Pokemon on a handheld while watching the Pokemon anime.

Deep Rock Galactic is a co-op horde shooter with impeccable class-based gameplay and wide weapon and environment variety. You play a dwarf in the caves of an alien planet, blowing away the local giant bugs while you plunder minerals. Playable solo, in friend lobbies, or with public randoms, and it has bar none the best community of any online game I’ve ever played.

Elden Ring is the first and only game to scratch the Itch of exploring game worlds when I was a child. Intensely immersive and fascinating. The combat requires reading a manual to know how to put together a build until you know what you’re doing and the plot is barely present, but the horizon never stops opening up a new vista.

Esoteric Ebb is the first real Disco-like. Set in a medieval fantasy world (with deep deep world building), you’re a cleric investigating a tea shop explosion. Instead of the many personalities of Disco in your head, you have your six ability scores. It also, and this is important, doesn’t give a fuck about D&D mechanics and is a distillation of the experience of playing a really fun campaign. It’s like if Terry Pratchett’s Guards, Guards was a video game

I’m not talking emotional games about working out parental trauma

Sure, but if you need that, but don’t actually want to put up with something heavy, the answer is Earthbound.

Maybe also Crosscode.

Diablo 3 was amazing for that; can vouch, especially on console (even if I mostly prefer the PC version for being able to rack up larger kill streaks), and especially if you have a partner to drag in for local co-op.

Here’s my go-to list of “comfort” games:

1. Vampire Survivors. Once it gets its hooks in you, kiss your night goodbye.
2. No Man’s Sky. The building system is a little clunky, but there is so damn much to do in this game, especially if you make a beeline for the storyline missions or do an expedition (“seasonal” content). It’s like Ark or Rust, but in spaaaaace
3. Skyrim. Best played with a handful of quality-of-life mods (Unified Skyrim SE Patch, Alternate Start - Live Another Life, SkyUI) and some kind of funny build shenanigans in mind so you don’t just end up doing stealth archer for the 69,420th time.
4. Stardew Valley. Can you complete the community center before the end of Year 1? Can you establish a People’s Republic of JojaMart and keep your hatred of Pierre pure? Can you start a PoWeR dYnAmIcS struggle session about the ethics of your avatar in-game dating a 21 year old?
5. Octopath Traveler series. OK, full disclosure, I grew up on NES and SNES-era JRPGs, particularly Final Fantasy IV, VI, and Mystic Quest, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Destiny of an Emperor, Dragon Warrior (“Quest” #1), so this shit was catnip for me. The original OT1 is a little unrefined, but solid if you’re into that sort of game. OT2 is streamlined and introduces a lot of quality of life tweaks, and you don’t need to have played the first one to enjoy it. Start here if you’re not up for getting thrown straight into the missable achievements meat grinder. OT: Zero is game of the year material, according to a certain amateur wrestling transfemme enby gaming media personality whose ADHD should be reason enough to avoid anyone voluntarily being employed by her, but otherwise whose opinions I generally trust. (I haven’t played more than about an hour of Zero yet, but the nostalgia bait is definitely there. It’s next on my list.)
6. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Randomized). https://alttpr.com/en – I got into this on account of my spouse showing me Griffin McElroy’s “Trial by Fieri” playthrough and thought it was hilarious. Pro tip: play with the Mog sprite from FF6 so no one can spike your cortisol levels. This one is good for learning to do glitchless speedruns, usually in the 4-6 hour range per playthrough.

TurtleWoW gives that feel for me, but WoW was my high school nostalgia game

If it’s your thing there are PC recomps of Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, the two Legend Of Zelda games on the n64, and Mario Kart 64. They play smoother and have better support than emulation. Otherwise, I would go for 3D platformers to do this for myself, newer games that look interesting are Frogun and Demon Tides

Mario Galaxy, Portal, Skyrim with PG-13 mods while not devolving to porn, whatever Tony Hawk game came out near your childhood.

Oh, and shitty cigarettes, like Pall Mall Blue or half-smoked Marlboro menthol silvers you steal from your parents desk.

if you like boomer shooters cultic is great

GTAs around San Andreas or the contemporary Saints Rows are great for getting into this headspace, for me. Probably not for the whole day - I tend to get bored again after a few hours, but there’s something about blasting your way down the highway in a tank with 4-5 stars, or on a motorbike dodging FBI trucks while you do flips over a hospital, that tickles that weird child-space enjoyment itch for me.

Yaoling is like a chinese autobattler version of pokemon and it might be the best monster-taming game I’ve ever played. There’s some depth to the game mechanics, the monster designs are great, and it’s fun to accessorize your monsters even though that’s just cosmetic. This little guy of mine goes into battle with mushroom ears while carrying around a little lantern:

My favorite yaoling is the one called “Goose”, which is literally just a goose. All the other designs are much more creative, and I find that kind of funny.

• mount and blade warband
• shadowrun games
• underrail
• carx street

Despelote. This is especially true if you are latin american

I was up til midnight eating an ice cream sandwich and playing civ5 both last night and again in a few hours from now

Oh I was going to say Disco Elysium as Harry’s story is as much a meditation on picking up the pieces after you fail as anything else it says

So instead I’ll recommend Amid Evil which is a goddamn dream game of mine made manifest, old-school boomer shooter graphics and gameplay with my shootan gaem kryptonite: a ridiculous arsenal including a staff that shoots planets, a trident that can chain lightning between enemies, and a mace that shoots crystal shards that crucifies enemies against walls. It’s fucking siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

Comforting and chill eco terrorism.