Animal Crossing: New Horizons

GWJ Conference Call Episode 703

Stellaris: Federations DLC (PC), Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Switch), Doom Eternal (PC), Doom 64 (PC).

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Amanda, Julian, Rich, and Glendon talk Max Chillaxing: Games That Relax Us. Games that can calm vs games that aren't inherently relaxing, but help us unwind and process the world around us.

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Comments

00:01:40 Stellaris
00:11:52 Animal Crossing: New Horizons
00:20:20 Doom Eternal
00:25:21 Doom 64
00:31:21 Games that Relax Us
00:44:49 Your Emails

Great discussion and topic.

One category of calming games was "comfort food" classics. I was surprised the titles mentioned were still relatively recent: Minecraft, Dragon Age, etc. Old school PC nostalgia is my pure calm down time: Master of Magic (which just had a re-release on Steam with a DLC!), Quest for Glory 1 (Hero's Quest), Quest for Glory 2, Sim City 2000, Theme Park, Master of Orion, Dune 2, or even a deeper dive like Castles II: Siege & Conquest. For some reason, these embrace a mood of relaxation way more than console games I played from the same era.

My chillax games are turn-based tactics - your XCOMs and Battletechs. The lack of a time component is essential for maximum unwinding, otherwise I'm too keyed up. At any given time, I've always got a active campaign running in one of those games. Currently re-playing through Battletech campaign with all the DLC, then I'll get back to Phoenix Point.

They tend to take the correct slice of time for a single mission too, something like 30-40 minutes, which is the perfect slice for me, long enough that it feels like a complete experience in a session, and not too long that I can't binge 2-3 missions if I'm really digging it.

Glendon, I also listened to this podcast while drinking from my Pats mug! (Also, my nickname is a Pats reference, hehe)

I switch my chillax games often, but it's typically a puzzle game that is not terribly difficult. Currently, my two preferred ones are Tiny Islands and Tametsi. Tiny Islands is a free browser game where you place randomly drawn tiles on a grid and collect points according to rules that have to do with how you lay those tiles relative to each other. It's super fun and a round takes 2 minutes. Tametsi is like Minesweeper but with a bunch of new mechanics thrown in. It's like a uglier but richer version of Hexcells. It can get pretty difficult unless you're a minesweeper veteran, though.

Tetris – From Russia with Love is a great documentary about the making of Tetris. It's from the BBC, you can find it on yt.

Pink Stripes wrote:

Glendon, I also listened to this podcast while drinking from my Pats mug! (Also, my nickname is a Pats reference, hehe)

One of us! I'm a very apologetic Patriots fan. I started watching the NFL right when the Patriots dynasty started. So I guess I'm a bit of a bandwagon-er but now's the time to stick to the ship because I think we're in for a rough couple of years ahead.

I didn't know the Pink Stripes reference! Had to look it up, very interesting. Thanks for giving me something new I learned today!

The Racing Dorks are still looking for someone or a few people that can join our races and commentate over them. Nothing serious. Just someone that can laugh at us so I can watch it afterwards and laugh too. Raceroom has a pretty robust spectator mode so you could control the camera and swap between cars and battles on the track.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

The Racing Dorks are still looking for someone or a few people that can join our races and commentate over them. Nothing serious. Just someone that can laugh at us so I can watch it afterwards and laugh too. Raceroom has a pretty robust spectator mode so you could control the camera and swap between cars and battles on the track.

Would it be a benefit or a hinderance that I know next to nothing about racing?

staygold wrote:
EverythingsTentative wrote:

The Racing Dorks are still looking for someone or a few people that can join our races and commentate over them. Nothing serious. Just someone that can laugh at us so I can watch it afterwards and laugh too. Raceroom has a pretty robust spectator mode so you could control the camera and swap between cars and battles on the track.

Would it be a benefit or a hinderance that I know next to nothing about racing?

In our case, a benefit. Like I said, I just want to watch it afterward and laugh too. Hearing someone try to describe racing while knowing nothing could be hilarious. Now if you random people started watching your stream they may be turned off.

If nothing else, having a spectator view of the race to watch afterwards where I can see more than just one drivers first person perspective would be nice too. That way I can see where some interesting things happened without having to go through the replays.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

If nothing else, having a spectator view of the race to watch afterwards where I can see more than just one drivers first person perspective would be nice too. That way I can see where some interesting things happened without having to go through the replays.

I found this on Sector 3's forums about spectator view: https://forum.sector3studios.com/ind...

Anyone tried that?

I have. It works, but it's hard to race and maintain spectator view and commentate at the same time.