By Syd Stephenson (Follow us on LinkedIn)
Working in academia, specifically an academic law library, can be an enormous amount of stress and pressure. When I finished my MLIS in 2022 and started working full time, I found that I had a really difficult time separating my brain from work once I was off the clock. I found myself stressing over the next day, after-hours emails, and feeling like an imposter that might be fired at any moment.
There is much to be said about how important it is to separate yourself from work and have a strong relationship with rest. One of the most effective hobbies in my rest routine has been playing relaxing and immersive video games for an hour or two each night. For me, video games are a hobby that has always provided some form of escape and exploration. As an adult, they have become a really important part of my daily self-care and rest routine.
As I spend time getting lost in a beautiful landscape, interacting with interesting and new characters, and learning all the lore I can get my hands on, I can physically feel my mind and body becoming more at ease and the stress of the workday melting away.
Now, playing video games may not be the hobby that YOU need to disconnect from work at the end of the day. However, if it’s a hobby you’re looking to invest in, my top recommendations are listed and briefly described below:
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Earlier this year, the long-awaited sequel to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was released on the Nintendo Switch and it is a truly special game. This game is filled with a cast of adorable characters, challenging puzzles, and dazzling, open landscapes. You can ride your horse across the Plains of Hyrule while a twinkling piano plays in the background, explore crumbling ruins high in the sky, or build a giant mech and fling Koroks across the map.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Anniversary Edition
My favorite way to play this game is role-playing as an alchemist—spending an hour or two in the evenings building a cottage near a scenic lake, exploring lush forests and caves for ingredients, and making potions as a bard plays a lute in the background.
Baldur’s Gate 3
Baldur’s Gate 3 has been the surprise hit game of this year. The gameplay style may be a bit challenging for newer gamers, as it is based on Dungeons and Dragons. Larian Studios did an incredible job bringing the tabletop game to gaming consoles. Every quest and interaction rely on dice roll successes and failures. There are dozens of ways that you can complete many quests with a variety of immersive companions that you can spend hours befriending at your camp.
Dragon Age trilogy
I stumbled across the first Dragon Age game, Dragon Age: Origins, during a sick day in high school. The gameplay of Dragon Age: Origins is very similar to Baldur’s Gate 3. If turn-based combat and Dungeons and Dragons mechanics are your cup of tea, this is the game for you. Similarly, to Baldur’s Gate 3, you have a group of unique and well-written companions that you can befriend or even fall in love with. My favorite part of this game, however, is that every possible character you can create has a unique origin story that you get to play through as a prologue to the full game (hence the name “Origins”).
Mass Effect trilogy
The Mass Effect trilogy is a sci-fi saga set in the 2180s, 40 years after humanity unlocked the secret to faster-than-light space travel and joined an advanced galactic civilization. Over the course of three games, you play as Commander Shepard, making massive, story-changing decisions as you fight to save the galaxy from an existential threat. The best and most engaging part of this series is the connections you make throughout the journey.
Lake
Lake is a wonderfully cozy indie game where the player character is maybe someone who is relatable to all of us—a woman in her 40s that can’t seem to find any time to step away from her career and focus on herself. When Meredith (the main character) returns to her cozy hometown to cover her father’s mail delivery route, she finds herself reconnecting with old friends and hobbies. This game is on the shorter side, but the multiple possible endings give Lake a high replay value.
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Notes Between Us (NBU) is a blog about conversations and topics of interest to the writers. The writers are expressing their personal opinions solely. The essays represent their personal beliefs and not those of their workplaces or any organization they are associated with.
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