Cozy video games can quell stress and anxiety
reuters.com
reuters.com
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.
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]
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.
A common issue with studying the effects of gaming is most studies are studying 1-2 blocks or light gaming schedules. I think most of the population is doing that, but there are people playing 4+ hours a day, most days. When articles are shared about the positive effects of gaming, a lot of people read them as though the effects must apply to them. Maybe they do! I don't see a lot of studies on this population.
I feel the same with this article, because I don't find Stardew Valley super relaxing. I think it's aesthetically relaxing, but mechanically stressful. Trying to complete the quests on time or get a certain item before the season ends is stressful. I could go into it with a more relaxed attitude, but then how is the game cozier for me than others? I could go into Skyrim with that attitude. Maybe I am too rushed in my professional life to play games in a relaxing way.
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.
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
Niles: [walks in] Hello, Dad. I believe we switched videotapes on
accident.
Martin: Believe me, I noticed.
Niles: Yes, there you go. [hands over video] At first I was dismayed.
I popped in the tape, and there was Charles Bronson blowing
away street trash, but I actually got into it. It was quite
suspenseful.
Martin: Yeah, well, that's the way Duke and I felt about "My Dinner
With Andre." Talk about suspense! [fake, dramatic
anticipation] Will they order dessert? Will they leave a good
tip? [walks to chair and sits]Millions if not billions are playing cozy "boring" games like Candy Crush.
Try not to play for 30 days and report back with your findings. I think you are underestimating the amount of time you spend on this filler activity.
Quitting gaming altogether wouldn't have many benefits in my case. I only play on weekends, and usually less than an hour per day. It's not that I'm boasting about a lack of filler activities in my life. I have them. They're just elsewhere.
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.
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.
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've never, ever been prouder of him.
There's something incredibly cathartic about ripping heads off of demons to the cacophony of heavy metal (Doom).
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.
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.
I am totally on board with the qualifier "not worth the money," but I can't imagine an outcome that's not worth writing home about. Hell, I'd probably enjoy the ride just as much as the view because when else do you get to go multi-Mach?
Longer video here: https://cosmicperspective.com/william-shatner-overview-effec...
Ironically, this only shows closed-mindedness and limited view of music (and other entertainment as well).
Seriously though, what is up with people here that go "entertainment is bad (cause i don't know better)", and seemingly have so many people agree with them as well. It's not even funny, it's just kinda sad, if this is even a sincere view and not just obtuse trolling slash some bizarre 'culture war', 'current culture is bad' shit takes. "the gory games", this is some "parents being scared of Doom (1993 videogame)" nonsense, are we seriously recycling all of that idiocy? Just barely new puritanism. Feeling traumatized by the Xbox games catalog is kind of a hilarious image though.
I really wish more games like it existed.
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.
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, ...
Although, sadly, most of those game appear to not have done very well :(
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. )
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.
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
Sensory overload sounds specific to some neuro divergent conditions, might not help with other people.
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.
3) spend time with friends, drastically reduce screen time, have people around you most of the time, never have dinner alone, etc.
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.
There are thousands of testimonies from people on a carnivore diet who report that anxiety issues went away almost immediately on that diet.
Before any other technique or medication, I would tweak the diet first.
If you have a high-risk high-stress job / life, playing a cozy city builder lets your brain turn off the "we need to be on max alert because things could go south at any moment" switch and turn on the "we're safe, let's relax" switch.
If you have a boring job / life, you might enjoy running into a horde of demons at low health and ripping their faces off with your bare hands while dodging bullets and fireballs. That way all the built-up "Danger! Run for your life!" hormones get spent in the high intensity experience and don't activate when you're trying to sleep, or at low levels throughout the day causing chronic low-grade mental and physical health issues.
…Optimizing my Factorio base supply chain until two in the morning.
Less than double my height? You get rocks. More than double my height? Beam.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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
The realisation was that "wait, Link is a coward!". I then avoided most battle encounters and spent most of my time just exploring.
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.
What I think is really good is that there is no one right way to do something. With some games if you can't figure out what they are trying to tell you, you hit a brick wall. With BotW, I could always figure something out, even if it wasn't "right". For example, at one point you can talk to the old man chopping down trees and the intent is for you to chop down a tree to make a bridge across a gap. For whatever reason, I didn't pick up on this. However, there was a wall that I thought I might be able to use to climb over there. It wasn't trivial (I died several times), but it taught me how to find little places on walls to recover stamina while climbing. I was still able to get over there. This lesson on climbing paid dividends throughout my entire play through, while the tree bridge mechanic was almost never needed again.
The first non-red Bokoblin (in the skull with the archer out front) probably killed me 10 times on the first play through. That was a bit frustrating, but I eventually got it. But I just ran in there and tried to fight him directly. To use tactics, you should have just gotten a bow and arrow before activating the first tower, and you can shoot the rope that suspends the hanging light inside the skull (by shooing through the hole where the skull's eye would be). This causes an explosion and gives you a big leg up in the fight. Later there are shines that help teach you how to use the various fighting mechanics, which help level up your skill controlling Link.
Most of the dying I didn't mind so much, because there was little to no penalty for it, and all felt like I was learning something. Can I jump off this high thing... nope dead... how else can I do this? I used the manual save a lot, instead of just relying on the autosave, if I was about to do something risky.
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.
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:
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.
The systems of that game were very impressive in terms of using game systems to support themselves.
As a conflict has multiple parties trying to reach their own goal which doesn't completely overlap with the others.
i think this would rule out nearly all games (including most non violent ones)
What if instead the majority of the gameplay was unique game mechanics that actually achieve the goal. Instead of "oh no it's full of monsters who are in the way of the buttons", why not having to scavenge the parts, solve some mechanical and electrical puzzles. Maybe find a person and get the right dialogue options to get information you need out of them, that actually applies to the puzzles, etc... this is all in existing games already of course, but hopefully that illustrates what I am getting at.
Cyberpunk 2077 had this issue in spades, as all the storylines were so interesting, and could have had such interesting game mechanics tied to them. But it was mostly combat.
I am not saying that makes it a bad game, just that there is so much room for other mechanics.
The Chasm of Possibilities sounds like a comedic juxtaposition, like something from The Phantom Tollbooth or Hitchhiker's Guide.
That is funny though, English is my first language and I am reasonably well read, but for whatever reason, common turns of phrase are entirely missing, so I fill in the blanks, and don't always hit the mark.
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.
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.
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.
In competitive game it's possible the less skilled player may never win (not true for party games), but at least only they are personally invested in their win so no one can righteously take over.
I tend to just not play with people like that. I find those same people are typically insufferable with competitive games too.
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.
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.
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.
After the lockdowns people slowly drifted back into normality, full time work etc, and we all stopped playing together.
EDIT: It's tiny glade
This video does a good job exploring what makes the genre so appealing. [0]
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.
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!
... and then you try your hand at Stardew Valley fishing and all sorts of weird frustrations bubble up inside you haha.
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.
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 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.)
Come to think of it, maybe that's part of why Doom and Animal Crossing had their Barbenheimer moment a few years back.
Dark Ages' combat seems closer to 2016, with much larger areas.
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.
"Your strength will be their shield, and your will, their sword. You remain unbroken, for your fight is eternal."
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.
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-...
Thanks for putting the word for it. That's what I feel about many of those 'cozy' games. It's like when you meditate and you force yourself to be calm, which give the opposite results.
I love some of those cozy game of course(the latest is called "Wilmot's Works It Out") but it's nothing compare to the calm when I play older 90-early 2000s videogames again, or the time you walk aimlessly in Skyrim. Maybe it has things to do with the zero expectation(playing old, outdated games that no one play anymore gives you peace of mind that you don't have to be FOMO of being 'cozy' or anything..which make you ended up naturally...cozy)
Some artists include "Grandma's Cottage", "Shire Oak", "Mushroom Grandpa" etc.
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
But do you also remember the Dr. Brain series? Those were amazingly restorative to my tiny young brain.
But I'd love to hear if it's reasonably "cozy" for a lot of the time.
I spend an embarrassing amount of time wandering around in between towns as well as playing dice.
Fighting can be clunky and hard but it's over pretty fast, and there's something very realistic about things. It's no FPS, I'm not a fan of those.
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.
As opposed to something like Animal Crossing with very few limitations where I can really enjoy myself.
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."
"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
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 always wondered how’s the procedural generation part of the game? Does it get repetitive fast?
Yes and no. They have been adding content and releasing free updates since release, I think the most recent one was this past march. I'm about a 100+ hours in and found out today that I'm missing half or more of the content because I was happy enough just exploring and figuring things out all that time that I didn't do any of the story.
that being said. There is definitely a feeling of repetitiveness across everything.
Makes you appreciate the fact that we have a staggering amount of different forms of life and biomes just here on earth...
If it's been years since you played it, you should give it a try. There have been a lot of bug/crash fixes, new mechanics, even redoing some core game systems (I think they recently made some big changes to planet generation).
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.
Literally I have a todo list for it.
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.
> 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?
They also publish, but I think they mostly talk about wholesome/cozy/relaxing titles on YT/Bsky/etc.
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…
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.
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
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
> 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.
Put another way, I do not believe this is about a “tangential” annoyance.
All the best,
-HG
Personally I'm relaxed by city/empire builder games. But my bother plays Doom to wind down.
Also, the site is beautiful. Excellent work.
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
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.
Have they seen the writing on the wall, and are now promoting cutesy escapism?
I'll play a few more hours of video games this afternoon too and play some music.
My point is that people do lots of things. Gaming is a modern form of entertainment and is much more active and engaging than watching TV or mindlessly scrolling a social media site.
It’s quite weird how gaming is still looked down on by the general public. While watching movies and TV shows is considered to be “more mature” hobby, even though it requires less engagement. Wonder what the effects of binge watching are on the brain in the long term, especially compared to gaming’s. If we think about it the latter is much more similar to solving puzzles or reading.
So in practice, the open world I enjoy are those focussed purely on discovery like The Witness, and metroidvania games like Hollow Knight.
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.
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?
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'm not going to pretend this life is a paradise
Who has ever claimed that it is?
—Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
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.
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.
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.
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.
—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
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/punctuation-capitalization/pa...
What is the logic here? Why not?
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.
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.
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.
Curious about your evidence and metrics for your claims of: 'net negative', 'few women play', 'more balanced' and 'more successful'.
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)
Are you living in 1997? Do you also think men are from Mars, women are from Venus?