By focusing on the intersection between gaming and mental health, they want to raise awareness of mental health challenges and reduce the stigma surrounding these issues. I've come up with some games that explore this topic, along with help and suggestions from Gaming The Mind ( Twitter), an organisation of UK-based mental health professionals who aim to promote positive mental health within the gaming community. But also, games can provide a helpful space in which to process, consider and understand death and loss. This means that some care is necessary if players are sensitive to losing significant people. Games include interactions, narratives and characters dealing with all aspects of life (and death). Or there are games you can play quickly, but require the real passage of time for certain aspects, like Nier Replicant, forcing you to wait 24 real hours between planting a crop and harvesting it But it also includes games like The Longing, that test the player's willingness to wait long periods of time and limit their ability to accelerate progress. This includes games like Animal Crossing, which requires regular visits at particular times of day to progress your island. The games in this list are designed to be played slowly over a large number of days.

Seaman was something like a month, and The Longing can be as much as 400 days.' Without cheating a system's clock, they're meant to play out over long periods. Some games double down on this mechanic, using, as Brad Gallaway recently said 'using the real passage of time passing as a way to progress the story or game mechanics.

It takes patience and investment of effort to start making an impact in the game world, and in many ways is actually hard, slow work. In fact, many video games take a long time before they are enjoyable.

Video games are often thought to be about the quick hit or instant rush of dopamine gratification. In some ways the resurgence of retro games could be seen in a similar light, although here the sentimental nostalgia is for virtual entertainment rather than rural lifestyle. Unsurprisingly this has become more popular on social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. These games emphasize simplicity and the slow pace of pastoral life as an escape from the modern world in favour of the bucolic. The Guardian called it a 'visual and lifestyle movement designed to fetishize the wholesome purity of the outdoors.' The New York Times described it as a reaction to hustle culture and the advent of personal branding. However it plays out in the game, Cottagecore aims to satisfy a desire for aspirational nostalgia and an escape from stress or trauma. Others use Cottagecore as a guide to how they look and feel, like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, The Stillness of the Wind and Mutazione. Games sometimes use these rural pursuits as play mechanics, like Stardew Valley, Potion Craft, Terraria and Fantasy Life. Although games are usually considered to be hard, harsh and technological, many of them play to this aesthetic that is sentimental about traditional skills and crafts such as foraging, baking, and pottery. Whether you are diligently cleaning someone's empty flat as in Sunset, setting up a farm after retiring from your adventures in Littlewood, reconnecting with grown-up children in The Stillness of The Wind, nurturing a musical garden in Mutazione, establishing a coffee shop in Coffee Talk or even eeking out provisions while you care for children in This War Of Mine all these games have something to tend to and people to get to know while you do it.Ĭottagecore is an online term celebrating an idealised rural life. The games collected in this list each offer the chance to escape and absorb yourself tending to a plot of land and nurturing often surprisingly moving relationships. They offer an escape to simpler times, that provides meaningful work along with the possibility of also working at friendships. These games, like Animal Crossing, present an 'ambience of bucolic' and a 'reassuring mix of the pastoral and the industrial,' wrote Simon Parkin recently.

Recently I've been noticing games that combine the stewardship of the land and the nurturing of resources. As regular readers will know, there are video games about everything. Video games are usually thought to be about fighting, shooting and adrenaline.

Cozy grove cat