What games help you destress or warm up your brain?

[QueriesNTheories]

In the title!

I am an anxious person, and in the last year I've had to try doubly hard to self-soothe and ease my own stress during really tense times. Life is weird like that lol. I tend to go to arcadey style games or comforting ones I know well if I'm not feeling right
Some games that help me see through the noise in my head in particular are:

• I Love Hue (and I Love Hue Too)
• Flow Free (the expansion packs are so worth the purchase)
• Ouros
• the Peggle games
• Bejewelled 3 (or Bejewelled Classic on mobile)

I also like a good puzzle/brain teaser game to prevent my brain from turning into slop. Not a big fan of strategy games so a few of these are in the same sort of arcadey/casual category:

• Professor Layton
• Snakebird (albiet very slowly, the main game is HARD. Buy Snakebird Primer first)
• Brain Training 1 and 2 for DS (or Brain Age for you 'muricans. I wanna get the Switch version, it looks cool)
• Ninimaths (which I found like two days ago, it's basically just maths problems lol)
• The Bart Bonte Collection (kinda owed it to him to buy the collection tbh, he's made so many cool games)
• Sam & Max (those two are so much fun in comic form I just had to get the games)

Honourable mention to Tetris which does fit into both of these categories for me, but the best port of Tetris for mobile was EA Tetris and I can only access it via APKs with Bluestacks >:(
So I just play on Tetr.io instead lol. I wanna get into Tetris Effect but that price tag hurtsss
Puyo Puyo Tetris is cool though. Wanna play it for real someday, the characters look like so much fun

[fitsoab]

I don't usually play games to destress but this post makes me happy because my partner does. She fluctuates a lot but one that always caught me interest was old school Runescape! She says it's kind of a "boring game," but in a way that distracts her with the busywork. I especially love just how cute and old the game is, full of weird nonsense and lacking a bunch of video game conventions we didn't have yet. Probably the silliest looking game I have ever seen.

[Pearlple]

I absolutely like that question. I haven't consciously thought about this for a while. For me various different kind of games can be de-stressing. On the one hand it can be small distractions and puzzle games like:

• Patrick's Parabox (solving Puzzles feels great)
• Baba is you (solving Puzzles feels great)
• Dorfromantik
• Terra Nil (very wholesome)
• Balatro (immensely satisfying gameplay)
• Mini Motorways

Then there is just open exploration sandboxes and worlds to marvel at or just idle around in, like:

• No Man's Sky (endless everything, your imagination is the limit)
• Just Cause series
• Subnautica (I know, I just played it so much, that there is no anxiety left)
• Avatar (beautiful world)
• Wildmender (very wholesome)

And the final category for me are games that I just played so much, that they have become routine things I can play while letting my mind wander:

• Borderlands series
• Skyrim
• Surviving Mars
• Vampire Survivors (immensely satisfying gameplay)
• Broforce
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Horizon series (beautiful world)
• Humankind
• Slay the Spire
• Two Point Museum
• Hades
• Hollow Knight
• Saint's Row 3/4
• Far Cry series

...damn turns out there are quite a lot of games that can brighten my mood after a bad day at work and such. I guess it always depends on what I am looking for.

[CitricScion]

I don't always get around to playing my game to destress, but it's Minecraft. I will forget how good a job Minecraft does of taking away stress. Lately I've been trying Luanti and it fits in the same bucket.