All of the chaos in the world can at times be a little overwhelming. This is why video games have such a following. They can be a way for players to shut things out for a while. Inversely, they can also help players with an important mental health tool: mindfulness.
Simply put, mindfulness is the practice of being aware of the present moment. This is something that can be done when meditating or going for a walk. Several of the most popular games in recent years have had that theme either deliberately or coincidentally integrated into their mechanics and pacing.
8 Stardew Valley Is About Enjoying the Little Things.
Sick of a monotonous job at the JoJa Corporation, Stardew Valley players inherit a farm from their grandfather. While a number of tasks can be accomplished, players are free to tackle them at their own pace. It’s all about living a simpler life and enjoying the little things, from day-to-day interactions with the villagers to farming and fishing in the local lake.
It is easy to engage in a Zen-like state through a play session of Stardew Valley. A certain peace comes with the routine maintenance of the farm, growing and harvesting crops, feeding the animals, and cleaning up the yard. Players can lose track of time in the game as they tend to their work and make their grandfather proud. One also comes to relish the daily trip to Pierre’s shop, grabbing a drink at the local watering hole, and participating in the seasonal festivals. Sometimes, doing less means enjoying a lot more.
7 Walden: A Game Lets Players Live Thoreau’s Grand Experiment
Henry David Thoreau’s goal with his experiment, described in his most famous work, Walden, was “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if [he] could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when [he] came to die, discover that [he] had not lived.” In Walden: A Game, players live in Thoreau’s little cabin in the woods off Walden Pond, tending to his garden, and going into town for the occasional odd job and to pick up supplies. Along the journey, players receive letters from home, read philosophical texts, and even interact with Thoreau's mentor, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
The gameplay is very bare-bones, amounting to chopping wood, gathering food from the forest, and maintaining the condition of one’s cabin and clothes, but that is kind of the point. It is about living life on its simplest terms and noticing everything that would often get overlooked in the commotion of daily life. As players observe birds flying around them or a rabbit scurrying across the path, they slowly build the components of Thoreau’s seminal text.
6 Playne is a Game About Non-Doing
One of the fundamental tools used to cultivate mindfulness is meditation, the practice of quietly sitting and being aware of the sensations of the breath, allowing thoughts to come and go. Playne is less of a game and more of a tool for practicing meditation. On a barren island, a talking fox guides players through their meditation practices, as it reveals the backstory behind the land that becomes more populated with life only through the player’s meditation practice.
As players practice their meditation, trees grow taller, fireflies and butterflies start appearing, and one can hear the songs of birds. Each meditation session leaves players feeling refreshed, and it is easy to linger in the environment after one’s meditation just to take in everything around them. The only real flaw is that players cannot pet the fox. Zero out of ten.
5 In Abzu, Just Keep Swimming
Abzu, published by 505 Games and developed by Giant Squid Studios, tells a beautiful story with very few words. Players are a diver exploring the remnants of an ancient, advanced civilization, which left behind evidence of their progress and downfall. This is a relatively short game that can be beaten in just a couple of hours, but if players aim to speed run it, then they're arguably missing the point.
Abzu is about taking in the tropical colors, exploring every little nook and cranny, and playing with the sea creatures encountered along the way. Players can even find meditation spots, which can be accessed outside the main game, to just relax and take in the sights of the diverse sea animals that swim about.
4 Mirror’s Edge Takes Mindfulness To New Heights
Developed by DICE and published by EA Games, cult classic Mirror’s Edge allows players to run and jump across the rooftops of a dystopian city that is so white and glossy that it looks like it was designed by Apple. Movement is fluid, and the whole city is the player’s playground.
In Mirror's Edge, it is easy to take everything in. Players must be completely aware of the present moment, always on the lookout for their next path, the next wall to climb up, and the next ledge to leap off, since there usually isn’t an enemy far behind. The player’s life depends on being mindful.
3 Hades is About the Journey As Much As The Destination.
If any game requires players to be mindful of their surroundings, it is Hades. As Zagreus, the son of the Greek God of the Underworld, players must navigate a gauntlet of randomly-generated rooms, enemies, and traps to get to the surface and find Zagreus’s mother, Persephone. The brutal difficulty of the game means that one mistake can mean the difference between victory and death, which means returning to the Underworld to start over.
In the classic tradition of Homer’s Odyssey, Hades is just as much about the journey as it is the destination. Players can interact with the Underworld’s regular residents, including the Greek legend Achilles and Zagreus’s adoptive mother, Nyx, who all have words of encouragement for Zagreus on his quest. If Zagreus is lucky, he will bump into Sisyphus and his constant companion Bouldy who always greet him warmly. Players can learn a lesson from Sisyphus, who has been pushing Bouldy up his hill for so long, that he has learned to just roll with life and appreciate the little things.
2 Animal Crossing: Wild World is About Taking In Life With All Its Ups and Downs.
Animal Crossing: Wild World puts players in the role of a villager who has just moved into a new town. Players can run around doing odd jobs for the villagers, trading furniture, and poking around in the shop of Tom Nook, who is always surprising players with more debt.
If players end up making a mistake, they can always restart the game without saving, but then Mr. Resetti the mole will have some choice words for the player. He is there to remind them that what makes life interesting is not that it is perfect, but rather because it has its moments where things do go wrong, but that’s what makes life interesting, and players should appreciate it for what it is. As he puts it, according to Nookipedia, “It's takin' whatever comes your way, the good AND the bad, that gives life flavor. It's all that stuff rolled together that makes life worth livin'.”
1 In Super Hot, Awareness Means Life Or Death.
SUPERHOT allows players to unleash their inner Neo. The game opens up on the terminal of an old computer when a friend directs one player to a new shooter. In the pristine polygonal levels of the game, time moves when the player moves. This gives players the opportunity to assess the situations they find themselves in, and calculate which enemies to take down first, and with what methods.
Mindfulness is key to success in this game. Players must constantly be aware of any enemies that may emerge. When there isn’t a gun immediately available, one must improvise and use what is available. One misstep and it very well might mean instant death in the game. To survive, one must be entirely within the present moment.