I’m looking for some good games on my PC to play while I relax.
Basically, I want to listen to various podcasts and focus most of my attention on that. I don’t want to just stare at a blank screen tho, so I’m looking for some cool games that require little brain power or interaction.
The best example I’ve found is Euro Truck Simulator 2. Nothing like throwing on the old podcast and hauling some pesticide into northern France.
Anyone have ideas for something similar? Doesn’t have to be driving or anything in particular. Just something I can kinda play almost on autopilot. Preferably building up to some long term goal.
Have there been any better incremental games since Cookie Clicker?
I like Sol Survivor, which I found to be a pretty zen tower defense game. You drop turrets from orbit onto a map, and they kill enemies for you. You can also use air support if you want to be more hands-on with the killing, but I rarely do. I found that it wasn’t too hard on Normal difficulty, and you could probably run Easy on autopilot once you get familiar with the different types of turrets. I know you want to listen to podcasts, but I also really liked the soundtrack.
Microsoft Flight Simulator X. Once you’re in the air, you can literally put it on autopilot.
Spore. You can take your time building your creature, just exploring around, doing whatever. You don’t have to move on to the next phase until you feel like it.
Worms Crazy Golf. It’s golf. With Worms. And “crazy” courses.
Zen Bound 2. You are presented with a wooden sculpture. There is a rope attached to it somewhere. Anywhere you wrap the rope around the sculpture gets painted. Your job is to paint a certain percentage of the sculpture with the length of rope they give you.
I have a friend who plays the various train simulation games for exactly this purpose. He rather enjoys setting all the dials and then just, you know, training from place to place. I don’t claim to understand it, or him, but maybe you will!
Osmos
It’s a very relaxing game where you propel a sphere around and try to absorb smaller spheres and avoid larger ones. Beautiful, relaxing music and graphics.
It’s available on PC, Mac, Linux, IOS, and Android. If you use Steam, they have it on sale once in a while but you can get a PC non-Steam version at my link.
While recuperating from a fall in yoga class, I switched from Borderlands 2 to Civ 5. It’s purely mouse-based, turn-based world building and conquest. You do have to think some to play the game, but you don’t have to think fast, and if you’re ok with getting overrun more often, you can follow a pretty basic build order and still spend hours playing any given level.
Minecraft could fill the void I think. I haven’t played creative mode but I imagine that would be pretty relaxing. Survival mode itself is generally pretty stress free.