Games

if you like boomer shooters cultic is great

Pokemon on a handheld while watching the Pokemon anime.

Deep Rock Galactic is a co-op horde shooter with impeccable class-based gameplay and wide weapon and environment variety. You play a dwarf in the caves of an alien planet, blowing away the local giant bugs while you plunder minerals. Playable solo, in friend lobbies, or with public randoms, and it has bar none the best community of any online game I've ever played.

Elden Ring is the first and only game to scratch the Itch of exploring game worlds when I was a child. Intensely immersive and fascinating. The combat requires reading a manual to know how to put together a build until you know what you're doing and the plot is barely present, but the horizon never stops opening up a new vista.

Esoteric Ebb is the first real Disco-like. Set in a medieval fantasy world (with deep deep world building), you're a cleric investigating a tea shop explosion. Instead of the many personalities of Disco in your head, you have your six ability scores. It also, and this is important, doesn't give a fuck about D&D mechanics and is a distillation of the experience of playing a really fun campaign. It's like if Terry Pratchett's Guards, Guards was a video game

If it's your thing there are PC recomps of Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, the two Legend Of Zelda games on the n64, and Mario Kart 64. They play smoother and have better support than emulation. Otherwise, I would go for 3D platformers to do this for myself, newer games that look interesting are Frogun and Demon Tides

I'm not talking emotional games about working out parental trauma

Sure, but if you need that, but don't actually want to put up with something heavy, the answer is Earthbound.

Maybe also Crosscode.

Diablo 3 was amazing for that; can vouch, especially on console (even if I mostly prefer the PC version for being able to rack up larger kill streaks), and especially if you have a partner to drag in for local co-op.

Here's my go-to list of "comfort" games:

1. Vampire Survivors. Once it gets its hooks in you, kiss your night goodbye.
2. No Man's Sky. The building system is a little clunky, but there is so damn much to do in this game, especially if you make a beeline for the storyline missions or do an expedition ("seasonal" content). It's like Ark or Rust, but in spaaaaace
3. Skyrim. Best played with a handful of quality-of-life mods (Unified Skyrim SE Patch, Alternate Start - Live Another Life, SkyUI) and some kind of funny build shenanigans in mind so you don't just end up doing stealth archer for the 69,420th time.
4. Stardew Valley. Can you complete the community center before the end of Year 1? Can you establish a People's Republic of JojaMart and keep your hatred of Pierre pure? Can you start a PoWeR dYnAmIcS struggle session about the ethics of your avatar in-game dating a 21 year old?
5. Octopath Traveler series. OK, full disclosure, I grew up on NES and SNES-era JRPGs, particularly Final Fantasy IV, VI, and Mystic Quest, Super Mario RPG, Chrono Trigger, Destiny of an Emperor, Dragon Warrior ("Quest" #1), so this shit was catnip for me. The original OT1 is a little unrefined, but solid if you're into that sort of game. OT2 is streamlined and introduces a lot of quality of life tweaks, and you don't need to have played the first one to enjoy it. Start here if you're not up for getting thrown straight into the missable achievements meat grinder. OT: Zero is game of the year material, according to a certain amateur wrestling transfemme enby gaming media personality whose ADHD should be reason enough to avoid anyone voluntarily being employed by her, but otherwise whose opinions I generally trust. (I haven't played more than about an hour of Zero yet, but the nostalgia bait is definitely there. It's next on my list.)
6. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Randomized). https://alttpr.com/en -- I got into this on account of my spouse showing me Griffin McElroy's "Trial by Fieri" playthrough and thought it was hilarious. Pro tip: play with the Mog sprite from FF6 so no one can spike your cortisol levels. This one is good for learning to do glitchless speedruns, usually in the 4-6 hour range per playthrough.

Mario Galaxy, Portal, Skyrim with PG-13 mods while not devolving to porn, whatever Tony Hawk game came out near your childhood.

Oh, and shitty cigarettes, like Pall Mall Blue or half-smoked Marlboro menthol silvers you steal from your parents desk.

• mount and blade warband
• shadowrun games
• underrail
• carx street

A game that is really fun that I recommend: Steamworld Heist 1

A game that will easily keep you up until the sunrises if you enjoy the gameplay loop: Frostpunk

You hate yourself: Europa Universalis 4/5

Minecraft

Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

Comforting and chill eco terrorism.

Despelote. This is especially true if you are latin american

If you liked diablo 3, you may like grim dawn! Highly recommend reading the lore notes and dialogue, goes deep. Alternayively, ignore it all end enjoy the murder

TurtleWoW gives that feel for me, but WoW was my high school nostalgia game

Play a Fire Emblem game, they are really fun, i say Three houses or Awakening are good start to the series, also nerds say Final Fantasy Tactics and Ogre Tactics are really good so if you end up liking FE you will probably like those 2 too

My comfort game these days is Valheim. Exploration, building, beautiful scenery, really fun open world game

Yaoling is like a chinese autobattler version of pokemon and it might be the best monster-taming game I've ever played. There's some depth to the game mechanics, the monster designs are great, and it's fun to accessorize your monsters even though that's just cosmetic. This little guy of mine goes into battle with mushroom ears while carrying around a little lantern:

My favorite yaoling is the one called "Goose", which is literally just a goose. All the other designs are much more creative, and I find that kind of funny.

Oh I was going to say Disco Elysium as Harry's story is as much a meditation on picking up the pieces after you fail as anything else it says

So instead I'll recommend Amid Evil which is a goddamn dream game of mine made manifest, old-school boomer shooter graphics and gameplay with my shootan gaem kryptonite: a ridiculous arsenal including a staff that shoots planets, a trident that can chain lightning between enemies, and a mace that shoots crystal shards that crucifies enemies against walls. It's fucking siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick

Risk of Rain 2, Hades 1 and 2, Dead Cells

• Nier Automata Metaphor Winter Burrow Cozy Caravan Okami FF14 (MMO though. Good story if you get past ARR though) Elden Ring

Idk at the top of my head, big range of moods and time frame

Demon Tides came out recently and had me doing exactly what you're describing lol. It's a stylish platformer about overthrowing a king - good messaging, but also pretty silly too. The open world is a a series of islands that you swim between by transforming into a snake. It's a great game.

(There is some parental trauma if that is a deal breaker)

Also, have you considered Diablo 4? I just finished it with my gf and we both thoroughly enjoyed it.

paradox map staring games. just pick one that looks cool and go in blind and fail a bunch and suddenly waow it's 5 hours later and the sun is coming up.

classic JRPGs, turn based non-active battle systems with easy exploration, and if it doesn't have spoken dialog it's great for podcasts or youtube on a 2nd monitor.

fromsoft type games if you're into that sort of thing can be huge timewastes too just getting lost getting your ass beat.

My inner child is a sweaty nerd and deadlock has consumed my soul. I'm not a huge fan of mobas nor hero shooters, but for the first time since I first played counter strike as a wee lad I have an overwhelming desire to git gud at this dumb ass bullshit.

I have no joke lost my last few weekends in a bliss of escapism of this fuck ass PvP moba. This weekend I plan to get a pizza and some pop and disappear once again from the world (if you or anyone reading this wants/needs an invite shoot me a DM with your steam friendcode)

I'm playing kotor 2 right now and if you can get past the jank and some of the sillier bits it's a great reminder of why it's a classic. Would play the first but can't be buggered getting it to work when I believe the remake is on the way.

Any of the old school Tony hawk's games also fill this role for me, especially Pro skater 1-3 (I never really vibed with the open world stuff in the later games).

Or of course whatever kind of extended rpg suits you. The PlayStation or PS2 final fantasy games are obvious contenders, or maybe some of the cooler western RPGs (which I have never been particularly big on so no suggestions).

But really it's hard to say without knowing what you like and what you played as a kid.