Be it a comfort game or one that helped you at a time in your life, what is that game for you?

I've played Pokemon since I was a little kid in the 90's, so I always dive into the games whenever I want to just relax and forget about life for a while. They make me feel like a kid again.

The Red Dead Redemption games have tremendously helped me cultivate one of my current hobbies, which is westerns (books, movies, you name it. I love them). Funny enough, watching my gang members reading all the time actually got me back into reading again as well!

Kind of silly, but maybe Maplestory? I met a lot of cool people on there, several of which went on to become real and lifelong friends outside of the game.

Dark Souls. The first time I played it was a journey of me both loving and hating the game, and a lot of crying. But it's now one of my most beloved treasured games. Sometimes I play it just to find a nice spot with a view just to stop and feel peaceful.

ff14, it has the best storyline of any game i've ever played and was the only game to ever make me cry.

oh, To The Moon for SURE omg. it played a big part in helping me come to terms with being dx'd as being on the autism spectrum like 15 years ago. i was ugly sobbing by the end of it. very important game to me. river wyles my beloved

The game that changed everything for me was the original Myst. It was so revolutionary when it came out. My parents knew I was obsessed and bought it for me one year, and it started this whole tradition of playing those point-and-click adventure games every Sunday for at least an hour as a family, no matter how busy we were. We played all sorts of fun and interesting ones, but Myst started it all for us. <3

Assassin's Creed.

I picked up AC2 in early 2010 and it quickly became a hyperfixation and obsession. It rekindled my love of history and helped me through several dreadful times in my life, including my mother's coma.

With AC Valhalla, I was already debating leaving the fandom because of how toxic it was becoming but that aside, Valhalla gave me several keys to some missing family history. A long backstory short: my great-grandmother was always one for writing down family history, something she passed to my grandfather, then my grandfather passed to my uncle and my father but there were pieces missing. There's bits that predate my great-grandmother but not much further than that.

Back in early 2023, Dad asked me one day how to pronounce a name and it happened to be a woman's name, a Viking princess as the case was, and she was the first leaf. Considering the plethora of media surrounding the Vikings lately, my reaction was initially dread so I started digging and digging and digging.

10 generations became 15 then 20, 25, 30, 35, and at 38th... in what felt like a "What took you so long?"... was Ragnar frickin' Lothbrok. The one side of my family comes from Ivar Ragnarsson, the other comes from Sigurd Ragnarsson. Ivar had a son named Barid mac Imair, who... you know is the AC Valhalla's protag's cousin... turned out to be my 36th or so great-grandfather.

In short, what started as a comfort game in a lot of ways became a way of stepping back in time into my family history in a fantastical take on things.

Then to know how that history spirals up from Barid, sometimes addressed as a "Jarl of Lochlainn" (great-grandmother's maiden name was McLaughlin, one of the +100 accepted variants by the still active Scottish clan), to me, through England, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. With a couple detours into Germany.

I know 38 generations is a huge stretch but thankfully, I have the family records - of Stewart, Spencer, Campbell, Windsor, McLaughlin, etc. And yeah, I know, grand coincidence for someone with the UN I have on here. I have the external charts if anyone wants to see that I didn't personally assemble.

Dragon Age: Inquisition. I know most people would say Origins, and don't get me wrong, I loved all the games (with the exception of VG, which I am still grumpy with) but I think Inquisition was when I really started getting into the lore of the franchise, so it just landed at the right time for me to have it be the more impactful one of the bunch.

And FFVII, because that was the first game I ever played back when I was a kid.

And Silent Hill, because it started my love of horror games!