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My Top 5 - Fishing Minigames

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 I have never bought or played a game that is directly advertised as a fishing simulator.  They exude a kind 'Woman want me, Fish fear me' energy.  They remind me of guys on Tinder that have a picture of them holding a fish to show what a Manly Man they are.  They make me think of a stereotypical American dad who dissappears for a few days to go on a fishing trip.  It's not a genre of game that appeals to me. And yet - I am totally enamoured with any kind of fishing minigame that is part of a wider game.  I find them calming, giving me a moment of calm to take in the ambiance of the world of the game.  They are usually quite rewarding, providing my characters with food to eat or filling in some stamp as part of a collection my character has to fill in.  I'm at the point where I actually fet quite annoyed when I can see a fish in a game but you can't fish for them. I'm clearly not the only person who loves these minigames - There's a whole Twitter ...
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Anodyne - One-Part Charming, One-Part Unnerving Dungeon-Crawler RPG

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 Anodyne appealled to me as a pixellated RPG that I paid precisely nothing for.  It was in the "Indie Bundle for Palestinian Aid" that content makers with Itch.io did a few years ago, so I had access to it for years before I touched it.   The whole game is played in squares.  You can only see as far as the square that you are in, and you can check what rooms you've so far been in by refering to the network of connected squares that comprise your map.   The game starts off mysteriously, as some kind of monk makes vague references to what you have to do.  This leaves you to figure out what you have to do, exploring every region until all it's secrets have been found.  The first regions you encounter are really quite lovely.  You get to befriend some cats, you befriend a cool woman on a motorbike, you see the seaside and the woodland and the nearby hills. After a while, it gets weirder.  We get regions that are imaginary, one that's ba...
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My Top 5 - Puzzle Games

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To me, puzzle games are an archetypal form of cozy game.  Curling up with my switch and a puzzle game makes me feel like a sweet old grandpa doing a sudoku as he sits by a roaring fire.  Here are my favourite puzzle games I've played so far.     Honorable Mentions: Thomas was Alone - This charming platformer involves using your different character's specific abilities to problem solve.  Definitely more puzzle-y than most platformers but not enough to earn a place on the list. Zelda games - Most games in the Zelda series involve some level of puzzle solving, most commonly in their dungeons or shrines.  These puzzles can be fun, creative, and often involve quite a lot of thought, but vary hugely in their significance to the overall gameplay.  Breath of the Wild is a wonderful game, but part of what gives it mass appeal is that the game designers reduced the number of puzzles needed to complete the plot compared to others in the series.  Tetris - An...
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