Top 20 Relaxing Video Games

If you want games that give you gentle goals and quiet moments, there are plenty that focus on building, exploring, and simple tasks. These titles favor calm loops like tending a farm, arranging a room, or gliding through open spaces. Many offer flexible difficulty or no fail states at all. Here are twenty options that let you take things at your own pace.

Stardew Valley

You manage a small farm with crops, animals, and seasonal festivals. The game uses in-game days and a simple energy system that encourages steady routines. Fishing, mining, and crafting expand your tools and income sources. Local relationships grow through gifts and quests that unfold over time.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

You develop an island by gathering materials and placing furniture indoors and outdoors. Real time clocks match your console’s time so events and shop hours follow a daily rhythm. Villager conversations, fossils, bugs, and fish rotate by season. Terraforming tools let you shape rivers and cliffs for custom layouts.

Journey

You travel across a series of landscapes toward a mountain without spoken dialogue. Movement focuses on walking, sliding, and brief flights powered by a scarf that recharges near cloth creatures. Online play pairs you silently with another traveler who can guide or follow. The entire experience fits a single evening session.

Abzû

You swim through ocean zones filled with fish species that react to your movement. Controls center on gentle acceleration, dives, and meditation points that highlight local wildlife. Light puzzles open gates between areas. There is no air meter or combat so exploration remains uninterrupted.

A Short Hike

You climb and glide around a small national park to reach a mountain peak. Feathers increase stamina and unlock longer climbs and glides. Side activities include fishing, treasure hunting, and mini sports with other campers. The map opens naturally as you talk to characters and follow signposts.

Flower

You guide petals on the wind through fields and city spaces using simple tilt controls. Touching buds blooms new patches and changes the environment. Levels unlock in sequence and can be replayed to collect hidden flowers. There are no timers and no text to read.

Spiritfarer

You run a boat that carries spirits to their final destination while managing gardens, kitchens, and workshops. Each passenger has requests that lead to upgrades and new buildings. Sailing opens new islands where you gather resources and learn character stories. Movement uses platforming with a double jump and glide.

Minecraft

You can set the game to Peaceful so enemies do not spawn and you regenerate health. Survival mode adds hunger and crafting systems while Creative mode gives unlimited blocks for building. The world is procedurally generated with biomes, caves, and villages. Redstone parts allow simple contraptions and automated farms.

Unpacking

You unpack boxes and place items in rooms across different stages of life. Objects snap to valid spots and you can rotate or stack them. Each level ends when everything fits acceptable locations with a few exceptions that reflect character growth. A photo mode records your final layouts.

Dorfromantik

You place hex tiles to grow villages, forests, rivers, and tracks. Matching edges earns points and can spawn quests that ask for a certain number of connected tiles. Completing tasks adds more tiles to extend a session. Special tiles unlock through cumulative progress across runs.

Townscaper

You click on a grid to raise houses and arches over water. The system auto generates stairs, bridges, and courtyards based on your placements. There are no objectives and you can change light and color palettes at any time. Exports let you save or share your towns.

PowerWash Simulator

You clean vehicles and buildings using washers with different nozzles and soaps. Jobs track dirt percentage per object and highlight missed spots with a quick button. Money earned buys upgrades and extensions for reach. Free Play lets you revisit cleared locations for casual cleaning.

The Sims 4

You build houses with room tools, terrain options, and a catalog of furniture. Live Mode follows your Sims through careers, skills, and social events with adjustable aging and autonomy. Build Mode can be used alone for pure design sessions. Gallery features let you download or share rooms and households.

Coffee Talk

You run a late night cafe and brew drinks by mixing base, primary, and secondary ingredients. Customer stories advance day by day and certain drinks unlock unique dialogue. A recipe phone tracks discovered combinations for quick reference. Endless mode offers free brewing without the story timeline.

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure

You explore a Mediterranean island identifying animals with an in-game camera. Tasks include cleaning beaches, repairing bridges, and helping locals with small fixes. A photo log tracks species and encourages visits to different habitats. The main story can be finished in a weekend play window.

Monument Valley

You solve perspective puzzles by rotating pathways and sliding architecture. Each chapter introduces a new visual rule that builds on earlier ones. Touch controls are minimal and levels are short for handheld play. An onscreen guide helps if you miss an interaction.

Gris

You move through platforming stages that unlock abilities like swimming and singing. Environmental puzzles focus on color themes that change the world’s behavior. There are no enemies and failure resets you near the last footing. Collectibles add optional routes for completionists.

Eastshade

You play as a traveling painter who completes commissions by capturing scenes on canvas. Materials are gathered for canvases and blueprints open tools like a tent and a raft. NPC schedules and dialogue lead to quests that trade favors for access. Time passes but there are no combat mechanics.

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

You explore an open world with farming, fishing, and crafting in place of combat. Guilds teach recipes for clothes, food, and tools that unlock new areas. Farm plots can be placed in several regions to grow different crops and raise animals. Sprites clear gloom and reveal shortcuts between biomes.

Islanders

You place buildings to score points based on proximity rules like houses near markets or fields near mills. Each pack of pieces arrives after clearing a score threshold and maps grow across small islands. The interface shows point values before placement so choices are quick. High scores unlock new color palettes and sets.

Share your favorite calm play picks in the comments so everyone can discover a new go-to game.