Look, it’s time we got honest with ourselves. Multiplayer games are rarely relaxing. Between the toxicity in your team’s voice chat, opponents with bad manners, and just plain uncooperative teammates who don’t want to stick to their roles, it takes everything not to scream and throw your controller at the screen. Don’t do that, though, that’s expensive. That said, it’s not like you can drop video games entirely. I mean, what else is there to do for fun?
Good thing there are games out there that allow for a chill single-player experience that lets you have all the fun that most multiplayer games offer, but without the co-op toxicity. Don’t worry, there’s something here for everyone so if you’re looking for relaxing games that aren’t just The Sims 4 or Animal Crossing, you’ll find at least one that’s your cup of tea. There’s an otome game, a simulator, a rogue-like, a hack and slash, and even a card game so if any of those sound like they would be right up your alley, keep on reading!
1. Tears of Themis
Tears of Themis is best described as a lovechild between Ace Attorney and mainstream otome games, a genre of story-based (and typically romantic) games catered to young women. A reverse harem game, basically.
But Tears of Themis is one of those rare otomes that anyone can enjoy. Underneath its dating game facade, Tears of Themis is a detective adventure game at its core with Ace Attorney trials spread throughout the story.
You play as a young female lawyer. She’s a self-insert so you can name her anything you’d like. The game lets you know at the start that you’re a fairly new attorney at Themis Legal Office, one of the leading law firms in the city of Stellis.
As a lawyer, you take on several cases that get you increasingly entangled with the shady dealings and politics of Stellis. Oh, and men. You can get entangled with handsome young men. You meet the first piece of eye candy at your workplace in the form of Artem Wing, the calm, collected, and polite partner of the firm whose famous for going against big companies in Stellis.
As you uncover the underbelly of Stellis, you will discover the reason behind the rising cases of mental illness that make Stellis citizens violent, a behavioral effect that threatens the social fabric of the city.
2. Euro Truck Simulator 2
Do you ever think about how weird it is that we have so many games that are basically mundanity simulators? I mean, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying the simple things in life. But you have to admit, these games have been weirdly specific.
Aside from classics like that bus driver simulator and Farming Simulator 19, one of the most popular simulation games out there is Euro Truck Simulator and its sequel, drum roll please, Euro Truck Simulator 2.
Is there fun to be had with a simulator that puts you behind the wheels of a 35,000-pound truck? Surprisingly, yes, even if you don’t get to turn digital pedestrians into Gorey mush ala Grand Theft Auto.
The fun of Euro Truck Simulator 2 is in the way it simulates the experience of a long road trip. Think about it. Long drives are relaxing, but gas prices are skyrocketing. Big prices that burn a hole in your wallet are anything but relaxing. Now, here comes Euro Truck Simulator 2.
The clouds part and the angels sing because, for just a little over 12 dollars, you can drive for thousands of miles through a beautifully green European landscape without having to worry about rising gas prices.
3. Monument Valley
Remember this beautiful game?
Released in 2014, Monument Valley is a cheap (just 3.99!) puzzle and fantasy adventure game where you take control of the quiet princess Ida and help her get through the weird world of Monument Valley. The game combines impossible geometry and optical illusions to create a thoroughly confusing experience that never gets you frustrated because, come on, look at it.
The game’s gorgeous landscape, which doubles as a puzzle, is rendered in a minimalistic art style with bright, cartoonish colors.
Like Tears of Themis, Monument Valley can be played on mobile. It’s currently available on Google Playstore together with its sequel, Monument Valley 2 which is also worth checking out.
It’s slightly more complex than the original Monument Valley and you have a different set of protagonists, Ro and her child who she’s giving lessons to about the sacred geometry of the game. It’s a lovely game with a music box-ish soundtrack that gives it the same overall vibe as the entirety of r/oddlysatisfying.
Word on the internet is that Monument Valley is getting its own film. How they plan to adapt a game that looks like this into a film, I don’t know. But it’s a thing and it was announced in 2018 by UsTwo Games, the game’s developer.
The adaptation is set to be made by Paramount Pictures and directed by Patrick Osborne. Whether that movie will see the light of day (considering there hasn’t been any news about it and it’s already 2021), we’ll never know. Only time will tell. For now, just enjoy the game!
4. House Flipper
Okay, maybe you’re like me and you’ve sunk hundreds of hours into The Sims 4 because it’s got an amazing build mode where you can live out your architect and interior designer fantasies. But we know that’s not enough to hold your attention forever because there’s just no gameplay.
Don’t let yourself burn out on The Sims 4 when another game can offer a “similar enough that it’s comforting” but also “different enough that it’s exciting” type of experience.
In House Flipper, you get to be your own one-person HGTV. The game is exactly what it says on the box. You work as a faceless, voiceless house flipper who buys houses, fixes them up, and sells them again.
When the game says the houses are fixer-uppers, it really means “you’re going to find a box full of roaches in the basement. It’s disgusting, but the satisfaction you feel after every blown fuse is replaced and the bathroom is scrubbed clean makes all the Resident Evil-worthy parts worth it.
House Flipper can be customized with a handful of equally fun and satisfying DLCs. The Garden Flipper DLC lets you add being a landscaper to your list of home renovation activities so you can experience the joys of a massive yard even if you live in a high-rise apartment in the middle of a city. You can buy House Flipper and its DLCs as a bundle that includes the actual HGTV collab DLC and the Luxury DLC where you get to flip houses you will likely never set foot in in real life.
5. Hades
Are these games a little too chill for you? You might like Hades more.
This action RPG plops you into the depths of hell. Bet you wish you stuck with the house game, huh? Okay, hell would be an incorrect way to describe it since you aren’t in hell, you’re in the Greek Underworld.
Hades puts a spin on Greek mythology that makes it feel like the folks upstairs at Mount Olympus might get along someday. You play as Zagreus, prince of the Underworld and son of Hades and Persephone.
Your dad basically has you grounded in the Underworld and your goal is to escape him so you can bring the family together and clear the air regarding the circumstances of his birth and his mother’s whereabouts.
Of course, the divine family can get a little messy. When you’re not running small errands for the other Underworld staff members or getting two legendary lovers back together, you’re fighting them.
This is where the hack-and-slash elements of the game come in. All that errand-running you do for the other staff and the bonds you forge with the Olympians results in them granting you their favor. These power boosts help you fight your way out of the Underworld as the game gets progressively harder the further you get to the surface.
You might think all that fighting and brutality make the game stressful rather than relaxing. But Hades‘ story treats its combat and death moments with a lighthearted sense of dark humor, if such a thing even exists, so it never feels like the world is against you even when it literally is.
6. Cookie Run: Kingdom
Cookie Run: Kingdom is a new game released back in January 2021. As you can already likely guess from the name and photo above, the game is about a bunch of cookie characters who escape from their witch creators and establish their cookie kingdom.
The game is the sixth installment of a series of Cookie Run games developed by South Korean game studio, Devsisters. The story of Cookie Run: Kingdom picks up where earlier games left off, telling players about a long-gone age of cookie heroes powered by something called a SoulJam. When the heroes fell, the golden age of the cookie civilization came to an end. But now, there’s a new group of cookie heroes stepping up to save all the other cookies.
Don’t be fooled by how it looks. This sweet, sugar-coated game is an action RPG just like Hades except there’s a gacha element. “Gacha” is enough to scare a lot of players off, but there’s really no need to pay real money to play Cookie Run: Kingdom. The game is free-to-play and Devsisters’ generosity with its in-game currency makes it easy to stay a F2P player.
The game has some Cities: Skylines lite elements. Along with the fighting and emotional rollercoaster that comes with the gacha, you can build your very own cookie kingdom complete with houses and cafes for your cookies.
7. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
There are only two things that suck about CCGs: A.) How hard it is to build a meta deck and B.) Annoying opponents who insist on roping and will waste your time until they’re forced to end their turn.
Gwent? Amazing. Legends of Runeterra? Fantastic Hearthstone? Well, let’s forget about it. But Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is where it’s really at.
I didn’t expect much from Thronebreaker because it’s not like I played a game like it before, but man, it builds on everything that made Gwent and The Witcher 3 good games in their own right. You get both the cards and the amazing writing of the two other Witcher games in one fun card dueling game where the AI never ropes you.
Thronebreaker is a single-player game where you play as the legendary Queen Meve of the kingdom of Lyria and Rivia. Queen Meve fights her enemies on the battlefield in the form of a Gwent match (the in-universe card game, not the actual video game of the same name). The queen’s soldiers can be placed on one of two rows on the board. Like both TW3 and Gwent, this game’s Gwent makes use of complicated card position shenanigans to activate powerful effects and set off a string of unstoppable strategies.