Spiritfarer

Difficulty: Easy but need patience to gather materials. 

How long to beat the game: It took me like 4-5 months, but I think I was super busy or depressed when I was playing??

Best parts about the game: Well, if you love crying this game if for you. I think this game made me cry more than any game I've ever played in my life. My grandma also had recently passed when I was playing this game, so grief was on the forefront already. I think the art style and animation make this game beautifully done. It has a lot of fun little elements such as farming, modifying your ship, recipes to cook and other stuff to make this game really variable in its gameplay. I think everyone can agree that the very best part of the game is the cat that follows you around! So freaking adorable. This is definitely a cozy game, but as I said, be careful, it's heartbreaking when one of the characters finally departs after you've given them all those hugs throughout the game. I think I just have attachment issues though. I cried almost every time one of them left lollll I think the game is meant to maybe confront grief though? Like it made it a celebration in a way, and it was like a healthy goodbye each time? Whatever it was, this game really made me feel things. 

Home Safety Hotline

Difficulty: Surprisingly more difficult than I thought! I'd say on the high side of moderate. 

How long to beat the game: A few days to a week. You could easily beat this game in a single day though. 

Best parts about the game: This game is freaking weird! How weird it is along with all the retro interface elements make this game unique and fun to play. Of course, Supervisor Carol is increasingly off-putting throughout the game which adds to the wtfness of the entirety. As I mentioned above, this game is more difficult than I thought it would be. I guess I haven't really explained the premise of you are playing as a crisis responder and you get all these weird calls you have to figure who/what the culprits are. There is list provided with audio clips and descriptions, but make sure you look through allllll of them because there are points in the game where the software "glitches" and you have to use your memory to guess the culprit at that point. I really love this little gem. I also played the Seasonal Worker expansion and that was super fun. I liked that they let you know when an answer was wrong. The first one you didn't even know so you had to keep going back and guessing! My friend and I played the first one together and man, there were times we were like this hassss to be the answer just to go through the whole round again not really knowing if the answer was correct. This game gained a lot of publicity when it came out and for good reason!

 

Life is Strange

 Difficulty: Easy-Moderate

How long to beat the game: a few weeks, I think?

Best parts about the game: Obviously the story is the main draw to the game. This game is entirely choice based, and your choices affect the direction of the plot. This game did a great job at delivering an emotional story (yes, I cried during one part) and dang...some parts got a lot darker than I was expecting. I had never played any of the other games in the series, so I didn't know what to expect. This was a good break from playing action heavy games, but after this game I was ready to play something a bit more physically engaging. The other major part of this game is time travel. Max has the ability to go back into the future and rethink some of her choices. It was really creative how they tied that part in, and you get to see the story unfold in a number of ways. Of course...I chose to save the blue haired girl I only kissed once. Please kill me.