u/Sufficient_Object281

A good grind, for me, isn't a chore to endure so much as a kind of meditation. Almost.

There's a very special completely empty calming headspace I get into when I put music and switch most of my brain off, and just repeat the motions while watching them sweet numbers go up. It even feels like an idle game when I perfectly get into that sweet zone and zen out. Just peace...

Combat grinds do this for me less and less as I get older, even Diablo likes bore me much quicker than they used to. The most soothing grinds have become those with no threat. WoW professions used to hit this note perfectly back in TBC classic during the late Corona era. I'd herb gather my way around a zone on autopilot, half watching something on a second screen, and the gathering itself did all the work of calming me down. 

Cozy games have taken that idea and built entire experiences out of it, and they're where I get the purest version now. 

Moonlight Peaks is what’s holding me this summer. BTW Peaks is truly peak, it’s got even vampiric animals to farm, cutest shit ever. Perfect cozy intro before the next big vampiric game (you know which one) drops in September. Which is kind of the perfect timing for me, because apparently Loftia - the next cozy grind I’m dead set on experiencing, and an MMO at that - is also dropping in the autumn around that time so I can already see myself rewinding in Loftia before diving into the darkness that Blood of the Dawnwalker will bring into my life. And  then rewind-grinding again, before another dive.

That’s kind of a cycle I have. One game in which I can just turn off and grind, just pure progression and chill, and the other something more serious and dark with a good mature story. t’s just a routine I got into over the years.

So yes - for me it’s basically a cozy grind —-> serious story driven game (full attention) —> cozy grind again (or maybe PoE 2 if I wanna experience a new league) and so on. Games themselves vary.

But what about yourselves? Is there any sort of grind you find enjoyable/ that you relax to, or is the very idea of having to gather stuff/grind/craft just a general turn off for you?

I think there are actually many, many different kinds of grinds, as many as there are genres maybe, and I wanna know what’s YOUR pick. If you have one ofc

I stopped using voicechat what feels like a lifetime ago. No other away about it, the Ph levels of acidity are reaching critical to unhinged in so many game communities. Unless it’s your own personal premade group on Discord or you got really good RNG when matching with someone out in the open, it’s almost impossible. 

Some places try to assuage this, for example Gameram which at least lets me filter people by age and by games we both play so I can weed out the worst of the bunch. I had some success for the most popular games, as well as some niche ones that people don’t play a lot of nowadays. Vermintide for example (everyone is playing Darktide so getting someone for the leveling experience is a chore and NONE of my irl friends play). But even so, the pickings are slim, especially if you’re a girl and you never know how things gonna turn out in the end..

Like I said, peak vibes is playing with people you know, having a handpicked moment with people you know or are just extremely comfortable with and playing something you enjoy. But lets face it, a lot of time none of us can match our own free time with the free time of others. Wage slavery and capitalism and all that is involved… and there you have the hellhole that is random matchmaking in multiplayer! Idk about you but this was only amplified for me by hordes of screaming kids which used to abound in VR (I don’t have a set anymore but I never heard more vulgar unhinged kids than in VR chat, fml what happened to parenting yo)

We all have this and much worse stories, I know, and I don’t want to rant about my specific godawful moments that I would much rather forget.

Instead! I want to ask about the other side, the bright sunny side that’s gotta be there! So I want to ask - what moments in random multiplayer were the most unexpectedly wholesome, the kind that makes you unsure if this is another troll in disguise because of how kind the person is being?

I’ll go first.

My last extremely positive moment was this weekend (the reason I’m writing this now idk) and it was on a random Darktide lobby. I main a psyker and I normally don’t use voicechat, because no one else does it either except when things get critical. We were playing auric which is kind of the highest difficulty (havoc don’t count because it’s all sweat) where you can get players that don’t demand clutch at all costs

Except, this time I was feeling a bit NAUGHTY, wanted to roleplay and I used the Voicemod. If you played Darktide, you know there are some head cosmetics that change your ingame char’s voice a biiiit but nowhere near enough (and don’t change your actual voice). 

Well, turned out my voice pulled through the voicemod has a…. Shall we say… a truly space sorceress quality, spacing in and out of reality kind of vibe. First game I was in I started saying RP stuff like the the WARP IS MY TORCH AND MY SHIELD, or when I clear a boss something like YOU ARE IN PERIL NOW HERETIC SCUM (peril is a mechanic for the psyker icydk)

Yes I was high playing, horde shooters are just so better after a little boof,  but yes I also learned what it was like to be on the other unhinged RP side. But… the others all LOVED it. The distorsion was so weird combined with my high pitched voice that people legit didn’t know if this was the game itself, or what, until I said in chat, and everyone was just like HELL YEAH this is the intended way. One Ogryn even shouted a couple of times SPACE WIZARD LADY SHOWS US DE WAYY because I was more or less carrying the DPS with my inferno staff. He even asked me afterwards if I want to play Havoc because I’m the most insane roleplayer (insert obligatory comment about being a girl though) he came across.

It was great, it was exhilarating in fact, and I felt powerful not only because I was good but something something… confidence? I think I’m finally realizing how much confidence and playing confidently increases enjoyment. Also, zero chances to creeps because I can just yell SPACE SPACE GADGET CASTS YOUR DICKS INTO THE WARP at a high freqency that will make them question their life decision. I didn’t have to do that yet (lol this was about POSITIVE experiences)

Long storyrant, but yeah never knew horde shooters could be this empowering. Or honestly have people who are completely chill and don’t think you’re weird but appreciate you for it.

(Disclaimer: this is a lover letter - appreciation post for the whole series and what it meant to me and not a discussion of Spyro 4 per se)

I don't exaggerate when I say Spyro was one of those games that defined what pure gaming enjoyment meant as a kid. 

As clearly as then, I remember I was six when I first played the original on PS1, with my brothers, and it’s one of the few that hit the spot at that age. There was a big age gap between us (oldest bro was 13) and everything else was either too intense or too competitive or trying to scare me (Resident Evil 2, which I was definitely too young for).

I would also get beat bad in Street Fighter, so Spyro was the only true “retreat game”, if that makes sense, that I had. A completely chill but still challenge focused world where you collected gems and headbutted sheep and glided between platforms but in levels that were, stripped down, just FUN to explore.

I mean… it wasn’t quite pressureless, even though it was a cozy game before the concept of cozy games existed. Speedrunning was an insanely popular activity, as I only much later found out. But the whole of Spyro always felt like it was inviting you in, and as a kid that made all the difference compared to something like Crash where I'd get stuck on a level and want to throw the controller.

I've watched so many other franchises from that era get their comebacks - Crash got his trilogy remaster, Ratchet got a full PS5 game, even Medievil got a remake. But nothing for Spyro, and so much time passed that I almost began forgetting about it (impossible!) even though some indie games here and there reminded me of it. Most recent one in the line being Outclaw, which more or less has the same level structure and same kind of hype that only collectathons could give you: the joy of making it to the next level and getting to explore what’s next in store for you in the world. But it’s a dying breed (collectathons I mean) and this is the only one I came across last month on the Next Fest.

Little did I know that, one thing leading to another… I discover that Spyro does have a Remake on the way!... It’s getting its time to bask in the sun again and for a whole generation of us who grew up with Spyro the dragon and with memories perma hardwired in my gaming tastes, seeing this happen during this broader “remake renaissance” feels so incredibly right!

Sounds tacky when I actually want to write it, but honest is the first word comes to mind when it comes to Palia. Especially in this increasingly monetized F2P cozy gamespace where coziness is increasingly a vehicle for predatory monetization and gacha. I know I was a fool for thinking cozy games would be spared. 

Heartopia particularly failed to impressed me… other than the fact their gacha was more or less cleverly disguised until you got into it. And I just can’t work myself up for Totopia either. 

I can only refrigerate so much hype for these big cozy sandbox multiplayers, and aside from Palia, all the rest of my hype is for Loftia and that’s because I know the game will be P2P instead of F2P, so I know that store monetization will be minimum and mostly related to cosmetics, which is fair… and also because I their last Beta left a lasting impression on me, to say the least!

Until such a time as Loftia comes out though, it’s Palia all the way (and beyond) for me. Because it’s still the only F2P cozy game that just lets you play it, without even a whiff of gacha. No pay to progress stuff progression, cosmetic shop only monetization (just how I like it), and they've been upfront about that from the beginning and they’ve kept the promise.

The wonder of that, even though it’s shouldn’t be a wonder, is even more stark in contrast with Heartopia. I am sorry for mentioning that game again but I still can’t help feeling absolutely ICKY with how it drew me in with a bait and switch, but then ended up being the perfect storm of everything that’s wrong with this model. Launched with gacha mechanics buried under the cute aesthetic, and then got caught using AI generated art in puzzles, and then there was that whole disaster with an NPC where a black character was animated making monkey noises after eating a mushroom. Like who the hell does that? The devs pulled it within a day but the community was not having it, and the fact that it shipped at all tells you something about the priorities when the monetization layer gets more QA than the actual content. 

The fact that I can recommend Palia to someone without adding a disclaimer about the monetization (even though it’s free) is rarer than it has any right to be in 2026. It's a strange thing to be grateful for - a game that just doesn't try to get you through psychological tricks. But after the Heartopia mess and watching this gacha-cozy wave roll through the genre like a strip mining operation through a flower field, yeah I'm grateful!

It doesn’t need to be some super hidden mechanics, just special features or synergies or maybe even some unique conflict resolving choices? that the game didn’t bother explaining that well, or at all … but it was still that feature which lowkey impressed you more than anything else in the game.

I’ll start in no specific order and bring up the Mass Effect morality system first. It’s not a hidden system… but the incredible thing about it was - that it wasn’t just a good/evil alignment system either! I thought it would be just that but it isn’t really black and white like in other Bioware games. It’s more Shepard's personality “on the job”, let’s call it that, your approach to conflict resolution and it’s so much more intricate than just being a bad/good. And both paths can bite you in the ass in different ways.

I know MA games set a lot of benchmarks and this kind of alignment system was one of those. I still remember my Femshep being a baddie Renegade Spectre and how on point for that role it felt to be a more aggressive secret agent type instead of the typical evil for evil’s sake baddie.

Next are spell modifications/ spell crafting systems in general, and games that do them well. Morrowind and Oblivion both blew me the F away when I realized how far I can push this system. Oh, and Magicka of course!!! Though nowadays they’re strangely absent from most mainstream games. Only isometric ARPGs, which are all mechanics based, seem to care about giving players freedom to have the exact flavor of spell they want. Like Last Epoch letting you modify any spell to do any kind of elemental damage you want, or non elemental for that matter. Lol, I still remember my first physical based Warlock and how even the fissure changed color and turned all bloody and rusty when the ele damage turned to physical. Path of Exile is also among my darlings just because of how the skill gem system works and how it forces you to handle your gear, and the synergies you can get, or steal from a guide, are some of the most insane I had ever witnessed.

To tie in with this last part, there’s also hidden synergies and no best example than Dragon Age Origins where they’re literally hidden from you until you accidentally get one right, and then you get a Codex entry for it! It’s so cool and really complimented the overall simplicity of the basic game system, and besides there aren’t that many spells in the game. Lemme tell you all - the first time I discovered sleep + fear equals nightmare, I was mindblown in the literal sense just because it made so much goddamn sense! and a lot of these synergies are easy to discover like that.

Look at me gushing over games that are all old news. Are there any newer rpgs that similarly blew you away with something unexpectedly cool like this?