9 games that help alleviate my anxiety (that could help you too!)
Posted: 11 Jun 2024Nothing quite beats escaping from the woes of the world through the lens of video games. No matter what your situation is or how stressful your life may be, there really is something wonderfully unique about pressing pause on reality, and throwing yourself control pad-first into the virtual bounds of a make believe universe.
As a long-term depression and anxiety disorder sufferer, I find that video games help maintain an equilibrium in my life that no other medium can. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading, listening to podcasts, watching documentaries and exercising whenever I can – but there’s something special about throwing on my headphones and losing myself on a plane so different from my day-to-day that I’d be lost without.
The following list is a rundown of my favourite 9 games for alleviating my anxiety – whether that’s chilled out capers that help me unwind, or unforgiving adventures that instil a sense of achievement. Admittedly, some are a little left-field, but that’s the beauty of video games, right?
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
The fifth main series entry of Nintendo’s esteemed Animal Crossing series sweeps you off to a desert island and lets you explore, create and customise your own tropical paradise. This life simulation game is relentlessly charming and brimming with possibilities, as you mine the land around you for resources and build your idyllic sanctuary. Doing so facilitates a sense of control in our seemingly perpetually uncertain times, and adventuring on your own tailor-made archipelago, or visiting your friends’ utopias online, offers a degree of escapism that only video games can provide. For many players, New Horizons was the game that got them through the most restrictive lockdown measures at the beginning of the pandemic.
Nintendo, 2020; Nintendo Switch, £49.99
Monument Valley
Monument Valley is a lovely puzzle game whose dreamlike, geometrically incongruous level design echoes the work of late Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher. Its pastel art style is gorgeous, and its conundrums are expertly paced, with a subtle learning curve that means every mind-boggling ‘how the heck do I get that up there?’ moment is followed by a flash of ‘you beauty!’ realisation before long. Only available for smartphones – iOS, Android and Windows – Monument Valley and its sequel (there’s a third in the works, too) have sold millions of copies, which suggests its pick-up-and-play nature has appealed to both serious and casual players. Throw in some impeccable sound design and a moving orchestral soundtrack and this ticks all of the games-for-reducing-anxiety boxes.
Ustwo Games, 2014; Smartphones, £3.99
Journey & Abzu
Two games sharing the same entry here, both of which highlight the artistic flair of Matt Nava and the stellar audio composition of Austin Wintory. Thatgamecompany and Santa Monica Studio’s 2012 indie gem Journey tasks you with exploring a vast and sprawling desert as you slouch towards a glowing monolith far off in the distance. Its story is told without words, whereby visual-only cutscenes work in concert with Wintory’s dynamic soundtrack of harps, viola, and latterly, a choir.
After departing Thatgamecompany, Nava formed Giant Squid Studios whose 2016 game Abzu is a similarly soothing endeavour, this time set deep within the ocean where you weave around sunken ruins, learning more about ancient underwater cultures as you go. Like Journey, its story is told exclusively through audio and orchestral prompts, and its world is stunning.
Journey: Thatgamecompany, 2012; PC, PS4, iOS, £11.99
Abzu: Giant Squid Studios, 2016; PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, £14.99
Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Breath of the Wild’s slant on series setting Hyrule is one of most beautiful video game worlds ever conceived. From sunrise to sunset, trekking around its cliffs, canyons, mountains and marshes is a total joy, and while baddies lurk all over the world map, the scope for contemplative exploration is huge – both out in the open and within its myriad underground shrines. Like Animal Crossing, Breath of the Wild is also chalk-full of de-stressing activities such as horse riding, orientation, cooking, island hopping and town-building. If you fancy some Lego-like building to help reduce anxiety, Breath of the Wild’s sequel, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, is absolutely worth your time too.
Nintendo, 2017; Nintendo Switch, Wii U, £59.99
Hollow Knight
Metroidvania games – where players learn new skills to progressively unlock inaccessible areas within an interconnected map – are often frantic and fraught, but overcoming enemies and bosses can provide a tangible sense of achievement. This underscores the value of perseverance, and Team Cherry’s Hollow Knight is masterful in its execution. It’s punishing but never unfair, difficult but never impossible, and rewards patience and planning over steaming into battle with reckless abandon. Overcoming its most taxing boss fights after much trial and error can be cathartic, and despite crawling with enemies and pitfalls, the game’s Hallownest setting is up there with the best in level design terms. Protagonist ‘The Knight’ is as cute as a button too, as are their adversaries, and Christopher Larkin’s soundtrack is haunting and beautiful in equal measure.
Team Cherry, 2016; PC, PS4, Xbox One, Mac, Linux, Nintendo Switch, £10.99
Undertale
With its enchanting narrative, razor-sharp writing and the fact that you can play from start to finish without engaging one single character in combat (an otherwise central tenet of the role-playing genre), Undertale is a masterpiece. Its muted colour palette is perfectly matched to its sleepy world, and as you climb deeper into its magical surroundings, you’ll fall in love with its ensemble of weird and wonderful characters – even the ones who want to fight you. You can of course go toe-to-toe with any of your aggressors, but the payoff for choosing kindness over violence unfolds over the course of the game. Just like in real life!
Toby Fox, 2015; PC, PS4, PS Vita, Mac, Linux, Nintendo Switch, £6.99
Unpacking
Unpacking may well be one of the most relaxing, anxiety-reducing video games I’ve ever played. Which is ironic/hypocritical given the fact Witch Beam’s zen-like puzzler is, in essence, a game about tidying up the house – and I do not enjoy this activity in real life. Described by its creators as “part block-fitting puzzle, part home decoration”, Unpacking is as beautiful as it is soothing, and as clever as it is cool with myriad nods to bygone generations, iMac computers, rubix cubes, Tamagotchis and all. To this end, one of my favourite ways to play Unpacking is alongside my five-year-old daughter, answering all the questions she has about 90s pop culture as we go.
Witch Beam, 2021; PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, £15.49
Elden Ring
Okay, bear with me. I speak from 15 years of experience when I say FromSoftware games are up there with some of the many anxiety provoking games I’ve ever played. The developer’s penchant for brutally unforgiving boss battles, field baddies and brain-busting environments is unmatched, each of which has consistently driven me up the wall since Demon’s Souls in 2009. BUT, and it’s a big but, as a weird and wonderful combination of what I find de-stressing about the likes of Breath of the Wild and Hollow Knight as noted above, the sense of achievement gleaned from toppling any of Elden Ring’s biggest bad guys is likewise, for me at least, unparalleled.
I fully appreciate this is a wee bit of a wildcard given the context of this list, but I think it’s a worthy one all the same. Which is sort of the point – whichever games you find to be anxiety-reducing personally? Those are the ones worth playing!
FromSoftware, 2022; PC, PS5, Xbox Series X and S, £49.99
Joe Donnelly
Joe Donnelly is a Glaswegian writer, video games enthusiast and mental health advocate. He has written about both subjects for The Guardian, VICE, his narrative non-fiction book Checkpoint, and believes the interactive nature of games makes them uniquely placed to educate and inform.
