Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off our weekly open thread for the discussion of gaming plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is down in the comments, where we invite you to answer our eternal question: What Are You Playing This Weekend?
Earlier this year (and/or eight million, billion months ago, by the modern reckoning), I posed a question to our readership, asking “What’s your ideal comfort game?” When crafting this query, I envisioned a warm mitten of a video game, one that helped you through the darkest times, allowed you to traffic in the pleasant and familiar, and just generally soothed your soul. It was a happier question, for (arguably) happier times—but that is not the question that we are tackling today. No, these are not soothing or mitten-y days; as I write this, it’s Wednesday night, Twitter has declared the U.S. president a persistent source of dangerous misinformation, and nobody knows if Dave Chappelle is going to admit that he was full of shit for saying we should give Donald Trump a chance on 2016’s first post-election SNL. Which is to say: These are anxiety times, friends. So what’s your anxiety game?
As an on-the-record idle gamer, my immediate and obvious response to this question is the one currently running in the background at this very moment: Synergism, by a one-person development team under the name of Platonic. As with almost every idle game that’s consumed me over the last several years, if you asked me why I was addicted to this particular assemblage of math equations, logical fallacies, and extremely un-shiny visuals, the answer would come as some mixture of self-deprecation and the least flattering aspects of human nature, i.e., “I’m dumb enough to feel good when the numbers go up, and they know it.” And yet, prolonged exposure to this scrotty little genre has allowed me to detect the elegance of Synergism’s design, the smart way it incorporates choice and strategy into the rote business of the steady escalation of digits. (There’s also the fact that the game is currently solely Patreon-supported, with no in-game purchases or outside ads; I can admire the purity of the devotion to obsession.) There’s a philosophy at work here, new mechanics to uncover, a genuine sense of intent and design that belies the supposed simplicity of it all. Given that I’ve spent the last 24 hours staring at election maps, willing static numbers to work themselves into a more acceptable shape, the evenings I’ve spent tweaking my output in Synergism start to feel a lot less futile. At least there, I have some control.
Not that Synergism is the only game I’m taking out my feelings on—or maybe that should be, am using to take my feelings out on myself. I continue to torture myself with Spelunky 2, for instance, which is borderline Sisyphean in the ways it’s willing to kill you, over and over again. (Ironically, the recent roguelike release that actually features Sisyphus as a character hasn’t been able to scratch that same itch, possibly because it’s just to onice.) In addition to all the things about it that are genuinely great—the speed of its movement, the slapstick comedy of its chaos, the amazing sense of discovery it can provoke—Spelunky 2 is also a game for the criminally bloody-minded to cheerfully self-flagellate with. It’s a game you can grind away at, and let it grind away at you, too. Whip, jump, get impaled, repeat. Whip, jump, get shot by an arrow, repeat. Run, jump, get a jetpack, get set on fire, jetpack explodes, you explode… repeat. Sometimes you need a game that’s as relentless and unmerciful as the churning wheels operating in your own brain.
To be clear, this isn’t the only way gaming can address or express anxiety—and certainly not the healthiest. (As a counterpoint, please re-visit this wonderful column from my colleague Shannon Miller, who discussed how Katamari Damacy helped her work out gaming anxieties in a space free of triggering violence, or this essay from Joey Clift about games that foster connection and kindness.) But acknowledging those brighter lights doesn’t stop there from being games that live in the same spaces as the grayest or blackest of moods, the games that exist in some degree to eat time one would rather not spend with oneself. It’s a service, of a sort; sometimes colder comforts are the only ones that soothe.
61 Comments
Tetris sprint. Even though it’s called “sprint,” it’s the most relaxing, flow-inducing type of tetris.
There’s a level (I think it’s called Down the Tubes) in the original Earthworm Jim that’s in an underwater cave passage and you have to navigate your bubble precisely without touching the cave walls otherwise the bubble will burst.
And did I mention there’s a time limit before your air runs out.
There are two air refill stations on that route if you know where to find them. Even with that, I still crack the bubble more often than not.
Same. I remember those air refills as being necessary to complete the level.
That sounds hellish.
I remember there being a level set in actual hell.
This was worse.
That level freaked me the hell out as a kid. I don’t know if they adjusted the controls, timer, health of the glass bubble, if I was accidentally playing on a lower difficulty level, or if I just got good in the intervening 15-odd years, but when I replayed that level on the XBox360 re-release, the hellish difficulty spike forcing me to burn through my continues and restart the game… never happened.I think it might just be in there with the TMNT underwater bomb defusal, where enough games have had similar mechanics since then, I’ve gotten practice at similar challenges, and the level that once felt novel and scary just feels like a familiar routine now.
Oh poor you. A level ? One whole level ?Some of us had to go through THAT :
A great level in a great game!
It’s League of Legends for me. I know I’m not in a superb place in terms of anxiety when I’ve spent hours doing nothing but going from one match of ARAM to another; my brain can’t deal with whatever it’s worried about, so I put it on hold for 20 minutes at a time.(ARAM, for anyone unaware who may also care, = “all random, all mid” – a game mode where you don’t get to pick the character you play, and everyone is funnelled into a single “lane” of gameplay. It takes away pretty much any decision making beyond twitchy ability use, and matches are shorter than normal, sometimes even under 10 minutes if one team is particularly terrible.)
I was going to answer with Heroes of the Storm – which I used to looove and play a ton up until about a year ago. But really – the answer is any sort of ranked mode in an online game. HotS was great fun to screw around in or blow off some steam – but every time I would try out the ranked mode suddenly I’m SUPER tense about every match and I’m literally getting sweaty armpits and shit from playing. Even though I couldn’t care less about my rank (I never got out of platinum – though I never played rank much at all due to the stress). But just knowing there were numbers attached to me winning or losing now made the game 10x as stressful. It’s a phenomenon I’ve experienced (to a lesser extent) in other online game rank modes too. I can never play more than 2 or 3 ranked matches in a row before I need to stop and destress.
Katamari is indeed the greatest game ever. A work of art and gaming zen.I like Shinobi 3 for Sega Genesis – Really fluid action platformer that you can get through in just under an hour once you know what you are doing.And any number of older puzzlers – Tetris Attack, Tetris and Dr. Mario
I have that experience with Castlevania 4 for SNES – I know the game well enough that most of it is muscle memory at this point. That said, I’ve run into a genuine problem where the response time on my current controller is just a teeny tiny bit different from what I remember, so parts of the game (anywhere that you have to time multiple jumps in a row) have gotten challenging again.
Maybe that’s a blessing in a weird way, although it sounds kinda frustrating. I actually got too good at Super Mario World and it kinda killed it for me – Maybe a sign for me to get outside more. But Castlevania 4 is a great game!
I don’t think there’s anything that takes my mind off of everything quite like Viscera Cleanup Detail. It has no right to be as all-consuming as it is, but once I got into the game loop, I just lose all sense of time in the process of wiping down all the blood so you don’t track footprints everywhere, carting all the alien and human and… bug?… body parts into the incinerator, stacking boxes, stocking first aid kits, repairing walls, and pulling out your detector to track down any camouflaged splotches of blood and ash and acid and garage, and holy shit, I just got off work, why is it sunrise?I wish I’d thought to play VCD a couple nights ago. I knew what to expect with the poll results, but I didn’t think I’d be so shaken seeing the night 1 numbers and imagining another 4 years of distorted reality. I bought the newest copy for myself and a Steam friend, so hopefully I’ll be playing through that soon. Even with the worst of all this over (I hope?), it’s never a bad time to get lost in the very zen-like ritual of “blood on, blood off.”The big game moment of the past week was my Shivers speed run for the Horror Thriller Monster Marathon on Halloween. It was an utter disaster of a speed run, with like 2-3 minutes devoted to running back and forth trying to get a particularly uncooperative ghost to spawn, but I accounted for that kind of bad luck and still slid 15 second under my estimate for the game. And the community turnout was amazing. I’d been camping in chat for a few hours before my run started and saw a little bit of chatter, but the Shivers community brought the party, and we kept it up through the 7th Guest and 11th Hour runs, also run by members of our community.The people who share my uncool hobbies with me are, in fact, rather cool.Otherwise… most of my gaming over the past week has been more and more and more One Deck Dungeon. I’m still so shocked that I slept on this game for 6 months and thought it was too luck-based. It’s not like, say, Robinson Crusoe, which is just a perpetually cursed game that can destroy any chance of victory on turn 2. A, there are four difficulty levels that you can experiment with while you figure out the game mechanics, B, you can level up across losses so you’re able to take on greater challenges as you go, and C, I didn’t realize you could cash skills/loot in for experience when you replace them with better cards. If you know what you’re doing, you can almost always find good combinations of skills and the right dice to activate them all such that even the worst of rolls can be manipulated to wipe out the boss.But because it’s all based on which encounters you pull, and most of the cards go into discard before you even look at them, you really don’t know which combinations of skills you’re going to have available to you, or how many extra dice you’re going to get for each stat, or which potions you’re going to find lying around, so you have to work out different skill synergies every game. If you’ve formed a decent plan, taking into account what the balance of dice you need to hurt/survive the boss, the endgame consistently feels pretty controlled. You can still get destroyed before you even form a plan if you get really bad luck, but my win rate’s well over 80% at this point.We tried to do game night on Monday, but anxieties were running high, so after a single 2P game of One Deck Dungeon, we cut it off and resolved to try again on Friday. I’m excited to be doing these again, even on a much, much smaller scale, with just me plus one guest, but there are so many games I own that have single-player rules, but really shine with at least one other person, and make the single-player experience seem incomplete. I feel like I’ve been surviving on Playstation demo discs for eight months.
For me it’s playing Fifa on whatever difficulty allows me to win 90% of matches against the computer by a goal or two. Not so easy it loses all meaning, but easy enough that I can just sort of flow through it without ever getting particularly frustrated. Put on some music and I have an evening ahead of me.Civilization is so good at taking up 8 hours at a time that I paradoxically find it very stressful because it is a reminder that entertainment is hacking my brain.
NiohIt’s like a slower, more deliberate Ninja Gaiden with lots of loot and build crafting. I can put a podcast in the background and zone out for hours while grinding and the reflexes become second nature.
For the best part of a decade it was Binding of Isaac. First the original, then Rebirth. There’s something uniquely transportative about action-roguelites, and BOI yields a lucky run frequently enough that the deaths aren’t too frustrating. It took Enter the Gungeon to finally unseat it; and more recently Hades.This weekend though is for Crash Bandicoot 4. This game is stunning, last night in the city level I had to keep stopping to admire the scenery. I might also dip back into Tony Hawks Remastered, which went on hold while I dived into Crash; or Darksiders Genesis, which I fell off some time ago but didn’t stop enjoying.I’ve also got Civ 5 and 7 Days to Die sessions planned, assuming my eyes don’t fall out (and we aren’t all on fire by the end of the week).
For me it’s *still* TBOI… definitely my anxiety go-to, probably why I have over 2,400 hours in it!! It’s also my casual, non-stressed, quick-play go-to also tho…
Samesies. I’ll stop playing it for awhile and then I’ll hit a lull in my game backlog—usually when I can’t figure out what to play next—and I’ll pick it up again.While the meat of the game is adapting to suboptimal item drops, it is also really fun when everything comes together for a lucky run. One of my favorite combos: Gnawed Leaf (makes Isaac invulnerable if he doesn’t move) and Daddy Longlegs/Mom’s Toenail/any other ally pickup that does decent regular damage. It’s incredibly petty and maybe a little pointless, but there’s some really satisfying about entering a new room, putting down the controller, and letting your allies do all the work……of course, the damn host enemies screw it up…
re: “adapting to suboptimal item drops”… that’s probably why I’m such a total Item Whore; I’ll be D6ing the shit outa bad items, even if it means running back and forth 20 rooms to get another battery or whatever.
You may enjoy Gungeon then, it scratches that same itch gameplay-wise
I am on my 40s so that kind of game has changed quite a few times, but going through the second level of Flashback, my yearly beating of Another World, the first levels of Aero Fighters/Ajax/Air Busters (my AAA shoot em ups) and the regular beating of some other adventure games help me a lot. Outer Wilds actually caused me a lot of anxiety and it was a relief when I got to the end. Terraria was a good therapy for quite a long time.Lately it has been killing dozens of members of my family in Rogue Legacy what gets my head out, but also puzzle games as Line-A-Pix do their work beautifully.
for a very, very long time, my go to game has always been civilization, starting probably with Civ 3, though i am not sure, those days are a bit hazy now. then civ 4, and then civ 5, and since i got civ 6 for free, civ 6. i do not know what it is, but i can easily lose hours, playing this series. i can get get tired of it, but it forever draws me back, and then i sink in several 100 more hours. 🙂
Yeah, Civ 1 and 2 were my first time suck “why is it morning games, and I’m still playing Civ 3 and 4 to get there. I think I have 5 & 6, but still haven’t got there yet…
I’ve been playing lots and lots of Minecraft and repeatedly hitting the refresh button for updates.I built my villagers a stone prison with individual, gated cells organized by profession, so they’ll be safe, contained, and easy to find when I want to trade. I dug up a bunch of buried treasure, and captured some rabbits, horses, and turtles. Next I was thinking I’d work on levelling up my villagers, or maybe build a powered minecart track.
*takes long drag off cigarette*The dam level from TMNT for NES
Let me tell you about a little game called World of Warcraft, a game where the cause/effect relationship of your actions is as persistent and reliable as the turning of the Earth. Unlike the real world’s uncertainty of broken promises and a general ”why do bad things happen to good people?” (and vice versa) vibe, WoW’s questgivers say “if you do X, then Y will happen and you will receive Z,” and you can (literally) take that to the bank.A lot of games operate like that, but Warcraft has damn near weaponized it.
Quake I .The stress relief of shooting monsters , and the muscle memoryof controls and the familiarity of where to go on each level really helps me chill out . Its kind of zen experience for me which is weird since its a game about shotgunning evil beasts..
I just got the itch to play that one again, and it was weirdly comforting. I would just like to get the soundtrack working – it isn’t the same without it.
I feel the same way about the DOOM remake. No planning or thinking, just keep moving and shooting. It (bizarrely) pairs nicely with Teagan and Sara playing on Spotify in the background.
I think some of the best anxiety management games are ones that, on the surface, look like they should be thoroughly stressful. But when you master a hectic game, you get the sublimely calming experience of being in total control amid utter chaos.
If I want to be keyed into my anxiety? Dead Cells.If I want to tune out of my anxiety? Oblivion.
Fortnite Save the World. I’m not kidding when I say it’s the most boring game I’ve ever played. Every mission is the same. The objectives are unclear. It’s mostly about scavenging and the graphics suck.
But wow, is all of that perfect for anxious people. I can turn off my brain and just grind with my cartoon Detective guy for hours.
My anxiety game is Alien: Isolation. Because being stalked by the Xenomorph makes me so anxious I forget about my actual anxiety.
Backlogged: Pizza Time! EditionThis week in my ongoing quest to experience all the games I’ve missed out on over the years, I developed a fierce hatred for Slogra, vacationed in Florida, and wrecked a metric ton of Foot Soldiers.First up in my ongoing tour of 1991 was the second half of Super Castlevania IV. I was pleased to see that the SNES’s heightened level of detail continued to add a lot of character to the game’s setting, as Simon Belmont toured Dracula’s library, dungeons, treasure hoard and clocktower, each with its own hazards and aesthetic flourishes. Some of the platforming got a little tricky towards the end (Simon is built for endurance, not agility, at least in my inexperienced hands), and while last week I welcomed the improvements made to staircase controls compared to the NES titles, they’re still the most consistently frustrating element here.Then came the game’s final gauntlet of boss fights. I’m used to difficult fights against Death and Dracula when it comes to this franchise, but I was not expecting Slogra to be such a brick wall. While I was able to get away with spamming the whip against a number of the previous bosses, Slogra demanded a far greater focus on my spacing and reflexes, forcing me to raise my game in order to prevail. As jarring as the sudden difficulty spike was, however, it really made me appreciate the precision and control the player has over Simon and his whip. With my newfound skills, I battled on through Gaibon and Death, finishing with a dramatic final battle against Dracula (after needing to jump-and-whip to strike his head in previous installments, whipping diagonally up at his face with both feet firmly planted was immensely satisfying). Overall, I was a big fan of this one, and looking ahead, it’s exciting to think that the Castlevania franchise continues to deliver throughout the ‘90s and beyond.Next up was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project. I’ll be blunt; the opening credits were fun, but I thought it was all downhill from there. A simplistic control scheme coupled with an array of samey re-skinned goons as enemies made for another repetitive beat ‘em up that overstayed its welcome. I did like the boss designs, though the battles themselves were tedious, and a lack of visible health bars for the bosses often made them feel like an exercise in flailing katanas and blind faith. I suspect multiplayer would have added an element of chaotic fun (and the fact that I played it on election day probably didn’t help my frustration, especially since the first level takes place in Florida), but in the end I barely rated it above TMNT II: The Arcade Game, which I thought was a real drag.Fortunately, I enjoyed follow-up Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time a great deal more. The jump to the SNES was probably a major factor in that improvement, the turtles’ colourful world taking full advantage of the enhanced graphics and music, along with some charmingly fuzzy snippets of voice-acting (‘My toe, my toe!’). The additional moves afforded by the SNES gamepad’s extra buttons also helped make combat feel more versatile and fluid, especially the flashy throw moves (put to excellent use in one particular boss fight). Throw in the game’s shifting locales, some fun (and occasionally funny) boss fights and a couple of high-speed vehicle levels, and you have yourself a winner. There have been plenty of TMNT games since Turtles in Time, but the conventional wisdom seems to be that they aren’t worth the time, so that’s curtains for the turtles as far as my retro gaming is concerned. Later, dudes.
Anyway, that’s it from me this week. Next up is Capcom’s Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. See you folks next time! (And try to stay sane out there.)
Mine is WoW. Stressful day? Commute full of crazies? Our elected officials acting like bad toddlers on national TV and twitter? I’ll fix a quick dinner, something that will put my teenager into a carb coma like spaghetti or baked chicken with potatoes, and then I will sit down, get on my max level tankadin or hunter, and then massacre every bloody mob in low-level raids. I make the Lich King my bitch, I make Deathwing cry, and I make Ragnaros show off his chicken legs at the end of Firelands. That is how I work out a bad day. Oh, and I get a little loot and finish off some armor sets, so there’s that. Still don’t have the mounts from Icecrown or Ulduar yet, but someday. . . .
I know this isn’t at all the point of the post but that’s a super weird Dave Chapelle dig, he’s made it very clear then and since that he voted for Hilary and his never been a Trump supporter.
For my anxiety games, I tend to get sucked into mobile games and the skinner box they are. To that end, this week, where for some reason I’ve been in a state of high anxiety I’ve been playing a lot of Star Trek Fleet Command on my trusty Android device. I’ve been doing the daily grind missions to get my personal power up over 2 million, and the 16-member alliance I was in has been merging with another 16-member alliance to hopefully get us into the Top 50 on our server. Currently trying to upgrade my third ship, which you might be able to see here:I’m also retreating into Best Fiends, one of the many, many match 3 games on mobile:
This one seems to get advertised on about half the podcasts I listen to, including the Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me… podcast from NPR. I think I’m on level 640-something out of however many thousands there are. It’s a game that doesn’t need internet, and it’s a common part of my bathroom library if you know what I mean…
As for other gaming, my Tuesday night Dungeons & Dragons session was canceled for some reason, so nothing on the tabletop front.On the PC front, I did play some more of OG Costume Quest, in the spirit of Halloween. I hadn’t played before last week, but was able to do a few of the mini quests, including finding the hide-and-seek kids, and unlocking the Statue of Liberty costume:And finishing out trick-or-treating all 20 houses mentioned here:
Which also unlocked the next monster-infested area bringing me one step closer to finding my twin sister.
Skullmonkeys for the original Playstation. Getting through the levels hitting all secrets, and gathering max fruits, lives, and power ups makes the rest of the world go away. The final level however is pure anxiety so I just let that one go.
It has def. been harder to concentrate even on games this week. I have, however, made some real progress in Hades. I’ve gotten to Elysium! It’s really weird and tricky up there! But I’m having fun.
My anxiety game for the last 3+ years has been Breath of the Wild. I don’t play it as much as I used to, but it’s still incredibly immersive and therapeutic. And I’ve gotten good enough at it that, while it’s still plenty challenging, the stress of “how the hell am I going to survive getting anywhere with four hearts and a rusty sword that breaks after a few hits” is gone.
Animal Crossing, the worst thing that can happen is getting stung by wasps. It’s all very cheerful and peaceful.
Animal Crossing, the worst thing that can happen is getting stung by wasps.
Tied with getting bit by scorpions or tarantulas – the latter creeps my arachnophobic self out.
Civilization, Endless Space, or Endless Legend. They’re all relaxed, stylized and slow paced enough to calm the mind. The Endless games also have really cool soundtracks.
Even though I grew up on an actual farm and find real farm work hellish, apparently I find great comfort in virtual farming.
Stardew Valley, My Time At Portia – right now it’s Farm Together.
Something soothing about making things grow or crafting things, again and again, through the round of seasons.
The original Master of Orion. It’s soothing that it’s basically the same thing, over and over, with few changes for my strategy, turn after turn…
I love the microprose “newsreel” music from Civilization, Gunship 2000 or this one. It relaxes me so much.
I often turn to a lego game. Just smashy smashy smashy. It’s also very therapeutic to blast some storm troopers as Leia when the IRL fascists get you down.
I will sometimes play a quick round of GTA and pretend all the pedestrians are Trump supporters.
Saints Row 4 is good for this too. Everything you do is fighting the system.
It was Rocket League for the longest time until the last month or so. The matchmaking and system changes just made it too much of a mess for me to stick with regularly. Before Epic took over, the weekly challenges in a season pass would roll over to the next week during a season pass, but now it’s locked into the week and it was just enough treadmill running that I decided to pass. Now it’s Hades, which I’ve already beaten well over enough times to see credits and then some. The only issue is depending on the weapon it could take 35-40 minutes to get through a run and sometimes I just need a short burst, or want to try a second run and it can take a bit. One of my big frustrations with the game (which is far from outweighing all the good) is there is no good way to check your boons mid-battle. The only way to access them is without pausing and when you’re halfway through a fight, that’s the time it would be really handy to remember what your special boons are and all of that. Mario 35 actually is a good solution too, but the endgame on that rears its head and sometimes those runs can drag on for a long time when you get into the Top 5.
Dark Souls, Sekiro, Bloodborne. Because cursing loudly right now is very cathartic and absolutely called for.
Tetris 99 has become my way of distressing. Tetris is a good way of zoning out, just putting blocks where they belong. But I’m a crazy person who needs a sense of achievement no matter what, so the online aspect lets me do that, even if I do poorly I don’t really care.Also I initially misread this as stress-inducing game, so I just have to say if you ever WANT to be stressed out, throw on Papers Please for a good time.
Are modern men really this weak that we need anxiety games because “oh no, a president I don’t like might get elected, boo hoo”
The low stakes in No Man’s Sky are very zen for me. I just walk around gathering elements for no reason and building little houses and looking a critters.
For the last few years, which have had a lot of anxiety associated with them, it’s been Crypt of the Necrodancer. Since you have to actually listen to the music to follow the beat, it is a great source of abnegation.
nethack. The ASCII version. Just me as a little @ symbol, trying not to starve to death and avoid inadvertently running into arch-liches too early in the game. Choose some nice ambient BGM (or early 80s synthpop) and have snacks at hand and zone out for hours.
The walking dead. Man trying to save everyone fucking wrecked me.
Katamari has definitely been therapy for me, but more recently it’s been Into the Breach – and before that, the studio’s other game Faster Than Light. The inherent simplicity of the puzzle-strategy design makes it accessible, and the certainty that comes from every action makes me rarely feel frustrated when something goes wrong.
War Thunder planes arcade battle. I’ve always enjoyed air combat, but War Thunder is the best I’ve ever played. My mind is completely engrossed in all the variables of the plane I’m flying at the limit. And I am just whirling around in space jockeying all the controls. It’s ballet.