u/Emmyy_Beans

I had a bit of a nostalgia overload a few days ago, digging through my old video game boxes from the 90s and early 2000s. I couldn’t believe how many RTS games I had. And I don’t think it was just me being a big fan of the genre, it felt like everyone was playing these back then.

And I mean everyone. Command and Conquer, Age of Empires, StarCraft, Warcraft, these weren't cult titles you whispered about to fellow strategy nerds, they were the games your whole class played. They were almost as popular as the shooters back then, and the guaranteed pick at any LAN party (we especially liked playing weird custom maps in warcraft 3). I have very fond memories of crushing my friends in Red Alert. I had this stupid strat of rushing a dog and placing it at my friends barracks, he would get so angry hahahah. Even my mom knew the names of some of the games, which sounds ridiculous right now when the genre is considered kind of niche.

At some point the popularity of the genre sharply declined, I’m not sure why exactly. The community is still there (albeit much smaller) but very much out of the mainstream. We even have some really cool relatively recent games, and even subgenres evolving. Like the fortress defense stuff, my favorite being Diplomacy is Not an Option, which even has a nice long campaign that really reminds me of the golden age of the genre. But the releases are definitely few and far between nowadays, and they don’t get as much attention.

And it's weird because it didn’t happen to all the old school genres. The best example is ARPGs, they are still really relevant. New ones are announced all the time and we have a few of the live service heavy hitters pretty much everyone knows about going strong. I just discovered The Dark West a few days ago, a western themed singleplayer ARPG, like how oldschool does that sound lol? And people are hyped for it (including myself). While almost all of the old school RTS franchises have been shut down, we still have a new Diablo game every few years.

I have some suspicions about what happened. Obviously MOBAs played a part, they basically grew out of a Warcraft 3 mod and then ate an entire generation of the playerbase that might otherwise have been buying RTS games. I also think devs were leaning hard into brutal high APM competitive esports and leaving the fun, long single player campaigns that pulled most of us in as an afterthought, they treated them as a tutorial for the pvp. A part of it was probably economics too, nobody ever figured out a way to cram a battlepass into an RTS game well, and those are where a lot of the companies make most of their money now.

Whatever actually happened we have to deal with it now. Anyway, I’m glad there’s a nice community keeping the flame alive. Part of me still hopes the genre claws its way back one day.

I've noticed my gaming tastes are kind of weird. I used to think gameplay was all that matters for me but I kept catching myself playing games for reasons completely unrelated to the gameplay. What I actually care about above all else is the characters and the “vibe” the game has, if I get a cool feeling playing something It doesn’t really matter if the gameplay isn’t perfect.

I'll happily push through a genre I'm bad at or don't even really enjoy if the aesthetics are on point and the characters are loveable. I've suffered through games that I am really bad at because I just couldn’t get enough of the visuals and vibe. 

A good example of this was Cuphead, it was so difficult for me (and my OCD prevented me from lowering the difficulty to simple mode) but I beat the game eventually, because I just couldn’t get enough of the amazing hand drawn visuals. I think I will have the same love-hate relationship with Croak when it comes out, I am so bad at platforming even the demo is not easy for me. But it has that same awesome hand drawn style and the main character is an adorable fat frog. I will make myself finish no matter what it takes because I have to see all the art.

Sometimes it's just ridiculous, I see something on tiktok, like a short clip and fall in love with a cute character and immediately decide “I’m playing this”. Which is especially annoying when it's some game that isn’t even close to being out yet. Right now its Water Me & You I’m kind of impatiently waiting for, I love the little water droplet character (it reminds me of something I have tattooed on my arm). I’ve already convinced my boyfriend to play with with me so now all that’s missing is for the game to actually come out. And we will play the whole thing no matter how much I struggle with  the platforming because I have to see the story through. Cuz I have to know what happens with the little droplet.

I just read my post and it makes me sound so shallow, I swear I’m not haha. I just have a huge sweet spot for certain aesthetics and cute characters, I can’t help it. Please don’t judge me.

My favorite gaming experiences are when I play something without a lot of expectations and the game kind of surprises you with something you really didn't anticipate going in. I’m not talking about major plot twists, more like when a game just gives you more than you expected from it. Three games come to mind immediately for me.

Outer Wilds is the first one that comes to mind and I'll try not to spoil it. On paper it's a charming little space exploration game about a solar system stuck in a time loop. The puzzles and the world were really interesting but nothing out of the ordinary, apart from the presentation (the way the game teaches you its rules is very fun). Then the ending came and the conclusion kind of moved me in a way I wasn't remotely prepared for. I don’t think a game ever made me feel that emotional before or since.

The other one was something I played recently, Diplomacy Is Not an Option. I pretty much expected a simple satisfying fortress defense game, and I did get that. But what I also got was one of the best RTS campaigns I’ve ever played. Literally reminded me of old school RTS games I would play when I was a kid, I had no idea how much I actually missed that. At some point RTS devs started treating the campaign as like a pseudo tutorial and put all their focus on the multiplayer stuff, so this was really refreshing.

Cruelty Squad is probably the silliest example, because I went into it just because the visuals looked interesting and I wanted to experience it for myself. It's like a deliberate assault on your eyes, the kind of thing you assume is totally style over substance edgelord nonsense. However underneath that is a shockingly good immersive sim shooter with great gameplay and some very interesting ideas. And while it may not be something everyone agrees on, the visuals kind of grew on me and I feel like they added to the atmosphere.

I was wondering if you have experienced something like this too, playing something not expecting much and then getting wowed by something you never saw coming?

This kind of gradually happened but I noticed I’m using my main PC less and less over time, and instead I’m on my balcony or my couch with the deck. I spent a stupid amount of money on that rig, had to save up for a bit and skipped out on a vacation with friends to buy it. These days it sits there completely powered off unless my friends convince me to jump on for a few games of Dota 2 or some Counter Strike.

I think my gaming habits also changed as well, most of my time before was spent grinding Dota 2 ranked (I literally have over 7k hours) and CS a bit less seriously. While now I’m all over the place, trying out way more games, especially interesting indie stuff, RPGs, Platformers and Roguelites mostly. 

Recently got really into narrative heavy RPGs, they almost give me the feeling of getting comfy with a nice good book, it's like a video game equivalent of that. Played through Disco and Esoteric Ebb, right now I’m on Zero Parades and I’m really looking forward to Hollow Home. Never really played an RPG based on real events before, so that should be interesting. And it's a story told from the perspective of a child. I wonder how that will feel narrative wise since a lot of the story is told through internal monologues in these games.

Everyone seems to really like platformers/metroidvanias on the deck so I thought I would give that a shot as well. I started with Celeste, never tried it before but better late than never, masterpiece of a game, I can see why everyone loves it. Next I wanna play Croak when it comes out. I love games with hand drawn graphics like that (big Cuphead fan), I get major nostalgia from that visual style so it always feels somehow comforting. I played the demo a bit and it felt great.

I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that my work is done sitting at a desk glued to a screen. After eight hours of that, the last thing I wanna do is sit in the same posture to relax (both physically and mentally tbh). The deck on the other hand gives me the freedom to change my environment and lay down if I want to, also the ergonomics are way different compared to being hunched over a keyboard and reaching for a mouse. That comfort turns out to matter way more than I ever expected and my previous obsession with framerates and resolution is kind of a thing of the past for me.

I don’t feel bad about buying an expensive PC, it's there when I need it. But I can’t help but notice I’m pretty much only using it for a few games that I really can’t play without a keyboard and mouse setup. I was wondering for those of you that have both a good gaming PC and a deck, what do you play on which platform?

Cozy is such a weird word, because I doubt it means the same thing for everyone. Some people really care about the visuals, and find a game cozy even if the gameplay is a bit stressful. They need the soft colour palette and the cute artstyle with a nice calming soundtrack. If a game has that they already consider it cozy. For other people the gameplay matters way more. They want a nice satisfying low stakes gameplay loop that makes it hard to lose or have a bad time, and couldn't care less about the visuals.

It gets interesting when a game only has one of those 2 aspects. I've tried games that look really cute and then kick your ass with difficult platforming or time management that's hard enough to feel stressful. I had such a wrong idea about Oxygen Not Included for example, I thought it was a cute little game (the visuals tricked me) but it's actually one of the hardest things I’ve ever played.

And then the reverse, games that look grimy or downright bleak but have really cozy gameplay. Powerwash Simulator instantly comes to mind here, the gameplay loop is so relaxing, even if the environments are really dirty (obviously hehe) and grimey. Or something like Dredge, which proves even with horror elements and really dark visuals a game can still turn out really cozy because the gameplay is just so chill.

When it comes to my personal tastes the absolute coziest games are the ones with all the elements. Animal Crossing was probably where it all started. Then when Stardew valley came out I was instantly hooked. These days I’m mostly excited for games like Loftia, which also have that kind of community friendly multiplayer vibe, along with a chill gameplay loop and the proper visuals to go with it. And maybe some relaxed exploration based games like Big Walk, really looking forward to trying that one.

What makes a game cozy for you, is it the visual style and vibes, or do you mostly focus on how the gameplay feels?

We have reached the point where you can be almost any animal in a video game except for some reason a fish. You can be a goat causing chaos in a suburb or a stray cat wandering a neon city and an insufferable goose terrorising a village. 

You can even be a jumping spider, in Webbed, a really awesome game btw. Croak is coming out soon so that will cover frogs, and it looks really good with the hand drawn graphics (along the lines of Cuphead). A platformer fits perfectly for a frog game when you think about it, and the demo is great.

Pretty much the whole animal kingdom is covered. And yet I cannot for the life of me find a game where you just get to be a fish in its normal environment, swimming around underwater, doing normal fish things.

The one everybody points me to is I Am Fish, but in my opinion it doesn’t count. The entire joke of that game is that the fish is out of its element, rolling around in bowls and glass jars and mop buckets, flopping across dry land trying to get back to water. It's a physics comedy about being a fish in the wrong place, which is the exact opposite of what I'm after. 

Meanwhile, I just want to be in the water, and actually get immersed (no pun intended) into the fish lyfe.

It might be a dumb question but has anyone heard of a game that actually lets you live as a fish, gliding around beneath the surface? I don't really care if the game is old or not that good, I just want to lead that fish life for a bit.

Funny how my taste in game art has swung this way and that as I've gotten older and my perception of games followed suit.

As a kid I was the exact sort of dummy who judged a game by how "realistic" it looked. Yes, I’m one of those people who thought the Crysis engine was the best thing to ever happen in gaming. It wasn’t but it did set off a specific kind of trend that led to the graphic fidelity bottleneck we’re at now. 

These days that stuff mostly washes right past me, and my eye  goes to the games willing to commit steadily to a look of their own. Even if it’s a niche look, so long as it comes from the devs/artists hearts. 

A big part of it is a straight up return to the retro stuff I grew up on, pixel art especially. The good stuff, not lazy retro bait that’s popping up everywhere. Back then the artists had to imply detail instead of render it, and your brain happily filled in the rest. But the real treat lately has been the newer games raiding older animation traditions and doing something fresh with them. 

The rubber hose look is another I didn’t think would make a comeback, that 1930s cartoon look that came back in full style with Cuphead reminded everybody about it. Mouse P.I. For Hire also came out this year and there’s others like CROAK that are following its tracks. Even though Croak is kind of similar to Cuphead in look but it’s a classic platformer instead of a hardcore precision shooter. This is great because all three (and beyond) show how the art style can be used cross genre. I never thought I’d say this either but it’s one kind of Disnification I LIKE, so far as the visual style goes because it’s retro Disney that still had some soul.

The only new “popular” look I just can’t relate with is the anime adjacent look that's everywhere now, all clean cel-shading and big expressive eyes. Loads of people clearly adore it - proportional to popularity of anime - and the good ones are gorgeous and readable in motion. It's just never been my particular flavour. I like the Final Fantasy games in principle, but I just never liked the way the characters are modelled. Human characters to be fair, the way those crazy Japanese do monsters and fictional races is insanely good.

Anyway, that's my own biased tour of it. Which artstyle would you follow a game for on looks alone?

I've been having one of those weeks where every interaction with "normal" people just drains me, physically and mentally. 

For some reason (and the reason is ignorance) everyone is giving me that subtle judgemental look, and interacting with me like I’m some kind of complete weirdo. I am a perfectly cordial normal person but I wear some vintage clothes and have purple hair, people in my small town really can’t get over it. It's exhausting in a way that's hard to explain to people who don't experience it.

So I've been craving some serious gaming escapism where "normal" doesn't even exist as a concept. Games where every single character is some kind of lovable weirdo and being odd isn’t automatically abnormal, not something you have to defend or explain. 

Undertale is probably my favorite example, but I’ve already played it way too much. Every character from Papyrus to Mettaton is completely unhinged in the best possible way, and the game actively rewards you for being kind to all of them. Psychonauts is another one with a loveably quirky cast, every person you meet has this wildly unique inner world that's bizarre and beautiful at the same time. That's the kind of vibe I’m looking for. The only game (or rather demo, its not out yet) I recently played that felt like that was High Times. The cast reminds me of my friend group in high school and all the silly drama we used to go through, and I love how they approach identity and touchy things like that.

I just want more of that energy, games where you can hang out with a cast of lovable oddballs who I can feel kinship with even if it’s only in a video game… instead of being surrounded by these “normal” people. I get enough of that in my real life.

I feel like a lot of the visual novels people talk about involve some kind of alternate dimension or supernatural stuff going on. I don’t have a problem with that and enjoy some of those as well, but my favorite VNs are the ones where nothing crazy happens at first, or at all. School, a part-time job, trying to figure out a relationship where nobody has psychic powers or a secret past as an assassin.

I really like the slice of life kind of VN, like White Album or Katawa Shoujo. And stuff like Making*Lovers or even High Times when it comes out is also my kind of jam (I’m fine with non reading gameplay elements, as long as it's nothing too crazy)

I’ve noticed when I play something with real, I guess you could say mundane situations, when the stakes are that grounded, my brain doesn't have to go through that suspension of disbelief. Like the dynamic between Tomoya and his dad in Clannad. It's just a strained relationship where they live in the same house but barely know how to talk to each other anymore. If a character is dealing with that kind of family tension or stressing about a job interview, I've been there. I know exactly what that feels like. So when the emotional moments come, I empathize with them way harder than I can with some sort of supernatural scenario, because I can actually picture the whole thing happening to me or someone I know.

Maybe I'm in the minority here but I find it way harder to get into a VN if it drops you right into a crazy fantasy or sci-fi setting. I keep gravitating towards stuff that talks about mundane real life subjects, about stuff that can happen to anyone, without too much craziness going on, unless its a twist that happens later on, when I’m already immersed in the story.

If any of you feel the same way, what are your best recs for VNs that have that kind of grounded feeling?

I play a lot of games and the vast majority of them use occult imagery the way a Halloween store display uses it, some pentagrams on the floor, vaguely Latin sounding chanting and then some occultish looking demon shows up. It just feels like cheap decoration. There's rarely any indication that anyone on the dev team spent more than ten minutes on a Wikipedia page before deciding their villain should stand inside a magic circle and monologue about summoning demons.

And I get it, games aren't academic texts, but there's a massive gap between putting a interesting-looking symbol on the floor and actually engaging with the philosophical or symbolic traditions that this stuff comes from. Hermeticism, Kabbalah, alchemical symbolism, Thelemic ideas, chaos magick, any of it, when a game actually does faithful representation, you can feel the difference immediately because the world has a coherence that you can’t achieve if you just use the symbolism randomly.

I can’t really resist trying games that have a really strong occult aesthetic, even if they don’t really explore the themes with a lot of depth. I think ever since I played Doom and Quake I’ve just been drawn to the vibe. Right now I’m really into Exanima, it's a very strange game but the setting is excellent, the lore is kind of out of the way so I can kind of fill in the blanks myself. And then probably The Dark West when it comes out, ARPGs usually have a really cool occult aesthetic and this has to be one of the best looking ones I’ve ever seen, plus it openly describes itself as a western occult  ARPG, so I’m hoping it will live up to that description.

The ones that I think explore the occult in the most interesting ways are almost always the smaller or weirder titles. Cultist Simulator (and Book of Hours) from Weather Factory is the obvious answer here because Alexis Kennedy clearly did extensive research into hermetic traditions and the Hours system has this internal logic that feels rooted in actual esoteric cosmology rather than just borrowing the vocabulary. The Shin Megami Tensei series has always impressed me with how seriously it takes its demonological sources, the demon compendium pulls from actual grimoire traditions, Goetic hierarchies, Hindu and Shinto mythology, and the fusions follow a symbolic logic that rewards players who recognize the source material.

Blasphemous is another interesting case, though that's more specifically Catholic mysticism and penitential iconography taken to its logical extreme, not occult in the hermetic sense but absolutely steeped in a specific esoteric religious tradition in a way that most "dark religious" games completely fail at.

But I feel like I'm probably missing a lot, especially from genres or eras I haven't explored deeply. Which games do you think get it right - whether that's accurately portraying specific magical systems, capturing the actual unsettling atmosphere of encountering something truly unknown, or just showing a level of research that surprised you?

My cousins (9 and 11 girls) are coming to stay with us for a week next month and I'm trying to put together some gaming sessions that'll actually stick with them, like the kind of thing they'll remember fondly looking back 10 years from now. 

I keep thinking about being their age and spending entire weekends at my dads place with my best friend just destroying each other in Mario Kart, playing through LittleBigPlanet levels we built for each other, getting way too invested in Smash Bros matches where nobody actually knew what they were doing (playing with the broken items of course) but it didn't matter because it was so much fun. Those are legit some of my favorite memories from growing up and I didn't realize how much they meant to me until I saw my cousins gaming together and it brought me back.

They recently played through It Takes Two together and apparently loved every second of it so they're definitely into the co-op teamwork thing which is a great starting point. Hardware wise I've got two PCs and one PS5 to work with so anything split-screen, cross-play, or party-game adjacent is fair game.

I was playing Loftia (I was in their beta playtest in May) the last time they came over and they really wanted to play, but I didn’t have keys for them so I let them take turns a bit on my account. They really liked that but the playtest is done so it's not an option until the release this autumn, and I’m trying to come up with something that will give them a similar feeling. Besides, that’s full digital multiplayer and I want a game we can play in person on our flatscreen. 

Split Fiction is my backup plan if all else fails, that should work since they already played something similar. I have heard it has a few difficult parts, I’m just hoping they won’t need too much help, it's just not the same experiencing something like that when an adult has to help you. I was hoping Water Me & You would come out by the time they came over, that seems like the perfect game for them out of the co-op stuff I can find. But same as so many games… all the ones I really wanna play seem so far away, with just that (no month) 2026 release date :(

What I'm trying to avoid is stuff that's either too complex for the 9 year old or too simple for the 11 year old, that age gap is small but it matters when one of them is reading on-screen prompts faster than the other and the younger one gets frustrated trying to keep up.

If you've got recs for games that'll give two kids some great memories please drop them!! I want to make this count!

I replayed A Short Hike last week and it reminded me that I always end up gravitating toward the exact same type of setting in cozy games, give me a dense, lush forest with sunlight coming through the canopy and I'm immediately in my happy place. Every time, no matter what else a game has going on.

Smushi Come Home had exactly this vibe for me. The whole game is basically you exploring these gorgeous natural environments as a tiny mushroom and the forest is absolutely beautiful. There's something about being surrounded by trees and undergrowth and little streams that just makes me instantly feel relaxed and safe. My wishlist is full of games with cozy forest vibes, Water Me & You where the whole premise is nature slowly reclaiming an abandoned world and you're helping it grow back with a friend. Hela where you play little mice in a really beautiful forest. And Big Walk, a puzzle exploration game with more realistic but still very cozy looking scenery and a bit of a mysterious vibe.

I think what draws me to forests specifically over little towns or other types of nature is that forests feel enclosed in a comforting way. You're surrounded but not trapped and kind of isolated. There's always something to see behind the next tree or around the next bend and the density of it makes every little clearing or hidden spot feel like a new discovery. The only other setting that I really like is like a floating island world like the sky islands from Zelda. There are not a lot of games like that but Loftia had that feeling for me in the playtest with everything happening on little floating islands. I hope they add more exploration for the full release. Aloft is the only other game I’ve found that looks like it might have that vibe but I haven’t tried it yet.

What comes to mind when you think about the coziest video game worlds you have been in?

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I think mine was the one with the bow in the first Diablo game. I think she was just called Rogue, my older brother had it installed on our family computer and I used to watch him play for hours before he finally let me try it myself. I picked her without really thinking about it (she had a bow, bows were cool, that was the entire decision making process at that age) and it wasn't until way later that I realized how much it meant to me that the character I connected with first happened to be a woman. She wasn't "the girl option" in some character select screen that was just like a different model for the main guy, she was her own thing, and people would play her because of what she does, not what she looks like. To this day I love making a girl with a bow in every RPG I play. A night elf hunter in WoW then Recently ranger in BG3 and right now I’m grinding with my rogue in Last Epoch, they added a really cool bow skill in the recent update, shadow rend, it's pretty sweet.

Tomb Raider was the one that really cemented it though. Lara Croft wasn't an option, she was THE protagonist, for everyone who bought that game. There was something really powerful about that even if I didn't have the vocabulary for it at the time. When people were talking about Tomb Raider nobody was qualifying it with "yeah but you play as a girl" like it was some kind of compromise (my brother would get teased by his friends a bit when he played it though, I remember that xD). I never remember anyone making a big deal out of it at all, and Lara Croft was kind of instantly accepted as a classic character.

I think what made both of those experiences stay with me is that neither game ever made it feel like representation was the selling point. They weren't trying to be progressive or make some big statement about anything, they were just great games where the protagonist happened to be female, and because of that it felt completely natural. You weren't being handed a "female option" you were just playing the game the way it was designed to be played, and the character looking back at you was a woman who was competent and powerful and cool and that was just the way it is. And there wasn’t this whole marketing push or big deal made out of it, it just felt like a natural thing.

Looking back, I think those early characters shaped something real about how I see myself in games, and I bet a lot of us had similar moments growing up.