"I took that from you
The life that's born to die"
Stardew Valley I believe was the first game I saw routinely described as "relaxing" and though it never enticed me to buy, from its reputation it does seem to have addressed the growing demand in the mid-2010s for more freeform playing styles after a decade of WoW-inspired "kill ten rats" dragging you into quest after quest after rat-race after rat-race. Hey, I certainly like genres with a managerial side and I've got nothing against farming sims per se, having enjoyed SimFarm back in its day. But seeing "relaxing" crop up as an official tag on GoG just seems to be missing the point of this entire industry. There's a difference between freeform and no form.
Pleeeaase don't get me wrong, I utterly loathe the obssession with "action" games paced for meth-addicted ADD kiddies. I'm a big proponent of turn-based genres, which includes admitting that "real-time" strategy or role-playing were unnecessary gimmicks we too eagerly swallowed in the mid '90s simply 'cus that thar newfangled post-486 hardware could take it. I'm especially irked by designers strong-arming you into twitch-based gameplay in otherwise unrelated genres. The problem dates back at least as far as Oregon Trail's game hunting and rafting minigames.
The gunfights in Gemini Rue for instance added nothing but annoyance to an otherwise atmospheric and captivating 2D cyberpunk adventure.
I've been trying Hellslave recently, not a bad little loot-farming turn-based dungeon crawler, and can't help but roll my eyes at its trap minigame making you panic-click three random spots for a temporary XP bonus. At least it can be turned off and tends to only rear its head once a dungeon.
My distaste for "quick-time events" in The Wolf Among Us ran far deeper given their pervasive and intrusive nature.
I've run across one of the most glaring examples in Anomaly Defenders, a tower defense spin-off of 11-bit's Anomaly tower offense spin-off of the tower defense spin-off of RTS.
To spice up the whole recursive mess (in addition to making you panic-heal your towers) 11-bit severely limits one of your two resource pools and forces you to actively harvest it from dead mobs by clicking on the glowing orbs they leave behind. Wait. Pecking breadcrumbs relates to my strategic foresight in organizing a layered and thorough defense... how?
But there's gotta be a middle ground here. We shouldn't be trying to "spice up" genres which would be better served by increasing their core concept's complexity just by forcing players to SPAM CLICKS SPAM IT SPAM IT SPAMIT SPAMITSPAMIT! Neither should we be making a virtue out of dullness and passivity in themselves. You'll generally see the "relaxing" tag appended to the usual suspects like ULTIMATE FISHING SIMULATOR - now with EXTREEEEME lure bobbing! OMG totes badbass! But the few titles I've played falling under this new category make me wonder what anyone even means by relaxation.
Banished of all things gets slapped with the relaxing label, a game which diverged from old-school city simulators precisely for imposing scarcity, loss conditions and general stress on a genre which had more or less always presumed guaranteed forward momentum. Furthermore Banished's success in this kicked off a whole spate of survival city builders defined largely by anti-relaxation. So what the hell do you even mean by that tag? Soundtrack NOT by Mastodon?
If having a moment's breather qualifies as relaxation, nearly everything qualifies. I've posted endless screenshots here of my characters relaxing, watching the sunset from an awning, taking in scenic vistas, meditating on their past travails, plus watching my spaceship break atmosphere or gently nudging my empire's stats while it grows or tracking my citizens' progress through my neighbourhoods. Any designers worth their salt will leave you little opportunities to admire their handiwork. It's good business. But if you're seriously buying an interactive product for its pause button, there are other media more apt to let you lay back and passively absorb. Movies spring to mind. Enough with the damn walking simulators and idle games! A game, no matter how slow-paced, should still be judged partly for its ability to keep you engaged, considering strategies, plot and clues, moral quandaries, your resource stores, exploration paths, process flow in general.
Thought-effacing hypoactivity should be no more a selling point than thought-effacing twitch-based hyperactivity.
Being mentally absent is not a virtue!
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