I just finished Easy Delivery Co - a simple, short delivery driving simulator. It’s just PS1-inspired graphics, a small cast of Animal Crossing-inspired characters, your Kei truck, and good vibes. Most of the game is spent driving around the mountains, delivering packages. It’s not a particularly detailed driving game, the progression is basic (capping out after 3 upgrades), and the maps are small and easy to navigate. Yet, I enjoyed driving through the snow-covered mountain roads, listening to lo-fi beats, and zoning out.

Easy Delivery Co: A low-poly snowy town with Eastern Bloc high rises, and a Kei truck performing a deliveries of some cardboard boxes. Easy Delivery Co: It’s about the vibes - every other aspect of the game is quite basic.

I picked it up because it’s short. I have an infant now, and short games I can play on my Steam Deck have become incredibly valuable. I don’t really have time for big games anymore. Unless it’s Total Warhammer, of course - there’s always time for yet another Karl Franz campaign, praise be Sigmar.

This game got me thinking about all the games that I shouldn’t have liked, but did. For me, that’s various trucking-adjacent games. You see, I couldn’t care less about cars, or trucks, or deliveries. And while I’ve taken many a road trip across the continental United States (and even lived out of my car for a year while doing so), driving really isn’t a gameplay mechanic that appeals to me.

And yet, I’ve sunk hours into games I have no business enjoying.

Take Elite Dangerous. On paper it’s epic space battles, racing your spaceship across the galaxy, all that Millennium Falcon shebang. But in reality, the game is mostly about slowly flying your spaceship from point A to point Z, passing through B, C, D, fueling up, loading cargo, and selling it along the way. It’s a bit boring.

A blue and yellow marked spaceship parked on a massive fleet carrier. Stars adorn green tinted space. Screenshot by author. Here’s Dauntless II (the original Dauntless didn’t have the range needed). On my trip towards the center of the galaxy, I came upon a lone fleet carrier, thousands of lightyears away from civilization. Ah, respite.

My favorite memory from Elite Dangerous involved a journey to the center of the galaxy. Far over a hundred jumps across deserted systems, with not another soul in sight. Occasionally fuel up by siphoning fuel from a nearby star, or maybe record some discoveries. The whole endeavour easily took 8 hours one way. Oh-so-boring, but I couldn’t stop.

It’s those long haul flights that I found oh-so appealing. I’m in the cockpit of my spaceship - a spaceship with a wonderful sense of place - little design details, small scratches. These are real vehicles that have flown light years. A radio updates you on some politics I don’t really care about, or maybe a distant war, or a new scientific discovery on the edge of the galaxy. Hand on the throttle, I accelerate and head into the great beyond, following a route I previously mapped out.

Or Snowrunner, a game about hauling cargo through mud and snow in massive trucks. I love it for the navigation - plotting routes across treacherous terrain - and the minute-to-minute decisions: do I risk the ditch or take the long way around? It’s not the adrenaline of a shooter or a racing game, but it’s just enough that you have to pay attention. My hands stay busy, my surface mind stays occupied. And the rest of my brain can go somewhere else for a while.

Two cars in Snowrunner, turned upside down in a ditch. Screenshot by author. This is what an embarassing chunk of my playthrough in Snowrunner looks like. This is what happens when you pay too little attention.

Here’s what I’ve realized: these games occupy just enough of my brain to let the rest of it rest. But it takes a very specific type of a game for that.

Take Hardspace: Shipbreaker - you’re floating in zero-g, slowly dismantling derelict spaceships. Sounds meditative, right? But you’re constantly thinking. Which panels to remove first, which lines to cut, what compartments to depressurize before you crack them open. It’s a puzzle that doesn’t let up. I like the game, but my brain never gets to wander. It’s too busy solving.

On the other end, there’s Old School RuneScape. I’m still early in my OSRS journey, but I like the slow progress and the vibes of the world. The thing is, it’s almost too slow. Tens of seconds, sometimes minutes pass without needing your input. You kind of have to do something else at the same time - watch a show, pull up YouTube on your phone, whatever. The satisfaction comes from progression, from the grind, from that communal experience of everyone grinding together. But the minute-to-minute gameplay leaves much space. My brain starts looking for something else to do entirely.

Two players hacking at enormous redwood tree in Old School Runescape. Image courtesy of oldschool.runescape.wiki. This is a redwood tree in Old School RuneScape. You wield your axe, click on the tree, and wait for 4 minutes and 24 seconds. No, really.

The games I keep coming back to hit a middle zone. Enough going on that I need to pay attention - steering through mud, watching for the next jump point, checking the map - but not so much that my whole mind gets absorbed. I’m present, but not fully.

I used to get this feeling in other ways. There was a time I meditated. On those cross-country drives, I’d sometimes turn off the radio entirely and just think. These days I tell myself I don’t have the time, or the energy, or the discipline.

But boot up a game? That I can do.

There’s something a little melancholic about this, I think. That I need a game to give me permission to zone out.

A small spaceship in Elite Dangerous, painted in orange and grey, with a star in the background. For completeness’ sake, here’s Dauntless, the original. It’s a starter ship, but it served me well on a few “boring” long haul trips.

I grew up a high achiever. There was always pressure to do well, to optimize, to make things count. When I played games as a kid, they needed to be good for my brain somehow - educational, strategic, justifiable. I carried that pressure into adulthood. Perform at work. Study after work. Find ways to further my career. Do this throughout the fifteen years of my career, and leisure starts to feel like something you have to earn, or defend.

I’ve gotten better. I play lots of games. I have hobbies that aren’t getting monetized or leading somewhere specific - they’re not steps toward greatness, I just do them for fun. But I still struggle with doing nothing. Just sitting there, unoccupied, feels hard to justify.

It’s even harder with an infant. When I get a free hour (or twenty minutes, let’s be real), I feel the pressure to spend that time well. Optimally. Zoning out feels wasteful when the clock is ticking.

So I’m grateful for games that trick me. Games that look like I’m doing something - steering, navigating, delivering - but really I’m just sitting there, letting my brain go quiet for a bit. I don’t have to summon the discipline to meditate. The game gives me something to do with my hands while the rest of me takes a break.

I’ve been telling myself I’ll get back into meditation one of these days. Eh, maybe next month.