With the waking nightmares we’re routinely subjected to, it should surprise exactly no one that I’m feeling wildly disregulated right now. Anxiety has my body in a vice, and it feels like it’s only getting tighter with every new headline.

Meds help, for sure, but they’re never going to solve my problem completely. Breathing exercises, regular exposure to nature, and mindfulness are all needed to get things under control, but my favorite way to help crush the bad feelings for a while is to spend some time doing repetitive tasks in video games.

Thankfully, “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” got updated just in time to help heal my broken psyche.

Like so, so many people, I used the initial 2020 release of “New Horizons” as a distraction from the NOVEL CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC that really sidelined, let me check my notes, everything on the planet.

It’s kind of bizarre that the game is getting a proper Switch 2 release and additional features nearly six years later, but I’m not here to complain. I’m here to play “Animal Crossing” until I can’t think about anything besides gyroids and bells. $5 for an upgrade? Sure. Fine.

Back when this very website launched, I wrote about how “Arcade Paradise” kept me from falling apart during a few months of unemployment. Over these last few hellish weeks, I’m back on my bullshit.

It’s a game that is ostensibly about arcade-style time wasters, but doing digital laundry, picking up rogue socks, and impressing the very difficult virtual absent father are the tasks that really keep me coming back to “Arcade Paradise.” “Just one more run” means “let me do more laundry,” and I can’t fully explain why it resonates so strongly.

Maybe my real calling all along was to become a laundromat worker. Scrub-a-dub-dub!

Another go-to distraction of mine is “Cookie Clicker.” It’s an idle game like so many, but it’s the only one I’ve returned to again and again. There’s just something about cookie production and demonic grandmas that trick my brain into calming down when I’m feeling stressed out.

It’s available on all the consoles and Steam for just $5 a pop, but the web version remains free to keep running in my left-most tab of Firefox. Thank the heavens for these ding-dang cookies. They’re load-bearing for my mental health at this point — must-click gaming at its finest.

Click, click, click

Do you have a game that serves this purpose? Some sort of digital worry stone that serves as a balm for your brain? Let me know about it! Leave a comment below, shoot us an email, or hit me up on Bluesky,

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Image credit: “Animal Crossing: New Horizons”