Okami

1. Factorio
2. Hollow Knight
3. Hollow Knight: Silksong
4. Runescape
5. Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando
6. Path of Exile
7. Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage (PS2)
8. Elden Ring
9. Pokemon Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire
10. Lies of P

Air blowing over my skin is the worst.

Bright lights are bad, but they’re nothing compared to having a fan actively moving air across me. I can feel every bit of turbulence and it’s so distracting that it makes me want to stab something or tear my own skin off.

Now that it’s Summer everyone and their mother at work wants to have a personal fan on their desk or use a shop fan on the floor to keep cool and when I have to work with them it’s torture.

I’d rather be hot and just drink more water.

The Witness just starts right back off at the beginning unless you figure out the secret ending.

Returnal does this with several of its “endings”, but I haven’t been spoiled on all endings so I can’t say if it strictly fits.

One of Bastion’s two endings is a global reset.

I Was a Teenage Exocolonist plays with this in some interesting ways.

Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 both have maintain the status quo endings.

No! That’s why it’s OK!

Clear typo. The cannibalism gives her paws. She goes feral and transforms into a fearsome beast.

I don’t like the taste of pure water. Filtered, bottled, doesn’t matter. It tastes bitter and metallic and it always takes effort to choke down.

I keep a bottle of unsweetened juice and use a splash of that to add the bare minimum of flavor I need to be able to enjoy drinking it at home, and when I’m out and about I just drink it and suffer.

Porco Rosso is an excellent Ghibli film with anti-fascist themes.

Is there anyone home?

Tossup between how much caffeine I drink and not working out.

Void Stranger is a relatively recent one. It’s a Sokoban style puzzle game with layers of puzzles and a ton of hidden depth.

It took me 50 hours to feel like I beat the base game and I haven’t even touched the post-game content they added after release. I have a folder full of text files with notes and clues and puzzle attempts and one of the best puzzles involved taking several screenshots and stitching them together in an image editor.

La Mulana is another one to check out. It’s a metroidvania heavy on puzzles and exploration that’s actively hostile toward the player. It’s an exercise in frustration and every inch of progress is measured in blood. Every bit of information is important, and there’s a lot of information to untangle. I haven’t come close to beating it yet and my notes from just the first few floors are extensive.

I think the joke is that it’s a rating rather than a sample.

So this doctor gets 1* reviews vs the 4.5* doctors.

It took me a long time to appreciate eggs growing up, too. Used to only be able to eat them scrambled. Fried eggs and boiled eggs would make me nauseous. I hated the taste and texture of a runny yolk.

It wasn’t until my mid 20s that someone finally made me eggs over easy and taught me that you’re not supposed to just eat the yolk straight, but treat it as a sauce to complement the flavor of the other food on your plate. It was a revelation.

I still don’t like sunny side up or boiled eggs, and I still don’t like the texture of runny yolk on its own, but I love me some over-easy or over-medium eggs on a burger or over bacon, sausage, hash browns, waffles, or pancakes. Let that shit spread everywhere to mask the texture and maximize the flavor.

Never would have thought of that on my own. I wouldn’t mix foods growing up, and I still don’t when left to my own devices.

I’m not a super picky eater, but there are some foods I won’t touch.

Pickles, kimchi, and beets taste awful. Cottage cheese is a sensory nightmare. I don’t think I’ll ever attempt oysters again.

I hate how prevalent pickles are in American restaurants. Seems like I have to ask for no pickles in every new place, and half the time they’ll have pickles anyway, or they’ll include pickles in dishes that have no business including pickles and I wouldn’t think to ask for them to be excluded. If I pick them off I can still taste the pickle juices, and it ruins the food. The sandwich and burger places think they’re so fancy for including a pickle spear in the plating, and it’s a crapshoot whether they keep it isolated off to the side or drape it across the food where it can contaminate everything. Miserable.

Pickled jalapeños, lettuce, and mustard are on thin ice.

I don’t like ranch dressing or ketchup, but I’ll only grumble a bit if I find them in my food.

I’ll try anything once, and I do go back to foods I hate every now and then to see if my tastes change. I used to have a hard aversion to seltzer water, sour cream, and hoppy beers like IPAs, but I’ve come around on them. I have a much better appreciation now for bitter and sour flavors than I did as a kid.

Still. Fuck pickles.

Psychonauts (the original, not the sequel, though the sequel is also good) is a Summer Camp themed 3D platformer. It doesn’t quite meet your “low stakes/chill gameplay” criteria as it does have combat and mildly challenging boss fights and platforming, but it nails the rest. It’s easier than Tunic. Maybe worth checking out.

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons strictly meets all the criteria listed, but it’s ultimately a tragic story. If “some kind of impact” includes leaving you in tears, check it out.

Okami is a Zelda style adventure set in feudal Japan with immaculate vibes. You play as the sun goddess Amaterasu in the form of a wolf bringing light and life to a land ravaged by demons. The world is cold and dark at first, but you bring spring and summer on your heels.

Finally, two favorites from my childhood are the Spyro series and the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series. These are 3D Platformer collectathons and neither of these series are even close to any of the examples you provided, but they are bright and colorful and in my heart they have feelings of Summer Vacation and staying home all day to play video games.

Farming? Really? Man of your talents?