Wake up! Or, how to game when you’re tired
Has life left you too exhausted to game? Here’s how to get your mojo back.
You’ve got new lands to explore, new swords to collect, and wild new characters to meet and yet—you find yourself too tired and it’s all starting to feel like…work.
No matter how much we love a hobby, life sometimes gets the best of us and wears us too thin to enjoy them. It’s a classic Catch-22: you stop gaming because you’re too tired and then find you’re more tired because you no longer have those relaxing and rejuvenating pastimes in your life.
So how do you shake off those tired blues? Here’s our advice:
Play on “easy” (we promise we won’t tell)
Despite what you might read on forums, playing every game at its highest difficulty is not the sign of an uber-gamer. While gamers are natural challenge seekers, there are times for sweating-it-out, pulse-pounding gaming and there are times for chilling out and just having some fun.
If you’ve been using up all your tryhard energy in real life, it makes sense to rest up with a nice, easy game. These days, many games allow you to change the difficulty level at any point, so knock that sucker down to easy and relax.
Do some side quests
In the middle of a big game but don’t have the energy to take on the nigh undefeatable Chaos Golem? Not really feeling up to starting a six-part questline with half an hour of dialogue?
Just because you’re exhausted, it doesn’t mean you have can’t make progress. Take on some of those sidequests that you’ve been neglecting. They’re typically more lowkey than the main quest and you’ll be rewarded with new items and experience along the way. Who knows? After severing enough bandits’ heads and delivering supplies to the neighboring village, maybe that Chaos Golem won’t seem so tough after all.
Get comfy with cozy games
There’s a niche for everyone, and we’ve found that the niche that keeps on giving is the growing genre of “cozy games” (not to be confused with “cozy fantasy”). These types of games make you want to sink deep into your couch (or computer chair) doing something other than the typical slash, shoot, dodge, jump routine that defines so many games.
Run a café and chat with locals in the sci-fi, Seattle based Coffee Talk; build a boat and explore the world befriending spirits in Spiritfarer; add splashes of color to a black and white world in Chicory: A Colorful Tale. These are chill, easy-to-play games that make you feel more rested after playing.
Get…more tired
If you’ve been inside all day, butt-in-chair working or studying (and browsing the internet, looking out the window, checking your navel), it’s no wonder you’re too tired to game. It’s not a matter of being exhausted, it’s that you’re restless.
Take a real life sidequest and go for a walk, do a workout—something that gets those pent-up jitters out of your body. If you really want to go overboard, you might even spend some time cleaning up your gaming area; the less clutter around the screen, the more you can focus without the distraction of all that stuff.
Eat better and get some damn sleep
We can’t count out that maybe you’re too tired because…you simply need sleep. Or maybe your body is finally collapsing under a diet of potato chips, mac and cheese, and soda.
Would you know it, we’ve already got you covered! Level up your nutrition (and therefore, energy), by eating like a pro gamer, and top it off by improving your sleep schedule.
With all that newfound energy, it might be time to turn the difficulty back up a notch.
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