games

Seems almost cliche to recommend Stardew Valley but it's my go to relax and play at my pace game. Extremely low stakes gameplay

Might I recommend Hades, a roguelight about killing your dad and becoming your own person. There's a lot of progress to unlock over time, the story is very satisfying, you can pick it up on pretty much any platform, and I think the aspect of building up relationships with people over time is extremely well done.

what's your therapeutic category?

for example: doom eternal is therapeutic. so is stardew valley. but both in very different ways.

i will recommend against stardew valley actually, people forget that it's a low-key dating sim, might not be what you want after a bad breakup. or maybe it is

Minecraft and Undertale are the first two I'd recommend, they're classics for a reason.

Outside of that though? The new Wolfenstein series. Easily some of the greatest FPSes ever made. Killing Nazis is extremely satisfying, and the sequel gets into abuse pretty hard. BJ's dad is abusive as fuck, and they show very accurate depictions of the abuse. The 2nd game has a lot of moments that are hard to get through, but ultimately work because of just how GREAT it feels to kill the shitheads.

The Outer Wilds. One of those games you should go into knowing as little as possible but trust me.

Tetris is known to be therapeutic for healing from a traumatic event.

• https://tetr.io/ (but disable chat)
• https://jstris.jezevec10.com/
• https://nuketris.com/

Gris is only about 4-6 hours to finish but it's about dealing with loss and is under $4 on gog right now. Would definitely class it in the "games as art" category.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/gris

Dave the Diver has had a lot of critical acclaim.

It has a cute storyline, it isn't high-pressure although it still has its peaks of action and tension in the game, and overall it's a pretty relaxing game to play without being an office cubicle simulator.

There's a nice mix of microgenres within the game so it's got a bit of an old school RPG feel to it in that sense. If I could describe it in one sentence I'd say that it's a series of different mini-games of varying scale stitched together in a nearly seamless way and wrapped in a narrative.

You'll probably get 20 to 30 hours out of it, although the pacing is mostly self-directed so you could likely speedrun it in half that time or stretch it out to double or triple if you want to enjoy it at a leisurely pace or you want to keep on doing smaller stuff without advancing the narrative forward.

Here's a good first-time play through from the start of the game if you want to get a feel for the style of the game but maybe just watch the first 10 or 15 mins I guess because if you go too far then you'll encounter spoilers.

Good luck and make sure to congratulate yourself on getting out. You deserve to heal and you deserve happiness.

Journey is only 2 hours long, but is probably the most relaxing game you'll ever play.

You could try Death Stranding. it's about walking around and scary ghosts, but it's really about alienated people very deliberately rebuilding their connections with humanity after experiencing great and profound loss. it kept me going for a while during the early years of the Pandemic.

Night in the Woods! Beautiful, very chill game overall about friendship and healing from trauma in a meaningless world.

Owlboy is pretty nice. The setting is beautifully soothing, and it's got a lot of charm.

Superliminal is a really good surreal game that forces you to think outside the box, though it's short and you can easily complete it in one sitting.

Tetris has been found to reduce PTSD flashbacks in people who play it after a traumatic incident. Not sure what the parameters on that are, but I do know that Tetris rules regardless.

Play the game called Everything

Portal 1 is about 4ish hours, and Portal 2 I think is about 8-13ish.

I greatly enjoy the puzzle solving nature of the game, and they aren't that expensive on steam.

Sable: Combat-free 3rd person adventure game where you glide around and ride a floating dune buggy. It's a coming of age story where your goal is to learn about and eventually choose a trade to do for the rest of your life. 8 to 20 hours, depending on how much side content you do.

Terraria: 2d Minecraft, except with bosses, cool swords, magic, ranged weapons and guns, only has fantasy violence. Only negative: a bit wiki dependent. I have 200 hours in the game, but you could get through a lot of it in 30 hours. Lots of time spent upgrading to new armor and weapons after mining a bunch. It is kinda self directed though.

Sea of Stars: Cool RPG a bit like Chrono Trigger, with incredible music and some pretty cool plot moments. 28-35 hours. Fantasy combat only. Really cool party system where you have 3 active slots, and you can switch party members freely.

persona 5 puts you in a time vacuum and completely sucks you into the story and world. although it is very :awooga: at times...

Thanks do much for the suggestions. I'll consider these in the future. I'm playing Crash Bandicoot for the time being 😁

Lumines puts me in a trance when I play it. I think I like it better than Tetris. It's a digital drug. Beautiful, challenging, and satisfying when you get really good at it.

Seasons: A Letter to the Future is about a young woman setting out to explore and chronicle the world before the end of an "era". No violence, photos, drawings and audio recordings.

Do you have Steam?

Ultrakill, fast paced singleplayer shooter, cocaine in videogame form

If you just want to turn your brain off and vibe to a peaceful puzzle game, I recommend dorfromantik. I had a very traumatic near death experience a few years ago, and when I just needed to relax and bring my body out of fight or flight mode or pending panic attacks, that game helped a lot.

I've been really getting into survival games, lately. The gameplay loop can be relaxing.

Sea of Stars is a good Chrono Trigger like RPG. Great story, sad-ish but satisfying ending.

Stardew Valley is another good one. It does have some elements of abusive relationships but you don't really have to interact with the townsfolk if you don't want. You can farm and mine just fine.

I just played dragon quest builders for two weeks that was pretty nice

getting iut of an abusive relationship is a struggle but I hope with some time you see how good it is for you <3

what systems do you have/play on? Im on ps5 and Ive been really sucked into the phantom pain, which is great.

Stardew Valley. The premise is literally built around escaping from a former life to start anew

old school runescape so you can absolutely torch your attention to your thoughts with grinding 1000 copper ore at a time

Hard agree with portal games

Far: Lone Sails and its sequel.

Tetris effect can be beautiful and when you get “in the zone” it’s very easy to forget the world, for a time at least.

Duskers: use roombas to explore derelict spaceships. Best played full screen in a dark room while listening to local shortwave radio for maximum immersion

Dungeon crawl stone soup: please excuse the devs fishing out whatever gets added to the soup so they can keep the focus on the stone. Learn vikeys

The outer wilds.

It's my go-to rec but for good reasons. I 100% feel it's a therapeutic game in the general sense of the word.