Yeah, Lawnmower Sim looks to fall under those zen cleaning games like House Flipper, Viscera Cleanup Detail, Power Wash Simulator, etc. Just spend time in a low-stress game bringing order to chaos and feeling “constructive” even if you’re totally not.
PC Build Simulator is fun if you’re into PC hardware and want a light management sim. I actually prefer the free IT expansion to the base game since it lets you ignore paying rent and potentially going bankrupt and instead just run the PC fixing/building missions and do your own free-building on the side with leftover components. It also got rid of the tedious cable-by-cable installation and individually removing screws in the base game until you buy the tools to automate it. No dropping screws into the case though. My son claims that he’s learned a bit of fundamentals from it both in how a PC comes together and relative hardware tiers or stuff like memory speeds.
It’s reasonably “realistic” while still being a game. My biggest peeve is that it doesn’t recognize the importance of memory channels and will let you drop RAM sticks anywhere without it being an issue. I always wind up correcting the systems it sends me for repair
I played power wash simulator for a bit (it was on Game Pass). It was nice to chill out to but it was also way too picky about ‘finishing’ sections. You’d be nearly done and would have to hunt around desperately trying to find enough hidden pixels of dirt to trigger completion. Really ruined the flow (heh) of the game.
“Mom Hid My Game” is also free on Prime Gaming. However, it is a Nintendo Switch game.
I have a code for it and I don’t own a Switch, so if someone’s interested in my code, feel free to DM. I’ll give it a few days and then randomly choose a winner from among those who express interest.
Agree. I play American Truck Simulator and Snowrunner.
For anybody curious, on the ‘relaxing’ scale ATS is more relaxing than Snowrunner which has some potentially stressful aspects such as rolling your truck over and down a hill and losing your load, requiring you to bring more trucks to recover that one. Still, can be very relaxing most of the time and it looks amazing.
ATS has long stretches of just driving down the highway. I haven’t played it for a little bit, but once you get established (and get expansions with other states) you can do runs that take over an hour of real time. And it has “satellite radio” in the game, with a decent selection of stations though sometimes it can be finicky.
First Class Trouble looks like a realistic version of “Among Us”. I never cared for that game much (I’m probably too old to be the target demographic), and I’m not eager for party games to play on my PC, but I grabbed it anyway.
Gamedec looks really cool though. It takes place in a Blade Runner sort of setting, but it plays like you’re hopping between Holodeck scenarios in Star Trek to solve crimes. Neat concept.
It seems Gamedec also has a free character pack you can get for free but you have to make the point of also getting it…it does not come automatically (unless it is in the Definitive Edition but it showed as a separate thing to get so…I dunno).
I just wanted to point out that I finally got around to playing Gamedec and it’s really fun. It feels kind of like “Disco Elysium Lite”. It’s very dialog-heavy, and choices you make influence aspects of your personality which translate to skills you can purchase to help get you past obstacles. It’s a lot simpler (it seems like a lower-budget version) but it’s pretty good for free, especially if you like DE.
