Starting out as a tiny organism – basically a mouth and a torso – you have to swim around in blue gloop consuming other tiny organisms. At times you’ll find that eating something has changed your creature. Whether it’s a metamorphosis or accelerated evolution is irrelevant; after ten minutes your body will be longer, and you might have sprouted legs and other appendages and you’ll be chasing an even larger quarry.
All of this is reminiscent of the early stages of the game Spore. It’s lovely to play, and the music and simplistic design makes it an immediate and striking experience.
The wonderful physics engine makes this game a dream to learn as everything feels very natural; you’re supplied with three fully controllable sheep of different sizes.You have to work out how to get Timmy (tiny), Shaun (medium size), and Shirley (heavily overweight) over to the barn on the right of the screen using the swings, see-saws, ramps, steps, switches, and other paraphernalia lying around.
You’ll be hooked to Home Sheep Home in no time by the adorable characters and laid-back style of play. This is by design of course as puzzle games ramp in difficulty in later stages.
Fauna-based fun abounds in Flower Reaction, where each level begins with a number of little flowers floating around the screen, bouncing off the edges. Your cursor is another flower and when you click, it stops and blooms to about ten times its size for a few seconds. Any flowers that bump into it also do the same, and any flowers that touch them do the same.
Flower Reaction also provides different coloured flowers with their own unique abilities as well. These abilities are things such as lingering longer or growing massively for a second. There is enough variety to these abilities to cause various combinations and create potentially larger chains.
You’re a giraffe – at least in Casanova – trotting eastwards as a procession of other giraffes trots westwards. Each one has a neck of a different length, and all you have to do is click and hold the mouse button to extend yours so your heads meet for a kiss!
The whole point of the game is simple: land a smacker on the lips of the other giraffes as often as possible while collecting floating bonuses along the way. Between that element and the 70s sitcom theme tune plays jauntily in the background it’s so adorably cute it should be illegal.
Point and click adventure games come in all varieties, and for a time, a lot of video games were essentially that. These games sent you on journeys to find unique characters, gather various items, and complete oftentimes convoluted puzzles. This is what makes Little Wheel stand out amongst the multitude of point-and-click games. It is the sheer beauty and atmosphere the game’s makers One Click Dog have created here.
The graphics are striking enough to win awards and are reminiscent of another game called Limbo. Little Wheel goes a step farther through the addition of a slinky jazz soundtrack. You are given several options that you have to piece together to get you to that end result. Mentioning anything more beyond this would spoil the experience so I’ll stop there.
Jigsaw puzzles are forever world-famous for their addictive nature. For centuries, we’ve enjoyed opening up boxes of puzzles and putting together the images. The only issue with puzzles is the fact they can take up so much space. Thankfully, there are several online solutions that allow people to reap the benefits of putting puzzles together without worrying about the space.
As the name of this game suggests, this is a pure jigsaw puzzle game so if you’ve ever done one, then an explanation for what to do is really not necessary. What is necessary though is the complexity of these puzzles as they do take up a bit of time to complete – roughly an hour.
If you’re not familiar with Ferry Halim, he developed a website called Orisinal in 2000 and used the platform to develop 62 Adobe Flash games (as of January 2018). This game develop specializes in fun 2D experiences that bring creative game ideas to honestly online relaxing games to play. As with all this maestro’s work, it’s a joy to behold, looking more like a watercolour painting than a game.
The action takes place on a palpably breezy day, and you have to aim with your mouse and jump your puppy (or it could be a kitten) from balloon to balloon as they drift by, before your time runs out. You get points for landing on balloons and bonus points for jumping over them, and every so often a special balloon tops up your time – if you can land on it.
Even so, there are several games out there that have taken this model and changed it into something else. One popular example is the game Candy Crush. Unlike Candy Crush though, Bejeweled is more simplistic than that. All you have to do is swap the positions of pairs of jewels to make unbroken sequences of three, four or five identical jewels.
This game is so reminiscent of Tetris, that it’s addictive. And what drives this to being one of the greatest and relaxing games to play is the fact the sounds are delightful and create a sense of satisfaction.
This puzzle game can be tricky, but it delivers on satisfaction when you do it right making it an incredibly chill game to play. The missions you face are fairly straightforward to grasp: guide Fireboy (who hates water) and Watergirl (who hates fire) around the onscreen challenges until you reach the conclusion.
Expect lots of switch operating, box-pushing, see-saw running, and light-beam guiding in this game. This puzzle game will present all kinds of challenges, but you can also expect Fireboy and Watergirl to wow you with their laid-back charms as well.
This is a purely relaxing game as the visuals fully immerse you into those worlds. It’s a truly delightful experience as it provides a nice balance between the beautiful graphics and the luscious stereophonic orchestration.
Unlike the other chill games to play on this list, there isn’t a prime objective. Nor are you able to win or lose from this game. The whole objective – if you want to call it that – is you must experience and influence the worlds you see.
