Sometimes I just wanna distract myself, chill, and look at something pretty. If you feel the same way, I have good news! These three games are the perfect beautiful, relaxing games. They’re all sorta puzzle games, but nothing too hard or intensive. They’re all either fairly short or can be played a little at a time whenever you need a break from life. So check them out, and I hope you enjoy them!
(Note, I normally mention accessibility at the end of each review, but none of these are accessible for blind or visually impaired players since they rely on sight to play, and I don’t recall any other accessibility features, so I’m not going to mention anything below.)
Burly Men at Sea by Brain&Brain
This is a gorgeous little game. Simplistic, minimalistic, and gorgeous. I loved the use of shape and color. Lovely music too. It also has basic branching storylines based on your choices, and they involve fantastical things like getting eaten by a whale and meeting a giant rock creature. And the game remembers what adventures you’ve done and what characters you’ve met before and adjusts dialogue accordingly. You can also explore your small home island a bit. So that’s all fun. It does get a bit repetitive if you want to get all the endings, but you really only need to get six of the twelve to see every event since the last part is always essentially the same, just each chain of four events has an underwater ending and surface ending, depending on how you handle the third event. (You’ll see what I mean if you play.) It took me an hour and a half to see half the endings. Overall, just a lovely, chill, cute little game!
*Source/Cost: I played this on Utomik with a monthly subscription.*
Cloud Gardens by Noio
If you like plants and birds (crows specifically), this is a really pretty game! It has a small puzzle element, but overall it’s very chill. I also think it’s cool how the birds fly around and land on things you’ve placed. Because of the puzzle element, you have to kind of just place objects wherever you can fit them, in order to make the plants grow, and that kind of ruins the aesthetic sometimes, so that’s a bit disappointing. They do have a creative mode that’s a sandbox, I guess, but when I tried it, it was just empty land, not the interesting settings you get while playing for real, like highway signs and parking lots. And the controls are confusing, for me, at least. But it’s a cool game for what it is! Chill and pretty.
(Note that, because I got this as part of a bundle, if there have been any updates, I’m not aware of them.)
*Source/Cost: I got this as part of the World Land Trust Bundle on itch.io.*
When the Past was Around by Mojiken
What a beautiful little game! Just gorgeous. So pleasant and calming to look at. Also a lovely, though sad, story about love and loss and moving on. Though it’s possible it’s more metaphorical than literal, the light fantasy element gave it a magical, almost ethereal quality. The puzzles were pretty simple (a few were tricky), but I enjoyed that. It allowed the player to stay engaged but also enjoy the beautiful art and story. It’s a short game that took me only two hours to complete, but that was all it needed to be, and it was lovely.
*Source/Cost: I played this on Utomik with a monthly subscription.*
I love the art for each of these!
Me too!
In the last one there’s a man (?) with an animal head and they’re barefoot and talking in…plants? 😂
I think it’s pretty normal to be barefoot in your kitchen 😅 But he does have an owl head, I’ll give you that lol. I think that might’ve been metaphorical or symbolic, but not really sure. I like his owl head though!