Animal Crossing: New Horizons might be the most obvious selection on this list, but it’s no accident that this was the game that blew up when the pandemic hijacked modern life in 2020. It’s just about the platonic ideal of the capital-R Relaxing Video Game, a nonviolent escapist fantasy with no fail state, no overwrought narrative and constant progression. It broadly tasks you with developing a deserted island as you see fit. You plant flowers, catch bugs, pave pathways, talk with your animal buddy neighbors, collect a million things and generally hang out.
Everything passes in real time, so sometimes you have to wait to complete whatever little task you had in mind. On the surface, much of what you do is comically unremarkable. (You don’t save people, you buy furniture.) But, like Stardew Valley, the slowness and mundanity is what sells the whole thing. It points toward some of life’s little pleasures – watching things grow, getting to know others, seeing what a new day brings – and gives you a space to enjoy them, at least in some fashion.
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