This was difficult to read in Firefox without reader mode. No mention of that tiny town building game I've been looking for again (non-gridded, very adaptive, kind of medieval), which is shame because I completely forgot its name.
One of my favorite games is A Short Hike. It's not the same kind of game as Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, etc, but the writing is brilliant and it always makes me content whenever I play it.
Absolutely love A Short Hike. Perfect to relax in bed or on the couch on the Deck and just relax. I have fallen asleep playing it multiple times. Just wandering and soaring and climbing.
Another game that gave me similar vibes to A Short Hike was Lil Gator Game.
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.
I've played slither quite a bit, and I find it very stressful, it's hard to survive and very frustrating when you die, but I do think it's a brilliant little game.
If you get the mod so you can zoom out it gets a LOT easier! I play on the Pacific Servers a lot, if you see me on there I am LARGE MARGE. That's funny you find it stressful whereas I find it relaxing.
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, ...
Came here to post this. There’s just something so comforting to the soul about that world. There are no politics, crime, religion, homelessness, war, or disease. Just melons. Melons, pumpkins, turnips, corn, rice, and potatoes. Visiting that place is like pure heroin for people with anxiety.
I guess I never noticed that. I actually never paid attention to the story or characters at all. Just spent hundreds of hours growing increasingly large quantities and qualities of produce.
Maybe politics, but it isn’t necessarily fighting “against”. You can play the Jojo path, get different perks, and the shopkeep doesn’t become unemployed.
Plus the intro of the game is the player moving to the farm to escape a soul-crushing corporate job, only to find that same sort of culture taking root in their pastoral sanctuary.
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.
I hear your point, but there's literally a homeless NPC and an NPC suffering from combat PTSD. Another way of looking at it might be that you're empowered to make a meaningful difference in the lives of those people which feels good.
Not only does that second NPC suffer from PTSD, he's absent from the village for the first year, serving in the military that's actively fighting a war.
When I started stardew I didn't know how to play so I would spend days waking up walking around and then go back to sleep repeating until my parsnips grew, but when I introduced my SO to the game, we ended up trying to learn how to actually play and then ended up with spreadsheets to track all the seasons, grow cycles, relationships and whatever else lol
Its also chores that have an end, that you can have mastery over, that makes for only a small amount of variation compared to all of life.
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."
Right now I’m playing Sail Forth and it hits that stress reducer for me. It does have combat but totally optional and the exploration and fishing and discovery is so relaxing.
Going in the complete opposite direction, getting through Elden Ring two summers ago really helped me through what was the worst heartbreak of my life, an undoubtably stressful and anxious time for me.
Same in terms of quelling anxiety, but I think the commenter was referencing the fact that, in contrast to the original post mentioning 'cozy' games, this commenter is talking about a highly 'un-cozy' game.
Fairness and difficulty are orthogonal to each other, no one said the game is unfair. But it is definitely very challenging, and that’s not marketing as far as I know - I have yet to see a trailer etc for the game that says anything about difficulty. Dark Souls did that a lot more with their "prepare to die edition" or the opening of DS2.
There’s something about getting into a flow state with the game in a From Soft title that is relaxing to me as well. Even dying a dozen times in a row.
I don't think I ever made it into flow state once in Elden Ring even though I beat it. I just grinded until I was high level enough that it didn't matter that I didn't time any of the bosses right.
Throw in renowned ashes and party. Or get poise breaking and the mimic tear. So many ways to absolutely stomp Elden Ring if that’s what you want to do.
There's a meme in the FromSoft communities about how "Dark Souls cured my depression" that I think gets unfairly clowned on. So many people have posted anecdotes like that and been made fun of, but I think there is actually something there. Overcoming difficult challenges in a video game can, I'm convinced, help when your brain is stuck in a learned helplessness mode.
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.
That is one possible explanation. However i have a different theory why difficult games like this can help.
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.
The great thing about FromSoft games is that I know I'm not being coddled. The game isn't trying to hold my hand (or against me), it's giving me fair, intense challenges.
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.
During a layoff eons ago, I did something similar albeit with Shin Megami Tensei. The repetition, grinding, and lore aspect that come with those kinds of RPGs definetly help reduce stress.
Myst and Riven are surely the poster children for this. They’re practically ASMR and you can just chill on any screen and enjoy it without fear of anything happening.
Wow, what an interesting piece of journalism, in regards to the presentation. It reminded me of when I saw the NYT’s Snow Fall piece for the first time. At the time, it was an amazing display of cutting edge UI skills that exhibited both skill and restraint. Great storytelling to boot.
Maybe games do have something special because you have to be more actively engaged and empathizing with coziness part puts us in a calming mood. But it seems obvious to me that anything that you can engage with has a similar effect and games are just one type of media. Books, movies, music can do the same thing too, you just have to know how to get in on it and not suffer through it if it doesn’t click the first time. I don’t think it’s only the cozy part that brings the benefits but rather what effects that media or genre has on you at that moment in time. Over time what bring me calm and comfort has drifted somewhat.
Wow. I was not expecting that at all. I wish there were more reporting like this.
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?
There is no escaping stress or anxiety. Life is a nightmare, and the best you can do is accept it as an objective fact and try to make it better for others, since you will never be able to make it better for yourself.
hey -- I'm not sure what's got you thinking this, but I'd encourage you to consider that the way things seem when we're in emotional states (even long-lasting ones) aren't always reflective of the way things are.
Somewhere in the world right now, someone is suffering immensely, unjustly, and with no hope of relief. This is always true at any given moment. How can we sit back and be happy when these forgotten people die daily? And statistics indicate they're probably living next door to each one of us. The status quo is not good. Do what you will, but I'm not going to pretend this life is a paradise.
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.
Having empathy for the suffering in both other people and yourself does not close the door on still finding at least some amount of inner joy or peace. If you can only have any amount of joy when every other living being in the universe is totally free of suffering, then you are doomed to never have even an ounce of happiness.
> I'm not going to pretend this life is a paradise
"I said ... that there was enough suffering in one narrow London lane to show that God did not love man, and that wherever there was any sorrow, though but that of a child, in some little garden weeping over a fault that it had or had not committed, the whole face of creation was completely marred. I was entirely wrong. . . . Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection."
I've seen this in some other communities... the idea that any suffering outweighs all the joys of life. That life is a nightmare because pain and suffering exist.
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.
You can't improve your situation. Others can, but you can't, even by influencing others to, precisely because it would sitll be you trying to improve yours. You can only improve theirs.
No problems inherently cause horror. It's when we feel unloved that the smallest problem can seem like a nightmare. Almost no one in the world truly has genuine, selfless love. So countless people's problems seem insurmountable to themselves. When someone is willing to lift some of your burden, or at least share in it, this is the only proof of genuine love, and even when it doesn't truly solve the problems, it reduces or even removes the horror from them. But it has to be someone other than you, because love must be given and received from an other, and we are not an "other" to ourselves, even if in brokenness we often seem so. I think this is probably best exemplified by Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus Christ carry his cross.
I mean, that's just physical work, Jesus could have carried his own damn cross if he'd been super-strong like Samson. (Possible bible fanfic idea? Make Jesus basically Samson, see how it pans out.)
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.
In the entire Passion, Jesus represented every individual person, the weakest, the most vulnerable, the guilty, the poor, the abandoned. However you treat them is how you treat him in that moment. So you can try to make that argument for him in context, but then you'd have to make the same argument for every instance where you could help someone but try to argue that you shouldn't have to. If an old lady falls and breaks a bone, will you call the hospital or blame her for not taking better care of her bone health? If you find a child crying in an alley, will you bring it to the authorities, or leave it there so you can look for the mom and find a way to blame her? People are meant to be helped, not victim-blamed. That's a very large point of Jesus and the Crucifixion. Whatever you do to him, you do to others, and whatever you do to the least in the world, you do to Him.
Well nobody deserves blame for being a scrawny little weakling. However it's still technically possible to get stronger, which puts a hole in your assertion that it's impossible to improve one's own situation. It might very well be better if we help one another rather than trying exclusively to help ourselves (consider what Adam Smith had to say about the division of labor). But self-help and self-reliance still exist, when it comes down to it.
Don't worry about downvotes here, they don't matter.
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.
"[E]verything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
—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."
"Another common use of brackets is when you want to capitalize the first letter of a quotation that is not capitalized in the original. As long as the part of the sentence you’re using is not a sentence fragment, you can use brackets around the first letter to capitalize it."
I found Eternal different enough to 2016 that I just bounced off it. The glory kill system was expanded in Eternal and you have to keep doing it to acquire resources. The mobility is a huge step up though.
Dark Ages' combat seems closer to 2016, with much larger areas.
The way I put it is that Doom (2016) is more balls-out heavy metal, whereas Doom Eternal is more of a "concept album".
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.
Yes. I never enjoyed "cozy" games. Whenever I see them, I recognize that I'm supposed to feel coziness, but I don't. They're just boring, nothing happens. They remind me of places where I have to behave, which makes me stressed out.
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.
I recently played Dead Space Remake and it is fantastic - from the limb-separating game mechanics to the out-in-space eerie atmosphere, there is nothing quite like it.
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:
>They remind me of places where I have to behave, which makes me stressed out.
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)
As someone who didn’t play many video games but grew up somewhat adjacent to them, I’m just amazed at how much more relaxed I am having gone through that article (experience?) compared to before.
It's funnily enough the opposite for me, people always give me weird looks when I say that Lovecraft is my favorite author to read when I'm anxious or stressed but there's something cathartic and honest about it.
"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
I'm absolutely with you. It's the pointlessness of cozy games that gets me. It's just clicking around and a weird attempt at making you feel like you've accomplished something (instead of running on a hamster wheel).
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 still think video games are a net negative on society. How come so few women play - their lives are so much more balanced and successful - are games a symptom or a cause?
Isn't it a myth that women don't play as much? If I recall correctly, they just don't play the same games.
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.
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.
It's leisure. I don't see how they are worse than movies or watching sports.
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)
Women make up just about 50% of all gamers, and in many cases they make up the vast majority when you include mobile related games. This has been the case since about 2015.
I had an "incomplete" spinal cord injury back in 2020. Its left me with permanent pain and symptoms, this pain and these symptoms leaves within me a significant amount of ongoing stress.
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.
I don't understand how it is harming anyone—unlike web designers who actively design inaccessible websites—and while I suppose I could offer a reason, I don't particularly feel the need to explain myself.
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…
> 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.
While I fully understand, and try hard to refrain from making such comments, given that the actual point of this article is about stress-relief, but it leverages design patterns which are genuinely awful for accessibility and positive, consistent experiences on the web, it does actually feel topical to me.
Put another way, I do not believe this is about a “tangential” annoyance.
Right. It's front and center; kind of the most obvious talking point about the article. It arguably generates a much stronger visceral reaction than the actual contents. That's why it's such a bad pattern.
371 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 351 ms ] threadEDIT: It's tiny glade
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 :(
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."
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 do you also remember the Dr. Brain series? Those were amazingly restorative to my tiny young brain.
They also publish, but I think they mostly talk about wholesome/cozy/relaxing titles on YT/Bsky/etc.
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?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_all_possible_worlds
—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?
https://www.unpackinggame.com/
https://tetris.com/play-tetris
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)
"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.
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?
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
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.
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.
[1]: https://robinrendle.com/notes/scrolljacking/
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.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Put another way, I do not believe this is about a “tangential” annoyance.
All the best,
-HG