Nowadays I find a lot of games feel like too much work and/or anxiety when I just want to relax for like, 30 minutes to an hour after a long day. On the other hand, the games specifically designed to help you unwind just feel boring imo.
In the past I’ve felt like Outer Wilds scratched this itch, cause the whole experience was engaging but generally relaxed. There was a mystery that kept me hooked and the exploration and movement was fun in and of itself. I also felt like Subnautica filled this role since it was very much at my own pace, with anxiety producing portions which could for the most part be avoided or minimized, and also there was a clear objective to fulfill, get off the planet.
So what games do you play when you just wanna relax?
No Man’s Sky.
After the mildly stressful intro (which isn’t bad, just uses more sticks than carrots in the tutorial section), you basically just pick a direction and go.
If you wanna quest, there are quests available in (almost) every system.
If you wanna farm, pick a nice planet and get to building.
If you wanna fight, go find a planet with hostile Sentinel presence.
There’s always something interesting to do, but you can also just find a nice view on some planet, build a couch and just watch the iridescent grass blow in the wind for a bit.
The more I hear about No Man’s Sky now the more I’m thinking that perhaps this will be one of the games I can chill out to. I generally love space games, and the idea of just kinda flying around doing random stuff is already appealing.
Its a vastly game than it was at launch. It’s on my list to play.
As someone with almost 500h in NMS, get in fully aware that things get repetitive fast. Once you get off planet and can visit other stars the first time, it’ll likely take 2 hours to see all different kinds of planets.
Unlocking (“learning”) the 3 aliens’ languages is the absolute worst slog in the whole game.
Another ultra tedious chore is doing the daily missions for Quicksilver (special currency) to unlock some nifty cosmetics.
Also, combat sucks. It just plain sucks. The most annoying thing to me is: if you don’t fire your weapon for 1 or 2 seconds, your dude will put it down, which will create a small time window where you’ll have a significant delay between pressing the fire button and actually firing, because of the animation.