The PS5 controller for slow evening gaming. (Photo: Zoe)
Six Gentle Games to Unwind In After Work
After a long day of work, I never quite knew what to do with myself. My default was to grab something to eat (leftovers from the day before, more often than not) then fall into the same loop: lying on the couch, phone in hand, something playing on Netflix I wasn’t really watching. My mind was somewhere else entirely. Just noise to fill the quiet, to ease me toward sleep.
Then I got my first iPad, and something shifted. A thought came to me: why not play a game, the way I used to after getting home from school? And just like that, gaming quietly re-entered my life. The iPad was followed, inevitably, by a PS5 finding its place in the living room. And what surprised me most was how naturally it all fit in my life as a ritual. I spent years as a teacher watching how rest and play were slowly squeezed out of everyday life, and this felt, unexpectedly, like a small act of reclamation. Gaming, done intentionally, slips beautifully into a slow living lifestyle.
Here are six games I’ve tried and genuinely loved.
Journey
Category: Wordless emotional experience
Available on: PlayStation (PS4/PS5), PC (Epic Games Store), iOS
Playtime: Around two hours
What can I say about Journey that words can quite capture? The music is wonderful, the visuals are breathtaking, and the whole atmosphere is one of rare, unhurried calm. You play as a robed traveller crossing a vast, sunlit desert toward a distant mountain. No instructions, no objectives, no dialogue. Just you and the landscape. Occasionally, you encounter another anonymous player. You can’t speak or type. You can only chime, a small, clear sound, and somehow that is enough.
If long dialogue trees, sprawling task lists, and constant hand-holding aren’t your thing, Journey is the antidote. It feels like an evening walk somewhere beautiful, alone with your thoughts. It’s one of the few games I’ve replayed more than once, not because it changes, but because I do. I can almost promise you’ll feel lighter when you set the controller down.
The Pathless
Category: Open-world exploration & atmosphere
Available on: PlayStation (PS4/PS5), PC (Epic Games Store), Apple Arcade, iOS
Playtime: Around eight hours
The Pathless has a similar soul to Journey: unhurried, quietly beautiful, and blessedly free of pressure. You play as a hunter moving through a vast, misty forest, accompanied by a loyal eagle who becomes your closest companion. There is a gentle rhythm to the movement -shooting totems to build momentum, gliding through the trees- that becomes almost meditative once you settle into it.
Where Journey is about crossing a desert toward something unknown, The Pathless is about exploration for its own sake. The world is open and soft, more invitation than challenge. There are puzzles and boss encounters, but they never feel urgent. If Journey left you wanting more of that wordless, contemplative feeling, this is a wonderful next step.
Cocoon
Category: Puzzle / minimalist adventure
Available on: PlayStation (PS4/PS5), Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam)
Playtime: Around six hours
I discovered Cocoon entirely by chance. It was the free PlayStation game of the month and I downloaded it without knowing a thing about it. A cocoon cracked open, and out came my character: a tiny insect (a beetle, I later learned) blinking into a strange, luminous world. What followed was a series of beautifully crafted puzzles that unfolded with quiet elegance.
Something worth saying for the genuinely time-poor: Cocoon is the only game on this list with a proper ending. Around six hours, a beginning, a middle, and a close. There is something deeply satisfying about completing something, rather than tending a world that, by design, goes on forever. It’s the best starting point on this list if you’re new to gaming as a ritual, and want to know whether it suits you before committing to something open-ended.
The game is deeply calm, with striking visuals and a logic that slowly reveals itself. Some of the puzzles are genuinely difficult; there were moments I was very tempted to search for a walkthrough. I didn’t, and I’m glad. There’s a particular satisfaction in sitting with a problem until it gives way. Cocoon is the kind of game that asks you to slow down and pay attention, which is exactly what makes it such good company after a long day.
Astro’s Playroom
Category: Platformer / nostalgic adventure
Available on: PlayStation 5
Playtime: Around eighteen hours
Astro came as a gift with my PS5, and it turned out to be one of the most delightful surprises of my gaming life. It is unashamedly joyful. a love letter to PlayStation history wrapped in a platformer that makes you feel like a child again. The levels are imaginative and full of small wonders, and the way the game uses the DualSense controller is genuinely clever: you can feel the texture of different surfaces, the resistance of pulling a bowstring, and (my personal favourite detail) you can blow into the controller’s microphone to move things in the game! Tiny, considered touches like that make all the difference.
Astro doesn’t ask anything heavy of you. It just wants you to play, smile, and enjoy yourself. Sometimes that’s exactly what an evening needs.
Stardew Valley
Category: Farming / life simulation
Available on: PlayStation (PS4/PS5), Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam), iOS, Android
Playtime: As long as you wish
I’ll be honest. This isn’t usually my kind of game. I’ve never been drawn to the resource management, the pixel graphics, the Farmville-adjacent world. I don’t even remember who first told me to try Stardew Valley. I don’t even remember who first told me to try Stardew Valley. But it stuck with me in a way I didn’t expect.
The aesthetic is deliberately old school; you can see every pixel, and that’s entirely the point. There’s a warmth and handmade quality to it that feels intentional. What makes Stardew Valley quietly extraordinary is its origins: the entire game was built by a single developer over nearly five years, alone. You feel that care in every corner of it. It rewards patience, attention, and a willingness to simply tend to things without rushing, which, come to think of it, sounds rather like slow living itself.
Genshin Impact
Category: Open-world RPG / exploration
Available on: PlayStation (PS4/PS5), PC, iOS, Android
Playtime: As long as you wish
I want to make an argument that almost every review of Genshin Impact misses entirely.
Most coverage focuses on the gacha mechanics, the system by which you spend currency (real or earned) to unlock new characters. It generates strong feelings, and I understand why. But it has, I think, obscured something important: underneath the RPG systems, the combat mechanics, and the drip-feed of limited events, there is one of the most quietly beautiful open worlds ever made. And you don’t have to engage with any of the rest of it.
This is my favourite on the list, and the one I return to most often. On evenings when I have no energy for quests or storylines, I simply open the map and wander. I gather herbs and flowers. I fish by a quiet river. I open chests tucked behind waterfalls. My little companion Paimon (the “flying object” that Traveller jokes about) floats along beside me, and there is something genuinely soothing about it , like a walk with a friend who doesn’t need you to perform. The world of Teyvat is staggeringly beautiful: sweeping landscapes, intricate cities, hidden corners that reward wandering. The music shifts as you move through different regions, and I’ve stopped more than once just to stand somewhere and listen.
The team at HoYoverse has been adding to the game consistently for years. But if you come to it the way I do, it will give you more than you expect.
A Closing Thought
Gaming often carries a certain reputation associated with escapism, passivity, too many hours lost. But like so many things, it comes down to how and why you do it. Approached with intention, an evening gaming session can become a ritual as nourishing as a cup of tea before bed: a way to let the day go, to inhabit a different world for an hour, to rest the part of your mind that has been working all day and engage the part that simply wants to play.
What I’ve come to believe, after a few years of this, is that the right game doesn’t demand anything from you. It meets you where you are. These six do exactly that.
You don’t have to be a ‘gamer’ to benefit from it. You just have to find the right world to step into.
So tonight, why not try? Pick one of these six, settle in, and see how it feels.
- Zoe