PEAK, or how I regained my passion for gaming
Through all the time I've existed, I would lie if I said that videogames didn't play a part of who I am today, what I like, and how they motivated me to do things across the years, may it be back with the knock-off NES we had, a PS2 we got or later down the line, various PCs, with one of them eventually becoming my workstation + gaming machine.
Playing videogames just clicked for me, but at one point that passion I had for them kinda died out. Maybe it was after playing lots of online PvP games, but every game I tried to play something I ended up dropping it at the minutes of booting up, so instead I spent most of the day drawing, checking social media every 2 minutes waiting for something new to happen or chatting with friends.
Having left out videogames hurt a lot though, after being so attached for them for many years, quitting them felt like I was leaving a part of who I was behind, hell the original username I had for social media was based on how I played, but even if I tried to come back to it I never really managed to.
The most I played games was to play with friends, but I never really played out of passion for them at the time, it was more like a pass time with friends that I had once every 2 weeks rather than something I frequented for myself.
The worst part is that I tried to play games I was really looking forward to, like DELTARUNE and Balatro, yet they did not get me at all at the time.
Some months after all of this though, a funny game released called PEAK, which if you don't know what it is about, your plane to a trip crashed and you need to go to the peak of the mountain to call for help, may it be with you only or more than 1 friend, up to 4 peeps in total.
At first I didn't mind it, I just thought it was another silly coop game, until more and more friends started playing it, so I hopped on with the idea to do a few game sessions with them.
This game clicked with me like no other game ever did by a long while now. May it be the simple mechanics and goal, the art-style, the cooperation, I'm not kidding when I say I got reminded of playing for fun more than as a way to pass time with others, which isn't bad don't get me wrong, but both options reach different results.
Right now PEAK sits with 35 hours at my Steam library, which seems like a very small amount of hours, until you realize that it's in the top 10 of my most played Steam games, and I got over 180 games so...
The funny part is that, even if an usual playthrough lasts around 1 hour and a half, I never got around to actually reaching the PEAK, but I couldn't care less for that, I had a lot of fun every play-through and that is what's most important for me, not focus on getting a goal done but the path to trying to reach it, what happens on it and if it's enjoyable or not.
This is what I was searching for with games, not some grandiose story that lasts for a lot of hours and keeps you chained to it, or live service PvP games that want every bit of your attention, but far simpler games, that focused more on the gameplay loop, and PEAK showed me that the more I played it.
Since then, I've been playing other games that have a similar type of focus, such as CloverPit and Nubby's Numbers Factory, Megabonk and Brotato (the latter mostly on the phone), Haste and more. CloverPit and Nubby's are basically Balatro but instead of Cards you use Slot Machines and a Peggle style gameplay respectively, Megabonk and Brotato are survivors-like/bullet heaven games that are very easy to get to, and Haste is basically like Sonic but you actually feel like Sonic, if you get what I mean.
Just now I've started opening up to more types of games, like GTA V (which I had waiting to get past the first few missions for years now), but at least now I look for the fun aspect in them more clearly rather than "oh I need to finish this checklist so I can get this chore done".
It's funny I said all of this, because for other people the simpler games can feel very boring, and they're looking for bigger games with lots of mechanics and deep stories, or live service competitive games, or games that aren't really games but more so experiences, and there's nothing wrong with all of this.
If you feel stuck with games right now like I did before, what I experienced might not work for you, but you might need to go looking for what works best for your specific case, and that's the fun of it all really, to try out new games and find out what works the best for us all.
I guess the message I'm trying to get across here is that if a hobby or passion of yours isn't as fun as it used to be, maybe you need to look at it from other perspective rather than just trying to do what you were doing before work, time and time again, Like I do with art sometimes...
But oh well, I'll see you all at the PEAK... eventually.
-Anubi "ANoob" Arts.