Relaxing games on Nintendo Switch 2

These 8 games I've reviewed so far that really fit relaxing: Dave the Diver, No Man's Sky, Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Road 96, Airport Hero Haneda, Palia, Aerofly FS and Animal Crossing. Here is what put each of them on this page.

• Dave the Diver

  A dive is as chill as it gets: calm, floaty underwater music, a sea full of light and color, and a harpoon in hand. Run out of oxygen and you lose a bit of loot, that's about it. One dive is a perfectly good session, and on a lazy day I do two dives and a restaurant service. I still play it to chill and it helps on a bad day, 325+ hours in.

• No Man's Sky

  You decide how much effort the evening takes. Some days I look after my companions, some days I hunt resources, raid a derelict freighter or work on my base, and my favorite is getting lost exploring the endless variety of systems. Sightseeing and screenshots can be a whole evening with no resources and no mechanics, and on relaxed mode dying barely matters. The first time, set aside some time to learn it.

• The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

  There's no wrong thing to do. Half an hour on one shrine or ten minutes picking apples and cooking still counts. A shrine takes ten to twenty minutes, which is a perfect small session. Effort is the nice kind of moderate, driven by curiosity more than memory, and after a week away you just open the map and go. Weapons that break and rain that makes climbing slippery are the irritations.

• Road 96

  Chill 5 out of 5. I play it very chilled in handheld, on the sofa or even from bed, with headphones. It stays easy even when the story gets heavy, and being pure feeling is exactly what some evenings call for. It isn't all sunshine, though: it handles politics and fear, so it's not a cozy game all the way.

• I am an Air Traffic Controller: Airport Hero Haneda

  Chill 5 out of 5, and for me it's the perfect game to chill. It's extremely relaxing even when it gets really busy: early stages are almost meditative, and nothing carries over between stages, so you can leave it for two weeks and start again. It's easy on the battery, can be paused any time, and works as a short stage or a long evening. The hardest stages can hurt my brain, but in a good way. The one catch is the very long stages, where the game picks the checkpoints and a late loss stings.

• Palia

  The errands for the villagers feel fun, not like chores, and the routines give a gentle rhythm that's easy to slot back into. Docked is nice for long decorating sessions and handheld is perfect for a quick check-in. The music is gentle and folky, the kind you stop noticing and then miss when it's gone.

• Aerofly FS Flight Simulator

  After work it does the job. The learning curve is tiny, you're in the air in no time, and then it's you, the plane and the view of real airports and cities below. The copilot can fly the plane for you if you'd rather just watch. You pick the time of day, the wind and the traffic, which makes it easy to build the evening you want. It's relaxing because it's simple, even if it's a well made and realistic simulator.

• Animal Crossing: New Horizons

  It's genuinely relaxing after a day of work because you don't have to think about anything. You quickly pick up an order for doing things, follow it automatically, and when you're done your mind has been off whatever was troubling you, a bit like meditation. Mission accomplished, for a while. The catch is that played alone it starts to feel like chores: picking up bits, paying off a loan and checking the shop with nothing new at the end.