Things are bad. But in many ways, we are in exactly the right time period for this specific brand of badness. Imagine having to stay locked in your house in 1910, with only the Bible to read and the Pears Soap ads for erotic visual stimulation. We’re lucky in that there’s limitless culture available, and the only barrier is our lack of focus. Focus is difficult in a quarantine, because while you might have every intention to sit down and watch Roma, inevitably, you will pick up your phone and check how many coronavirus-related deaths there are in Lewisham, and that’s the evening gone.
Video games have the distinct advantage that they are harder to be distracted from. You can’t check your phone if you’re trying to outrun a nightmare demon in Wandersong.
But here’s the tricky part. If you haven’t played video games properly since your early teens, how do you get back in? Googling “the best games of the year” and blithely purchasing from there might not work. For one thing, mistakes are expensive. The latest Animal Crossing title got amazing reviews, but that’s partly because seasoned gamers know what they are getting and think nothing of spending £60 on the latest title in a long-running franchise about living in a community of cute, grabby animals. In contrast, paying £60 to weed Tom Nook’s bucolic hell garden may feel like a rip-off to you, the person who hasn’t bought a game since GTA: Vice City.
Then there are the stressful action games, the ones that give real gamers such an adrenaline high they need an hour on Animal Crossing to climb down. I’m talking BioShock, The Last of Us, Resident Evil – games that have incredible stories and beautiful landscapes, which you cannot appreciate because you have lost all your physical dexterity, causing you to panic and throw the controller across the room. As a writer, I was fascinated by BioShock: Infinite’s steampunk Mormon vision of America and I wanted to dive in. Three minutes later, I was getting my hand hacked off at the county fair. In the immortal words of Lisa Simpson at military school: “I wanted a challenge – a challenge I could do.”
The trick to getting back into gaming is finding titles that offer a modern slant on your favourites of yore. For this, there is a world of indie games to be discovered – usually at an extremely reasonable price.
If you used to love Rayman, you might love Night in the Woods
If Rayman smashed his way into a Diablo Cody script, indie megahit Night in the Woods would be the end product. NITW tells the story of Mae, a cat who has dropped out of university and returned to working-class Possum Springs, where the people are poor and pissed-off, but the telephone lines are pleasingly bouncy. There’s a helluva lot of story here, but all of it is so well written that you don’t mind spending several minutes clicking A while the characters banter with one another.
If you used to love The Sims, you might love Stardew Valley
There are so many farming simulators out there that it can be hard to know where to begin. Like The Sims, Stardew Valley is wonderful because it combines your dollhouse instinct with your general urge to get horny and cause drama. There’s a farm to build, but there are also neighbours to woo. Be warned: like The Sims, you will find yourself spending 18 straight hours on this thing.
If you used to love killing your Sims, you might love Untitled Goose Game
Maybe you played The Sims, but you only did it to lure your Sims into the pool so you could take away the ladder and watch them drown. In which case, try Untitled Goose Game, where you are a goose attempting to ruin the lives of village inhabitants, tapping into the chaos urge that lives in everyone to set the world on fire and then honk while it burns. There are no rewards except spite, no victories except the ones you savour over the human race.
If you used to love WarioWare, you might love Wandersong
I’m a huge fan of any game with forgiving play mechanics and where you don’t lose all your progress when you die. It’s why I always preferred the short sharp Wario games over Mario, and one of the many reasons I adore Wandersong. Here, you play as an young bard hoping to sing his way to saving the world, and while there are some tricky bits, you’re never overly punished for getting them wrong.
If you used to love Candycrush, you might love Pikuniku
Sometimes all your brain needs is a colourful puzzle game that soothes without asking too much in return.
If you used to love Grim Fandango, you might love Return of the Obra Dinn
If you were that nerdy kid who lived for hours of simply pointing and clicking at objects in exchange for a compelling atmosphere and scant yet well-deserved rewards, try Return of the Obra Dinn. You explore a coffin ship in the early 1800s in an attempt to figure out what was responsible for each person’s death. It’s ghoulish, beautiful and demands a creative brain.
If you used to love Journey, you might love The First Tree
Ah, Journey, the 2012 game about wandering around and … nothing else. If you loved the vast expanses and feeling of being tiny in a big world, The First Tree lets you play as a mother fox trying to find her babies in the wilderness.
This is just a beginner’s list: I am, after all, a beginner myself. I get all my best recommendations through friends who know what they’re talking about: namely, Sarah Maria Griffin (@griffski on Twitter). She’ll probably prescribe you a game if you ask nicely. My editor Keith Stuart recommends watching Eurogamer and Bryan Dechart on YouTube, listening to The Short Game or Talking Simulator podcasts or reading Kotaku’s Best lists. Otherwise, find gaming YouTubers, Twitch streamers or podcasters who love the same stuff you used to: odds are, they’ve discovered hidden gems with lots of the same themes.
Most importantly, don’t give up if you make a few bad purchases. Gaming is for everyone, and it’s a damn sight more relaxing than reading the news while pretending to watch Roma.
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