@mattgrayyes to add to the list:
Terraria
Gemcraft
Ultrakill (with or without The Peripheral. Ahem)
Hollow Knight
Path of exile (mid league in a 6 month league, but whatever)

There are ways. Several of these games are compatible with mods.

@mattgrayyes
Let's learn everything is one of my favorites. It is something special isn't it.

@mattgrayyes I also recommend Little Kitty Big City, a very wholesome and cute game that can be a good time sink.

@mattgrayyes Balatro is a drug!!! Today at random I restarted FinalFnatasy VII, so I think I have plenty of distraction, sick child premising.

@mattgrayyes I often get absorbed in Cities Skylines entirely on purpose.

Edited to add, I highly reccomend thr game Banished which has so much charm and is very easy to get absorbed in, but lacks the mass transit pull of skylines.

@mattgrayyes did you give Factorio a try? It's called cracktorio for a reason

@mattgrayyes people have probably asked but have you got absorbed into factorio?

@mattgrayyes I started listening to LLE after they appeared on Lateral. Great hosts, brilliant content. I'm slowly making my way through their back-catalogue. Seems I should add 99% Invisible to the queue, too.
What The Car is absolutely unhinged, I love it! 😂

@mattgrayyes Try Outer Wilds, definitely. It's weird when you start and experience the real gameplay after a while, but at some point you feel free as hell and you start learning about the story and it gets so deep you can't stop.

And when you finish it, whether with the whole story or with only bits of it, you can never play it again, it's so frustrating, but it's also what makes this game profoundly unique, a one-of-a-kind experience.

Enjoy 👌

@mattgrayyes For podcasts I can strongly recommend Song Exploder. You learn about how songs came into being, and discover new music along the way.

@mattgrayyes adding to the recommendations:

- #openTTD for your #TransportTycoon needs
- #openXCOM for the classic #XCOM / #UFODefence suffering
- #Brogue for a colourful #roguelike
- #OneWayHeroics for a mix between a #rogueLite and an #ActionRPG, where you play a character from various classes who has to try to outrun the darkness swallowing up the world from the left, while gearing up and leveling up to eventually face the evil villain at the end.

@mattgrayyes I love Mini Metro - I have Mini Motorways too but somehow it's not as good

@mattgrayyes for those with some neurospicyness I quite enjoy Wilmots Warehouse

@mattgrayyes Factorio, if crack isn't addictive enough…

@mattgrayyes@chaos.social Webfishing is rather fun too with friends, good way to chill out

@mattgrayyes I tried playing Balatro. It was so frustrating and I could never get past the 6th Ante Boss Blind no matter what I did. I had to stop playing out of frustration.

I've been playing other games, most of them on my Steam Deck and the rest on PC.

If you’d like a distraction from the world, here’s a YouTube playlist of mostly other people’s videos.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLu2ycIN65JoHhq2AFAw_RiG0ACq-g0vr6&si=k34mvv_1tsLg9EsJ

@mattgrayyes I've recently gotten addicted to webfishing and satisfactory :woozy_plead: