1. RimWorld - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a game care so much about making the player feel like part of the story; just all around amazing. Damn near everything is configurable and for anything that isn’t the modding community probably has a fix for (and then some).
2. Terraria - Certainly has its quirks and annoyances, but I like that it has sandbox elements to be creative and do whatever, but also always feels like the game has an objective to work towards. I’ve probably played though at least half a dozen times between solo runs and multiplayer games with friends/ family and I just keep coming back to it.
3. Stardew valley - it’s just cozy with a slight hit of nostalgia. I have childhood memories of staying up entirely too late monopolizing the TV/ GameCube playing Harvest Moon and this scratches the same itch. Beyond that you can feel the love and attention to detail that the dev has poured into the game. Plus the skill ceiling is pretty low, so even my non-gamer friends/ family can play and have a good time.

Honorable mentions:

• Factorio
• Slay the Spire
• FTL

Depends on the music for me. Anything slow or super lyrical tends to break my focus, while more upbeat stuff I’ve heard dozens of times can help me hit a flow state (or at the very least drown out the goings on around me enough to focus on something). I’ve had good luck with video game soundtracks, like Bastion or FTL because they tend to be lively without demanding attention.

Glad I’m not the only one, because that’s exactly where I’m at. The premises almost relies on consistent yield and unconstrained growth, which nature very much does not like. Plus it doesn’t consider the opportunity cost of having to sink your time into becoming a literal farmer (nor any other recurring costs to maintain and harvest your plants).

In this case, the upfront cash is hands down the way to go. You don’t even have to do any complicated investing, just huck the mill in a jumbo CD and take the monthly payout. Going off my local credit unions (about 3.75% in dividends for a 5 year term), at $37,500 per year it probably wouldn’t be enough to quit your job, but you’d be doing an order of magnitude better than $50 per week. If you’re really looking to grow it, you could just dump the lump sum in the S&P 500 (up 95.3% from 5 years ago). (Assuming no taxes and that the dollar still has any value in the next 5 years).

papyrus!

Jenkins!

I feel a bit like I’m slinging hard drugs here, but might I also suggest RimWorld and Factorio?