Celeste can be quite casual and also challenging at the same time.
You can die as many times and the game doesn't punish you, you can save at any point and come back exactly where you lef off later.
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2023
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Gaming
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Celeste’s difficulty scaling is great. First play through, though, be ready to break a sweat maneuvering some rooms. It also has great music, which is at least worth a listen.
Oh the music alone is worth it :) I sometimes find myself listening to it at work, and if you leave the suggestions on after it's done what follows is also incredible, found a lot of cool indie games based on that, GRIS is a good example.
What about tycoon games ? Old school ones are usually still very playable. Or for something more recent Planet Zoo can be as slow and peaceful as you like
Cities: Skylines is worth a mention too! There's a bit of a learning curve but it's good fun. And pocket city 2 for a mobile version
Tetris effect, katamari damacy - these two are the epitome of replayability and pick up/put down mechanics IMNSHO
This is my exact genre of choice. I’m only gonna list the games I play, because I can’t name them all.
Just about any sandbox survival game will fit the bill:
- Minecraft (obvi, but needs another mention)
- Satisfactory
- Rust
- Valheim
- Raft (there’s some story to read if you want to actually complete the game)
Then you have the simulators:
- Dreamlight Valley (a lot of story in this one, but once you get past the dialogue and tutorials it’s basically fetch quests and farming)
- My Time at Portia (same with this)
- Car Mechanic Simulator 2021
- House Flipper
- The Sims
- TABS (honourable mention; whimsical battle sandbox with some customisability)
I love to play from time to time Banished with podcasts. Once you figure out how to survive then it's just "how much can I build on a map before my PC explodes".
Ostriv seems nice too, but it's still in alpha, so weird things happen like villagers going out to buy candles or soap and returning with shoes.
Dead Cells was my go-to podcast game for quite a while! Story tidbits are few and far between, and it’s more about finding your stride in subsequent runs. There’s a lot of DLC that often goes on sale too.
Mordhau is definitely one of few casual games medieval fighting game where you can mindlessly kill other players and laugh your ass off. But at the same time its the type of game you can get really good at too. So it has a very in depth combat experience
Kartrider is a well developed Mariokart like game that is basically on all platforms (except Switch obviously).
Pokémon, via emulation.
I'm playing Ultra Moon on the Steam Deck and it's wonderful and chill.
I've started playing Infinite Fusion this week and it's really fun!
A Short Hike has dialog and a shorter play time but you can just ignore that and soar around the island. It's got an isometric view with a pixel art style. I really enjoy it. I play it when I'm hung over.
The X3 games, I think?
They may be ancient, and weird, and buggy, and huge time wasters, and frustrating, but hey I have like 500 hours of playtime on them
... oh, they also have a learning curve that C++ developers are afraid of but I would still call them "casual games" somehow
Two casual-adjecent games I played a lot over the past week are Mini Motorways and Inscryption: Kacey's Mod.
The first one is like a simplified city building simulator that works more like an evolving puzzle, you just build roads to connect houses and buildings of the same color while trying to keep traffic moving along. It might sound overly simple but it gets hectic and intense incredibly fast.
The other is an expansion to the original Inscryption game, which was a roguelike deckbuilder with a horror-ish spin that, no spoilers, went places lmao. What the expansion does is essentially take out all the story and convert a specific part of the game into an actual endlessly repeatable roguelike. It's challenging, but very engaging, and the presentation is just 10/10.
Snow Runner! Very chill if you like driving and nice sceneries. But it becomes Dark Souls real quick.