What Makes a Game a Good Self-Care Option?

It’s mental health awareness month, alongside several other things including barbecue, Jewish heritage, brain cancer awareness, wildfire awareness, and Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage month. I think it goes without saying, but I don’t think I’m going to talk about all of those, or even a majority. However, over the weekend Alexx reminded me about mental health awareness month, and the cogs started turning after one question he posed. “Can you think of any games off the top of your head that discuss/involve mental health, or [games that] are relaxing?” the former portion of that is easy to cover, but that last bit is, in my opinion, a little harder to pin down to one definition.

See, everyone has a different perspective on games. Between you and I, there are two thoughts that differ, and between myself and my editor that’s another. We all approach games differently, either through external means like work consuming a portion of the time we would put into games, or our moods before playing a game. I know that I have a very very privileged point of view when it comes games, because no matter my mood or external factors I have something I can jump into and relax with. Others, such as kids, don’t have that breadth of a library for several reasons.

Conversely, take for example someone who might be older. They may not have the same built-up reaction time for fast-paced things like the typical Rogue-likes/lites. As a result, they are naturally going to fall into something like Minecraft or something turn-based. Usually they will gravitate toward something you can set your own pace at. The same can be said of someone who’s not able-bodied, or someone that does not have the same motor functions that someone “normal” has. For those people, some games are simply inaccessible. I’ve spoken about it, Alexx has spoken about it, and I’m sure you’ve read/heard about it enough already. Accessibility is one of the biggest issues in gaming, alongside harassment in studios and bullying. That’s the other side of what I’m talking about.

Nonetheless, the question still stands, “can you think of a relaxing game?” Once again, I’m left replying with Dark Souls and F1. That is probably an answer that makes you think I need a few pills to straighten out what’s wrong with me. I honestly don’t know what else to say. I like throwing fancy go-karts into corners at 150mph and having the confidence to come out without issues. I also find swearing profusely at the offspring of Giger and Lovecraft’s monsters quite relaxing, but all the same, others might not. In fact, when others think of relaxing games they are looking at ABZÛ, Stardew Valley, Grow Home, Euro Truck Simulator 2 (or American Truck Sim).

Really, it doesn’t matter what is tagged as “relaxing” on Steam. It is all about what you want to play and what reflects that feeling to you. Drilling it down to the essentials, Euro Truck Sim 2 and F1 2020 are doing the same thing: Driving to an objective. Yes, there are slightly different driving styles, yes I’d be more likely to get pulled over if I drove the F1 car on the road, and one requires a little more focus, but it is more or less the same thing. I’m more likely to listen to podcasts or music while driving a truck. However, like F1 drivers, I’ll use music to get some energy into myself. To me, that’s the same thing. I’m driving and I’m doing so without hitting anyone.

Again, I think this drills down to how I approach games, the choices I have, and what I personally want out of a game. Sometimes my idea of relaxing is skewed towards the normal, and I’ll happily say that Animal Crossing is a fantastic game to wind down to. Beyond the first few hours of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, I don’t think you’ll spend 3-6 hours a day playing it. Though, once again, my mindset on games is skewed to think 3-6 hours is normal; Apparently, it is not.

Of course, New Horizons and its predecessor, New Leaf, are my wind down from a day type of game. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, I’ll get that itch for something relaxing and turn to Red Dead Redemption 2 or Far Cry 5. Neither game is something I’d describe as relaxing, but there is something in there. I disagree with hunting for “sport.” I don’t care what anyone says killing anything is not a sport, but I do enjoy hunting in games. In fact, while I don’t think I’d do it myself, I think hunting for food is fine. Both of those games offer that experience and both do have a hectic and unruly plot which I don’t like. Although, I do enjoy the relaxing Westworld-like life of a cowboy, or a sheriff taking time out to help the community with a bit of elk hunting.

Sometimes, and call me weird if you must, I just start walking around the city of Los Santos in GTA V or the state of San Andreas in GTA: San Andreas. Just walking and watching people, or simply driving aimlessly. Something about that California/Nevada environment is homely and worth exploring to me, just the same as London is in Watch Dogs: Legion. It feels the same as exploring exotic locales such as Kamurocho in the Yakuza games. Until you are forced into those JRPG/Pokémon-like random battles I try to avoid from time to time that is. I know, I am strange.

Not that I’m leaving western-Europe out, there just aren’t that many games set in the former Soviet Union. That said, I am partial to a bit of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Yeah the one with the PR-safe racism as the main point to a lot of the world. I’ll admit, I love exploring that little bit of a world we get to see, including all the vents, which have several dead bodies in there for some reason. My point is, open-world games should be more than what Final Fantasy XV/a number of Japanese games do. I want a place to entrench myself in and explore, not just a massive empty field with several dull locations dotted around it.

What does this have to do with mental health? Sometimes you just need that quiet moment without the first-person shooters and helicopters being shot down over the Middle East. Sometimes that quiet moment is the roar of a V6 hybrid engine, or the call of Moose before it is laying sideways kicking for life. Other times, it is games that are just mellow or typically relaxing. I’m thinking about A Normal Lost Phone, which I’d say doesn’t follow the typical gameplay loop. It is more of a walking sim-style going through the motions of a story that is relaxing and touching.

To fall into the more general gameplay bubble, Wilmot’s Warehouse is fantastic for your poo time/morning commute. It is the type of game where there is a bit of challenge and there is a bit of thinking to go on, but nothing you can’t really do without something else going on. I wouldn’t be making dinner and playing it, that way madness doth lie, but organizing a warehouse while watching a bit of a show that’s just on after having dinner or whatever, is brilliant. There are many games like that for handheld consoles such as the Switch the DS. Pokémon is the prime example, something you can put down for a minute during turn-based battles and wipe.

Alexx made a few good suggestions (under my suggestion), such as Gris. It is one of those examples of the “keep going right until the sad story stops” platformer. It is emotional and touching, but sometimes it can be a little too pretentious for some folks. I’ll say for a day and a lifetime, Cities: Skylines is brilliant in every single way possible if you just want to shuffle traffic issues about the place. A Short Hike, which was free on Epic a while back, was something warm and relaxing. I wish I could have had more time with it. To cap this little section off, once Satisfactory Update 4 unbreaks the mod-manager (I hope), the Passive Mode mod for Satisfactory makes that just one of the best games to be in early access in recent years.

The point I am ultimately trying to get to is something I’ve been saying for the last few moments. Every game you decide to play is some form of relaxing. To some it is the post-work de-stress, others it is the mid-pandemic island get-away you can’t have. Sometimes it is a madman driving a fast car around a bend. I’ve said it 1000-times and I’ll say it 1000 more, just enjoy the games you enjoy and learn what it is you really want out of a game. You should know your mental health and what you find relaxing more than anyone else. Sometimes, I just like shooting the plums off of a Nazi, and that’s ok too!