The thing about getting into game dev as a hobby is that basically now you have no time to actually play other games! 😭
When I do get time, Deep Rock Galactic is a fave for those days when you just want to shoot something in the face but you don't want to do it surrounded by aggressively sexist 12 year old boys. A new season just dropped this week, which makes it sound like a typical money-hungry microtransactional mess but I swear it's not like that at all, the devs are great people and everyone should give this one a go. ROCK AND STONE!
More chill days I like to investigate the unending backlog of cozy indie games from Epic (never touched them until I got a Steam Deck but it's been great for those). Or revisit Mini Metro which on the surface is a simple af puzzle game but it's surprisingly immersive and deep.
Of course it's Steam Next Fest atm, I've only tried a couple of demos so far (Station to Station and Laysara: Summit Kingdom) but was thoroughly underwhelmed by both of them. On the other hand my husband tried the demo of Memori and got super into it, he says anyone who liked Celeste should give it a try.
Also last mention goes to Outer Wilds, I'm not "playing" it as such because it's pretty one-and-done, but it's impossible not to recommend it whenever even a slightly appropriate opportunity allows. One of the most amazingly crafted and emotionally impactful games I've played in my 30-odd years of gaming and if you've never tried it, please just trust me and go in blind it is so worth it.
One of us! It's honestly an absolute masterclass in how you can make a simple concept so surprisingly deep.
Downside is they released Mini Motorways a while ago and I'm sure it's amazing but Mini Metro was so good that I've still not got bored of it and moved onto the sequel and I feel bad 😆
Motor ways and metro are entirely different, yet very similar. I would recommend giving motorways a shot, I think you'll find the differences enough that it'll feel like an entirely different game, with the same amount of satisfaction. I kinda flip a coin to see which one I'll be playing.
For anyone wondering about Deep Rock - it's a co-op FPS that is insane amounts of fun with a very friendly community. The DLC is cosmetic only - all the seasonal content is free.
As for the links, sorry, I know Jerboa was having trouble opening links but thought they'd sorted it out by now tbh. The link with the ! syntax is just literally direct to the community ([email protected] being the address you'd enter into search to pull it into your instance). The other two are relative links that users on the Lemmy and Kbin websites can use to click straight through to their local version.
If there's a better way to link for Jerboa users please let me know! Trying to make the effort and give people easy ways to get to any community I mention.