-one’s making anything like it since.
I enjoyed both games, to an extent, but OMG, get ready to spend 90% of your time reading through the boring dialogue of the characters.
I tried to follow it, and then I just started skipping through it. Then I go to where even doing that was just not worth it.
I couldn’t make it through either game.
(To be fair, I don’t think DQB1 was quite as bad with this as DQB2, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the roguelite approach of the levels.)
For me Mutatzione[0] was incredible and appeared at a time in my life where I was in a very dark place. I discovered one saturday morning, bought it and played it the whole day. It's short, it's sweet, the art is beautiful. It's not super cozy in the traditional sense, but it has a lot of calm, serenity and it was exactly what I needed that day.
[0] https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080750/Mutazione/
I'd love to read the article but it doesn't want me to On the subject of cozy games I personally like Viscera Cleanup Detail a lot. I've seen people criticize some of the (arguably) annoying design decisions like bucket dispensers sometimes sending out organs and severed limbs. The way I see it: I'm playing this game for the express purpose of cleaning spaceships and sci-fi laboratories. The game is just giving me more stuff to clean, good! When there is some meta-progression (unlocks, dialogue trees, etc.) I find myself getting stressed over what I can unlock next, or which dialogue tree I have yet to clear. In that way, VCD is perfect because you just pick a map and go. More games should make all of their content available to the player from the start.
https://archive.is/oty3L
Kingdom Come Deliverance: 2. Oh, my lord, if you're remotely into Medieval realism and RPGs you'll be floored. Amazing escapism.
It's funny, I fit that description perfectly and played all the way through KCD1. But when I saw the trailers for KCD2, it looked like it was so fighting and confrontation focused, maybe even more than the first one. The main title art seems to reinforce this: https://www.reddit.com/r/kingdomcome/comments/1etv380/offici...
But I'd love to hear if it's reasonably "cozy" for a lot of the time.
Highly recommend this charming unpacking game.
https://www.unpackinggame.com/
If you need more stress and anxiety try this packing game.
https://tetris.com/play-tetris
unless... maybe... https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-03-28-tetris-used-prevent-pos...
I wish I could spend more then 10 minutes playing games; feels like work.
Same. At 40 I simply can't expend any of my limited time or energy with games, when I could be doing something productive/wholesome (which for me is lifting weights, reading and learning). It's a shame as I used to love playing RPGs and FPSs.
I have no issue playing games at nearly 40. After having been on a productivity grind since childhood, and having faced my mortality, I now appreciate having stepped back to smell the roses.
That’s because jobs steal too much time from our lives and we don’t have it anymore to sink into something meaningful. We are forced to find meaning in jobs.
That’s exactly my feeling also. So frustrating, some games want you to invest so much time I gave up and sold them back
Stardew Valley helped my non-gamer partner so much during the pandemic.
Stardew is the opposite of relaxing for me. It’s a never ending to-do list and sense that you don’t have enough time. It’s “Chores: The video game”
‘Chore simulator’ could describe maybe 50% of what gets put on Steam these days. Some people just can’t get enough of drudgery, I guess.
The time of day running out, the stamina, and the seasons calendar for crops add so much pressure to me. I simply cannot relax playing Stardew Valley.
As opposed to something like Animal Crossing with very few limitations where I can really enjoy myself.
Yeah, that’s me with SV. Horrible optimisation problem, so much to fit into every day. And then there’s the damn fish calendar…
Its also chores that have an end, that you can have mastery over, that makes for only a small amount of variation compared to all of life.
Then you also know that you don't need to do things as fast as possible, you can always let things chill. Sometimes you can use it to practice not caring about everything - like "this run, I don't fish until year 2 - just farming for me."
When I started stardew I didn't know how to play so I would spend days waking up walking around and then go back to sleep repeating until my parsnips grew, but when I introduced my SO to the game, we ended up trying to learn how to actually play and then ended up with spreadsheets to track all the seasons, grow cycles, relationships and whatever else lol
I see it as a game about getting a horse.
Yeah I feel that. It was fun for me, but also kind of stressful. I don't know why I felt the need to min-max it but yeah.
It helped my partner significantly during multiple home-bound years of unexpected health issues. She wasn’t a gamer either.
Came here to post this. There’s just something so comforting to the soul about that world. There are no politics, crime, religion, homelessness, war, or disease. Just melons. Melons, pumpkins, turnips, corn, rice, and potatoes. Visiting that place is like pure heroin for people with anxiety.
I hear your point, but there's literally a homeless NPC and an NPC suffering from combat PTSD. Another way of looking at it might be that you're empowered to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those people which feels good.
Not only does that second NPC suffer from PTSD, he's absent from the village for the first year, serving in the military that's actively fighting a war.
There is politics from scene one? You are literally fighting against a giant corporation which is taking over the town.
Maybe politics, but it isn’t necessarily fighting “against”. You can play the Jojo path, get different perks, and the shopkeep doesn’t become unemployed.
Plus the intro of the game is the player moving to the farm to escape a soul-crushing corporate job, only to find that same sort of culture taking root in their pastoral sanctuary.
I love pretty much every system of progression it has, but I do respect that the game doesn’t really force you to engage with the parts that you don’t enjoy.
But anyone who sides with Joja is a monster.
I guess I never noticed that. I actually never paid attention to the story or characters at all. Just spent hundreds of hours growing increasingly large quantities and qualities of produce.
you only played about a third of the game then lol, you missed out on hundreds of hours of content
I really like potion craft, it really hits the optimization part of my brain without feeling grindy or stressful.
The gaming loop is about using the right subpaths using resources to reach a destination while avoiding obstacles, and slowly improving your resources options and quantity, at the end of the game it looks a bit like the traveling salesman problem. Also liked this series on YouTube: https://youtu.be/d_JfzuJzUFE?si=pifLxMFo4itOihdK
Horses for courses...
If the game in the article captures what these are about, it didn't do anything for me. Interesting to read, though.
I've enjoyed some games that have a cozy vibe while actually presenting me with puzzles to solve. Monument Valley for example.
I'd say the increase in cozy games is more easily attributable to Stardew Valley in 2016. So many of the clones that came out directly resemble SV in progression, style and content.
Also, the site is beautiful. Excellent work.
When TV shows go to Japan and interview people at pachinko parlors and ask why the patrons go there they all say it’s to relieve stress.
Pachinko parlors are noisy, with loud music blasting from speakers in the ceiling being drowned by music blazing from each individual machine, competing with the sound of metal marbles falling.
It’s not what you think of as a relaxing environment.
I don’t think it is cozy video games that quell stress, I think it is the escape that helps manage it. I played a lot of Tetris when I was going through a phase with a lot of stress. It’s pretty intense at the high levels, but it was nice for me at the time. Now that I’m not stressed, I actually find it kinda overwhelming…
No Man's Sky here, just cruising around, trying to find the best pet to float around on
I don’t play video game anymore since fatherhood but my 2000 hours of Skyrim would agree with the article.
I initially stopped playing when I had kids. As they got older though we started gaming together on weekends while my wife has a break. We have an absolute blast together building a world or questing in Minecraft or squadding up and getting a victory royale in Fortnite. I know it probably won't last as they get into their teens but for now it's something both me and them look forward to every week.
Some day you might play games with your kid(s). Keep the reflexes!
I played through the indie game 'Forest's Secret' and its DLC a few years ago, it's a cozy, non-violent, zelda-like game. Definitely recommended.
https://bynine.itch.io/forestssecret
Wholesome Games has a nice set of social media channels around this stuff, down at the bottom of https://wholesomegames.com
They also publish, but I think they mostly talk about wholesome/cozy/relaxing titles on YT/Bsky/etc.
Not sure I would call it cozy, but Magic the Gathering (Arena) has played this role for me for a long time. It is probably about the retreat to familiar that helps most of all to supress stress and anxiety, regardless of the type of the game.
Wow, what an interesting piece of journalism, in regards to the presentation. It reminded me of when I saw the NYT’s Snow Fall piece for the first time. At the time, it was an amazing display of cutting edge UI skills that exhibited both skill and restraint. Great storytelling to boot.
My girlfriend calls farming vials in Bloodborne knitting.
Euro truck simulator memories
A tried A Short Hike. Games like this make me anxious, actually, because they make me feel like I'm wasting time. But I'm not anxious in general. I guess, it depends on the person.
Walden, a game. This is an other calm game, full of nature and simple life.
I noticed I need high reflexes games to make my brain rest after work, so I don't agree. It's really hard to shutdown after a day that required a lot of brain power, but high reflexes games do the trick (nine sols, hollow knight come to mind)
I quite like Pokemon Go in that way, which also gets you out for a stroll.
I think all games can do that, the type of game you enjoy is highly personal. Not sure why they focus on "cozy" games. Probably because bloody games are still a bit controversial.
Personally I'm relaxed by city/empire builder games. But my bother plays Doom to wind down.
truly, playing rdr2 helped me ngl
So can ultra-violent games. I guess it depends on your vibe.
Come to think of it, maybe that's part of why Doom and Animal Crossing had their Barbenheimer moment a few years back.
Yes. I never enjoyed "cozy" games. Whenever I see them, I recognize that I'm supposed to feel coziness, but I don't. They're just boring, nothing happens. They remind me of places where I have to behave, which makes me stressed out.
Violent games, on the other hand, will take my attention, and have me stop thinking about the real-world stress. I really miss the craze of violent and edgy games of 2000's. Any recommendations?
I guess the bottom line is "people relax when doing hobbies" which is not a revolutionary take.
I have a ton! If you want to play Doom again, but from the perspective of 15-year old you, try this:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/project-brutality/downloads/proje...
Or if you were more into Heretic, try this:
https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=56762
But you should also try new releases that were made thinking of the classics of the past. There's ton of crap, and develoepers that don't really understand what they are doing, but I recommend these:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/562860/Ion_Fury/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2272250/Forgive_Me_Father...
I also recommend the Ashes Trilogy, which is like a blend of Stalker and Doom:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/ashes-2063/downloads/ashes-stand-...
I recently played Dead Space Remake and it is fantastic - from the limb-separating game mechanics to the out-in-space eerie atmosphere, there is nothing quite like it.
Doom Eternal put me into a flow state like literally nothing else in my life. Made me feel so good.
Doom Eternal is great for affirmation and motivation.
"Your strength will be their shield, and your will, their sword. You remain unbroken, for your fight is eternal."
I've played doom 2016. Thinking about picking up eternal. How does it compare? Dark ages?
I found Eternal different enough to 2016 that I just bounced off it. The glory kill system was expanded in Eternal and you have to keep doing it to acquire resources. The mobility is a huge step up though.
Dark Ages' combat seems closer to 2016, with much larger areas.
The way I put it is that Doom (2016) is more balls-out heavy metal, whereas Doom Eternal is more of a "concept album".
See, it turns out that in Doom (1993), there was sort of this refined balance between the enemies and the weapons you carried, such that while all of the enemies could in principle be taken out with any weapon, there were generally one or two really effective ways to kill them. Demons (pinkies) for instance, lacked a ranged attack, so it was possible to kill even a pack of them with the chainsaw while taking minimal to zero damage. And the cacodemon was large, moved slowly, and had a high chance to stun, so a rapid-fire weapon like the chain gun or, better yet, the plasma rifle would make short work of one while affording it little opportunity to counterattack.
For Doom Eternal, the developers decided to really lean in to this idea, calling it the "Doom Dance", and craft the enemies in such a way that they were specifically vulnerable to specific attacks from specific weapons. Again, using the example of the cacodemon, it's a real bullet sponge but if you pop a grenade into its mouth, it's an insta-stun letting you do a glory kill. The Mancubus and Arachnotron have weapons that can be disabled or weakened with specific attacks. And, annoyingly, there was one enemy (the Marauder) that can only be killed via a sort of quick-time event.
This expands to resource management too. There are fewer pickups, which means you have to top up on health with glory kills, ammo with the chainsaw, and armor with the Flame Belch as you clear an area of enemies. The emphasis is on "using the right attack at the right time", which is what the developers were deliberately aiming for. The campaign was also much more story-driven which only adds to the concept-album feel, as it's a very eurocomic-ish story that delves into the connection between the demons and the angelic aliens known as Maykrs, rather than just thrusting you into hell and telling you to murder every demon in sight. They definitely wanted you to get the most out of the game by experiencing it a certain way.
For these reasons I liked it less than I liked Doom (2016). I can see what they were going for, but it's just not my thing. For Doom: The Dark Ages they appear to be changing the combat system yet again, with more emphasis on tanking, and dealing out, massive amounts of damage from/to hordes of enemies, as well as use of a throwable shield and a more flexible glory kill system. I think they realized that they kind of veered from the Doominess of the combat with Eternal and are attempting to course-correct. Props to them for trying something different.
Websites that hack the natural and expected behaviour of the scroll bar certainly don't.
It was a while before I realized you scroll down to advance the graphics...
As someone who didn’t play many video games but grew up somewhat adjacent to them, I’m just amazed at how much more relaxed I am having gone through that article (experience?) compared to before.
For me it was going deer hunting in the woods in Oblivion. Maybe it's just something about open world games that allows you to find a quiet corner to yourself.
Myst and Riven are surely the poster children for this. They’re practically ASMR and you can just chill on any screen and enjoy it without fear of anything happening.
Fucking Myst is the opposite of replacing for me. FUCK those puzzles.
But do you also remember the Dr. Brain series? Those were amazingly restorative to my tiny young brain.
The recent re-releases (built in Unreal Engine) were really cool. Kids and I had a blast playing through them together.
I find puzzles more stressful than anything else
I'm sure walking outside is much better. Or outdoors sports.
Can you just not accept that there are others who just don't enjoy sports? Or going out in winter when it's either rainy or freezing cold outside.
You may need to sit down for this... did you know we can do two things, that are not the same thing?
Reminds me of Gathertown, although it felt patently absurd to be using it for actual business meetings.
I really loved it for a virtual conference
exactly for this made vortle.com no login, no internet needed, no data collected, no score - just you and the game to de-stress and calm down
Are there tools out there to help build these scrolling sites? Works well on my phone and that isn't always true on DDG browser.
Machinarium did it for me. Immensely atmospheric and relaxing. The soundtrack is John Williams level quality in my opinion. Introduced me to the musician Floex, whos songs I played at my wedding.
There is Creaks also but I did not find the time to play it yet.
When did “cozy” become such a buzzy word? How did that start? That one snuck up on me
As opposed to overly-engineered websites that hijack [0] scroll-behavior, which only increase anxiety and fury.
ಠ_ಠ
All the best,
-HG
[0]: web-designers take-note, the normal term [1] in the field for doing this refers to violent crime. Think on your sins.
[1]: https://robinrendle.com/notes/scrolljacking/
From the HN guidelines[0]:
> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
While I fully understand, and try hard to refrain from making such comments, given that the actual point of this article is about stress-relief, but it leverages design patterns which are genuinely awful for accessibility and positive, consistent experiences on the web, it does actually feel topical to me.
Put another way, I do not believe this is about a “tangential” annoyance.
All the best,
-HG
Right. It's front and center; kind of the most obvious talking point about the article. It arguably generates a much stronger visceral reaction than the actual contents. That's why it's such a bad pattern.
All the rest of your nonsense aside, why did you sign your comment. You know your name is already attached to that, right?
What can I say? It's a habit I developed long ago… [0][1]
All the best,
-HG
[0] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1417817#p1417817
[1] for anyone who doesn't have an Arch BBS account: https://0x0.st/8OL4.png
That's really, really weird. What are you trying to accomplish with all that?
I don't understand how it is harming anyone—unlike web designers who actively design inaccessible websites—and while I suppose I could offer a reason, I don't particularly feel the need to explain myself.
I am sorry that this seems to have struck a nerve for you. And, as I genuinely mean to convey every time, I wish you…
All the best,
-HG
Loving Jusant for that reason. Liminal spaces and wonderful music.
You might enjoy the Cairn demo on steam if you like Jusant.
Right now I’m playing Sail Forth and it hits that stress reducer for me. It does have combat but totally optional and the exploration and fishing and discovery is so relaxing.
Valheim
super cute! love pixel games
Reuters has good visibility into the state of the world.
Have they seen the writing on the wall, and are now promoting cutesy escapism?
Hijacking scrolling increases my stress and anxiety
Absolutely, they helped a TON with my depression and anxiety.
The important thing is to select Story Games, the slower the better that slowly pull you in. Any fast paced game will keep you anxious and won't work.
Some game recommendations that I will make while we are here:
1) Outer Wilds - must play especially for HN people. Great puzzle and exploration game. A game you will never forget.
2) Alan Wake 2 - Insane story and graphics.
3) Day's Gone - really chill zombie game.
Is it just me that finds exploration open world games frustrating? It makes me feel awful having to walk around endlessly to gather resources etc. I prefer linear experiences that don't feel like I'm back to work.
Open World games were an interesting experiment, but the result is clear: the good ones are good despite the open world, not because of it. Not a single one managed to not feel like the developers copy-pasted content in a desperate attempt to fill the empty game world. At that point maybe don’t make such a huge world? And replayability suffers too, because replaying the game means working through a list of things to collect before the actual game can start.
That said exploring the world in Elden Ring was probably the best time I ever had in a video game. The repetitive dungeons not so much.
Yeah, I like gathering/crafting mechanics but it has to be a focused experience, either I'm out on an adventure and happen to pick up some useful things on the way, or the whole point of the adventure is to pick up one or more things I need. Either way, the movement still has to be slick enough to not be boring, and the world has to be engaging enough to warrant caring about moving through it.
I like the open-world aspect, but you’re right it’s often paired with what is commonly called “grind”, which I despise.
So in practice, the open world I enjoy are those focussed purely on discovery like The Witness, and metroidvania games like Hollow Knight.
Hollow Knight is a great game. That's not the kind of game I meant though. I think the older I get the simpler, easier to get into games I'd rather play. I have 1 hour to play, I'd rather spend it entertaining myself rather than going through a tutorial or having to grind.
Is this really so much of a shocker? Video games are awesome. They're one of the best things about living in the information age. In an overcrowded, unequal and stressful time to be alive, it's awesome to have an escape - a portal to another universe that is far more engaging than any other forms of escape that came before it. And far more economical, too.
Debeaking keeps angry chickens from beaking others.
Reuters realizing in 2025 what gamers knew in 2016. That’s the mainstream media in a nutshell.
And also what gamers knew in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s...
IF you have a VR headset, Moss is one of those semi-cozy games.
I had an "incomplete" spinal cord injury back in 2020. Its left me with permanent pain and symptoms, this pain and these symptoms leaves within me a significant amount of ongoing stress.
As dumb as this sounds potentially, because in real life, i'm not that huge on it, I have found a big help is this VR game I play, walkabout minigolf. Once every few days, usually when pain levels etc are peaking, I play a slow 18 holes and something about the landscapes, the visuals etc...its like a zen garden for my mind. It just soothes me.
Primarily this course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6mt9ev2xQY
It's funnily enough the opposite for me, people always give me weird looks when I say that Lovecraft is my favorite author to read when I'm anxious or stressed but there's something cathartic and honest about it.
"Cozy games" actually always unnerve me, they give me this uncanny valley feeling of "what are they trying to hide from me here, what am I not supposed to think about", like can I actually go and walk out from the farm or is this a Never Let me Go or Truman Show situation. Granted maybe this is a lesson of not having your kids grow up on Lovecraft but I've always found it hilarious how it makes me feel the exact opposite of what it's supposed to do
I'm absolutely with you. It's the pointlessness of cozy games that gets me. It's just clicking around and a weird attempt at making you feel like you've accomplished something (instead of running on a hamster wheel).
Far Cry 4, half life 2, or fallout new Vegas are my go to destress games.
I also love Lovecraft and The King in Yellow when I need to space out and relax.
Superliminal did this for me recently. Also had me reflect on some things.
thats gta sa for me xd
This is so relaxing!
i have always kind of thought that videogames are bad for young adults but the other day i realized that people exposed to certain videogames growing up are much more sophisticated. same with movies. if we could take the violence out of games and movies then they would be a very useful way to supercharge the education and development of young people. if we had movies that werent filled with harmful misinformation… its a great way to augment life experience. a lot of kids would have trouble sitting down to read for two unbroken hours… and the bitrate of movies is much higher
> if we could take the violence out of games and movies then they would be a very useful way to supercharge the education and development of young people.
No thanks. Violent video games led me to my career and passion. Non violent games exist, you are free to choose them. No need to enforce your choices onto others.
Wow. I was not expecting that at all. I wish there were more reporting like this.
I am wondering if an LLM helped put this together for the journalist ? And if yes, how were they able to display all that in a single page, without access to servers, etc?
There is no escaping stress or anxiety. Life is a nightmare, and the best you can do is accept it as an objective fact and try to make it better for others, since you will never be able to make it better for yourself.
"[E]verything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
—Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
"Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances."
—Mahatma Gandhi, A Cry from Germany
Why did you enclose the E in brackets? Is it really missing in the citation source?
"Another common use of brackets is when you want to capitalize the first letter of a quotation that is not capitalized in the original. As long as the part of the sentence you’re using is not a sentence fragment, you can use brackets around the first letter to capitalize it."
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/punctuation-capitalization/pa...
hey -- I'm not sure what's got you thinking this, but I'd encourage you to consider that the way things seem when we're in emotional states (even long-lasting ones) aren't always reflective of the way things are.
Somewhere in the world right now, someone is suffering immensely, unjustly, and with no hope of relief. This is always true at any given moment. How can we sit back and be happy when these forgotten people die daily? And statistics indicate they're probably living next door to each one of us. The status quo is not good. Do what you will, but I'm not going to pretend this life is a paradise.
Your original framing was "life is a nightmare".
My response was not "life is paradise", but rather a reminder that emotional states can vary your perception of how nightmarish/paradise-ish life actually is.
"I said ... that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. . . . Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection."
—Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
I've seen this in some other communities... the idea that any suffering outweighs all the joys of life. That life is a nightmare because pain and suffering exist.
I'm personally more inclined to the idea that the joy one experiences can make all the suffering fade away into meaninglessness. Perhaps my wife or child will die before me, and it'll be painful. But still, better they were than were not, and I would smile when thinking of them.
I don't know if one approach can be considered 'correct' over the other... but I know which approach I'd recommend. It may be very difficult to change, though.
Having empathy for the suffering in both other people and yourself does not close the door on still finding at least some amount of inner joy or peace. If you can only have any amount of joy when every other living being in the universe is totally free of suffering, then you are doomed to never have even an ounce of happiness.
> I'm not going to pretend this life is a paradise
Who has ever claimed that it is?
Leibniz.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds
Why should I worry about that?
Unclear on why you can only improve your situation by proxy and not directly.
You can't improve your situation. Others can, but you can't, even by influencing others to, precisely because it would sitll be you trying to improve yours. You can only improve theirs.
And why is that?
No problems inherently cause horror. It's when we feel unloved that the smallest problem can seem like a nightmare. Almost no one in the world truly has genuine, selfless love. So countless people's problems seem insurmountable to themselves. When someone is willing to lift some of your burden, or at least share in it, this is the only proof of genuine love, and even when it doesn't truly solve the problems, it reduces or even removes the horror from them. But it has to be someone other than you, because love must be given and received from an other, and we are not an "other" to ourselves, even if in brokenness we often seem so. I think this is probably best exemplified by Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus Christ carry his cross.
I mean, that's just physical work, Jesus could have carried his own damn cross if he'd been super-strong like Samson. (Possible bible fanfic idea? Make Jesus basically Samson, see how it pans out.)
But you're saying we can't quell our own anxieties. No auto-quelling. This is an interesting insight, although I think you overstate it because some auto-quelling seems to be possible. I am not very social, nor very anxious, but I suppose I take comfort in the output of others.
In fact you can see video games that way: an opportunity to accept other people (game creators) making your life better, relieving your stress and anxiety.
It's not the physical act but the intent behind it that gives it meaning and value and power.
Well the intent behind it wouldn't have been meaningful at all if Jesus had been stronger, so this example doesn't work.
In the entire Passion, Jesus represented every individual person, the weakest, the most vulnerable, the guilty, the poor, the abandoned. However you treat them is how you treat him in that moment. So you can try to make that argument for him in context, but then you'd have to make the same argument for every instance where you could help someone but try to argue that you shouldn't have to. If an old lady falls and breaks a bone, will you call the hospital or blame her for not taking better care of her bone health? If you find a child crying in an alley, will you bring it to the authorities, or leave it there so you can look for the mom and find a way to blame her? People are meant to be helped, not victim-blamed. That's a very large point of Jesus and the Crucifixion. Whatever you do to him, you do to others, and whatever you do to the least in the world, you do to Him.
Well nobody deserves blame for being a scrawny little weakling. However it's still technically possible to get stronger, which puts a hole in your assertion that it's impossible to improve one's own situation. It might very well be better if we help one another rather than trying exclusively to help ourselves (consider what Adam Smith had to say about the division of labor). But self-help and self-reliance still exist, when it comes down to it.
I don't know why you're being down voted.
Life absolutely is a nightmare. We live and struggle and people die horrible deaths for no reason. Children suffer. Then we die.
It's what you do with that. Give up? Or try to make your small part of the bullshit better for yourself and those around you?
Your point is 100% valid.
Don't worry about downvotes here, they don't matter.
Giving up is never the right answer. Life is hard, but if nothing else, this fact becomes an opportunity to make it less hard for others, which in itself is a very worthwhile goal.
> try to make it better for others, since you will never be able to make it better for yourself.
What is the logic here? Why not?
I still think video games are a net negative on society. How come so few women play - their lives are so much more balanced and successful - are games a symptom or a cause?
Isn't it a myth that women don't play as much? If I recall correctly, they just don't play the same games.
Much like women-dominated professions, their choices tend to end up labeled "not real games". Cozy games, social games, mobile arcade à la Candy Crush, etc. You need that exclusionary lens applied to what is a game to then get a tally where women comparatively don't play.
Not even sure this is true. Perhaps a skew toward survival horror.
OK, here's a 2024 survey:
https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/industry/technology...
Deloitte says women prefer solo story-driven games and dislike multiplayer.
Women make up just about 50% of all gamers, and in many cases they make up the vast majority when you include mobile related games. This has been the case since about 2015.
It's leisure. I don't see how they are worse than movies or watching sports.
There are bad actors out there with gambling mechanics or addiction exploitation but the article is not about those. (and sports have their variant of it with sports betting)
What about movies, television, books, hiking, riding atv's, fishing, drawing, etc.? Are those a net negative? They're also hobbies or entertainment.
> How come so few women play
Are you living in 1997? Do you also think men are from Mars, women are from Venus?
I'd guess a symptom rather than a cause, but I'm not sure what of.
Curious about your evidence and metrics for your claims of: 'net negative', 'few women play', 'more balanced' and 'more successful'.
> How come so few women play
I feel like you really need to update your priors here? It's 2025, not 2000, and games are immensely popular for both men and women. Almost all women I know play at least some games these days.