Your Own Comfort Games

Sir Bill

Sir Bill

Basically, any games that you find yourself going back to time and time again.

Sure, there may be newer and shinier games that you play, your Steam backlog may be growing ever-longer, but even if the game might not be objectively all that good, there's still something about it that you keep going back to.

For myself, I'll name Command and Conquer: Generals. I particularly like the General's Challenge (basically, a series of levels in which you can play as the various subfactions of the game). It's nice to play through them and screw around with new strategies and units, trying out the various factions and all their little changes. At my skill level it's difficult enough that it can be challenging but also not difficult enough that I always have to stick with the most optimal strategy, and a lot of the generals are arrogant enough that it's kind of fun to beat them down. Sometimes I try to finesse a level. Sometimes its fun to just out-economy the enemy and drown them in units. Or just drown them in superweapons. Or do a creeping barrage to open a path for your troops by launching nuclear warheads. There's flexibility there that prevents it from being too samey, even if I've played them countless times and have basically memorized most of the maps.

I like single player campaigns in strategy games, and with how wildly different the commanders can be, this is a single player campaign with enough flexibility that I find myself going back to it frequently and not getting bored.
 
Medieval II Total War.

It reminds me of a time when Total War was still good and fun, and not the trend chasing micro transaction hell it is.
 
A Night In Berlin is a short indie hardcore third-person shooter released in 2020 with only six levels. It features heavily limited ammo, forcing you to rely heavily on melee attacks and lining up trickshots to kill several enemies in a single bullet by guiding them into specific positions. It also features enemies that can turn around in the blink of an eye and kill you instantly with hitscan melee attacks.

The graphics are incredibly low-poly in a strangely stylistic manner, but I found the story intriguing, and the gameplay is tight and challenging in a uniquely rewarding way. There's a speedrun mode that lets you skip all the cutscenes, and once you've figured out all the tricks each level only takes about a minute or so. It's easy to come back to, and it's perfect for when I need some stress relief during five-minute study breaks.
 
X-Com Apocalypse.

I have no idea why. I just like the comfort of knowing how to advance through the tech tree, and the setting of Mega-Primus, and the weird aliens (that look completely different between model sprites and concept art), and ignoring all psionics and Brainsuckers by using all androids all the time. Also, always real-time, never turn-based.

Objectively it isn't a very good game. And I'm sure there are plenty of other games that have some or all of the bits I find comfort in. But I keep coming back to X-Com Apocalypse.
 
Rimworld.

Every so often, after I'm feeling burn out by other games, I find myself launching Rimworld, only to then spend an hour or two removing and adding mods to get my game to launch without crashing from running out of RAM while initialising. And then I spend the next few weeks running a colony before getting distract by a different game and not picking up Rimworld for the next couple of months until the burn out comes again.
 
Civ 4, so many newer and shinier and honestly better 4x's out there, but sometimes you just wanna veg and click buttons you know the order of like the back of your hand
 
Man I have a Bunch of game I keep coming back too even though I have a bunch of un-played games in my steam library.

Starbound (with the FU mod installed): Terriaria but in space, I love it because I can watch/listen to videos/podcasts while I play...

Rimworld: Also usually play this heavily moded, I don't always come back to it but still I love it because I can watch/listen to videos/podcasts while I play...

Gunfire Reborn: Rogue-lite Borderlands-esque looter shooter, I love it because I can watch/listen to videos/podcasts while I play...

....
.....
...Oh it seems all of my most played games share a certain something in common.
 
I'll echo a couple of the picks here, and say that Command and Conquer: Red Alert 2, and Rome: Total War are peak comfort plays for me.

I've recently been replaying Pokemon Heartgold for the millionth time, too, so that probably qualifies.
 
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain.

It's nice to just go back into the open world occasionally and mess around with the sandbox.
 
Devil May Cry 5. The combat feels so good that I can always just boot up a random stage or go into the Bloody Palace and go to town to have a good time.
 
Arknights, weirdly enough. Yes it's a gacha game that wants your daily logins and timed content and blah blah, but I don't bother with that or even log in that often anymore. But the game's made up of little 2-5-minute tower defence challenges that are short and sweet, and by this point the game has a lot of them.

What The Golf and Clustertruck rate similarly, in that you can pick them up, do a level or two to decompress and then just get back on with life.

There's also Metro 2033, when I feel like reliving the London Experience.
 
Dungeon keeper of you wanf to take out frustrations from work, bloons tower defense 6 (gotta love the mortar monkey now that it's a beast on chimps mode)
 
I'll just boot up Outer Wilds, fly into space and listen to the music, the sounds of your precious irreplaceable friends. Touching base with a story and characters you've known and know all about already is a good way to feel real.
 
the SMT Digital Devil Saga duology. DDS is just a game I've played so many times that it feels like putting on a really comfy sweater whenever I come back to it. I like the story and music and stuff but the monotony of the RPG grind is really theraputic for me.
Also Recettear. Number go up makes me happy :]
 
MC_Lovecraft said:
I've recently been replaying Pokemon Heartgold for the millionth time, too, so that probably qualifies.
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Eyyy, another HeartGold enjoyer! HG was my first mainline Pokemon game, and though people seem to be turning against the Johto games lately, I still really enjoy HG. I've recently picked it up again (this is my second playthrough) and am in the process of taking on the Kanto gym leaders. I made the mistake of taking Sabrina on too early, and she whupped my ass. I returned after battling a lot of trainers and beat her thanks to my Sudowoodo's Feint Attack and Sucker Punch, and then I took on Janine...and she was so easy. Her levels were a lot lower than Sabrina's, so I guess I wasn't supposed to beat Sabrina before her. Oops.

As for other comfort games, I have two series, and they're both Pokemon spinoffs:

1. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, specifically Rescue Team DX, Explorers, and Gates. I didn't really like Super, but I won't go into that. I prefer RTDX to the originals because the QOL enhancements actually let me play through the postgame dungeons! In the originals, I kept losing the Dive HM, and I had no one on my team who could learn it, and once it was gone it was gone forever (until I reloaded my save), so I was stuck. I'm super glad that DX took out that requirement. The repetitive gameplay is super relaxing for me, but it's challenging as well. I've been doing a lot of the RTDX postgame dungeons, and maybe someday I'll actually beat Mt. Faraway...

2. Pokepark (1 and 2). Childish? Yes. Do I care? No. It's just so much fun to wander around and try to play all the minigames, explore every area, befriend every Pokemon, find the secrets, and just goof off. I loved to "play soccer" in Cove Town and watch the Pokemon interact, which usually ended up with everyone fighting. It was entertaining. The games are just so wholesome and relaxing!
 
Illune said:
Eyyy, another HeartGold enjoyer! HG was my first mainline Pokemon game, and though people seem to be turning against the Johto games lately, I still really enjoy HG. I've recently picked it up again (this is my second playthrough) and am in the process of taking on the Kanto gym leaders. I made the mistake of taking Sabrina on too early, and she whupped my ass. I returned after battling a lot of trainers and beat her thanks to my Sudowoodo's Feint Attack and Sucker Punch, and then I took on Janine...and she was so easy. Her levels were a lot lower than Sabrina's, so I guess I wasn't supposed to beat Sabrina before her. Oops.

As for other comfort games, I have two series, and they're both Pokemon spinoffs:

1. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, specifically Rescue Team DX, Explorers, and Gates. I didn't really like Super, but I won't go into that. I prefer RTDX to the originals because the QOL enhancements actually let me play through the postgame dungeons! In the originals, I kept losing the Dive HM, and I had no one on my team who could learn it, and once it was gone it was gone forever (until I reloaded my save), so I was stuck. I'm super glad that DX took out that requirement. The repetitive gameplay is super relaxing for me, but it's challenging as well. I've been doing a lot of the RTDX postgame dungeons, and maybe someday I'll actually beat Mt. Faraway...

2. Pokepark (1 and 2). Childish? Yes. Do I care? No. It's just so much fun to wander around and try to play all the minigames, explore every area, befriend every Pokemon, find the secrets, and just goof off. I loved to "play soccer" in Cove Town and watch the Pokemon interact, which usually ended up with everyone fighting. It was entertaining. The games are just so wholesome and relaxing!
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Blue version was one of the first games I ever played outside of Tetris, but Johto will always be my favorite region. There's just something so comfy about each of the little towns, and I feel that the monster design peaked in gens 2 and 3. Before HG/SS came out, Crystal was probably the game I played the most over the years.
 
Mega Man X4. The Perfect Mega Man game.

It has sublime controls, fantastic level design complimenting the protagonists' movements, excellent and fun to use weapons, creative boss fights, a cheesy but terrible storyline with one-off characters getting hijacked by Sigma, awful voice acting in well-animated anime cutscenes, the absolute best upgrade suite in any Mega Man game before or since and the single greatest Mega Man X armor set, bullshit spike traps are kept at a minimum and Dr. Light Being An Asshole Moments low.

This is a comfortable playthrough, and that's just as X. I feel like I'm killing a part of my soul when I choose Zero's campaign and playstyle but his campaign is equally great.

It's not a perfect game. Jet Stingray's Ride Chaser stage sucks ass and I can never forgive him for Volt Kraken on principle. The weapons are fun and satisfying to use but quite a bit of them are useless against the enemies you want to kill with them, Cyber Peacock a bitch, Double a bitch, and the waste of Iris is why I feel like killing a part of my soul when I play Zero, even though the game is very much about him. I love Iris. My mascot is an lore-central kayfabe clone of her. (the Radiaforce HEAT Director? That refers to her, not me) I dun wanna kill her cos that's like killing my wife.

Anyway, not a perfect game. But it is the Perfect Mega Man game, and it's gorgeous to boot. There's a reason I always cite my dream game as a Vanillaware-developed Mega Man X4R, with a playable Repliforce mode, that sets up a new timeline of Mega Man.
 
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Stardew Valley. It's just cozy and I like the music and it's not very complicated.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, and Morrowind, for Extreme Nostalgia.
 
Final Fantasy XIV is probably the big one for me. I've got a lot of games that I play, and a lot of them that I come back to fairly regularly, but none that I keep returning to as consistently as FF14.

It's a game that means a lot to me for a lot of reasons and it just...feels like home.
 
I'm going to say Middle Earth: Shadow of War. I can just pop on, start a siege of one of my forts, have a big brawl which I'll probably lose due to it being on brutal difficulty ( which makes everybody go down faster), and then spend a couple hours taking out the new commanders spawning in, taking a few to join my army.

The game has a nice melancholy to it now. The story is over, Sauron and his legion are coming, and you can just hold on as long as you can. Your allies that you gain over the course of the game gradually begin to fall in battle, and either you let them go or bring them back as mindless undead servants. The protagonist is mostly silent now, flitting about in the garb of a ringwraith and bringing death by the edge of his sword wherever he goes.

I wouldn't say it grabs me like it used to for long stretches, but for those hours at night where I don't feel like starting something new, manning the walls against Morder will do.
 
I think have perhaps played Zeida Link to the past and Link's Awakening more than any other games, I have many games I play again and again but I've always been drawn back to those two games since I was a kid.

I just enjoy playing them.
 
1) The Escape Velocity trilogy of shareware games by the late Ambrosia Software (may it rest in peace).

Imagine a top-down, 2D version of the original version of Elite... written by someone whose only experience with Elite was extensively reading the manual and imagining what it must've been like to play because they'd lost their registration key. A surprisingly fun little space-trading a combat simulation roleplaying game, whose longevity was greatly enhanced by it's intentionally easy modability ("plug-ins" like The Frozen Heart and Galactic Scourge being perennial favorites). Growing up in a Mac household, these games practically defined my childhood.
 
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