About Relaxing Gameplaid
About relaxing gameplaid
~ Relaxing Gameplaid is a safe and inclusive space ~
On this site, no AI is used
A relaxed passion for indie games
I like the idea of increasing the appreciation for indie games, especially if they are small, short, artistic, or otherwise significant beyond how complex their mechanics are or how much playtime they promise.
Especially since the pandemic, and after David Wehle (literally) set a precedent with his "The First Tree" which almost became a case study, the world of indie games has progressively expanded. It is now a highly fruitful and diverse dimension of extremely different people, no matter if they are gathered in studios with a more or less known name or solitary developers with an idea to share.
And, in recent years, indie games have also offered themselves as a true medium for storytelling, often providing small games that didn't promise days of impossible challenges, but even just a half-hour of quality to tell a single story, with the aim of leaving food for thought.food for thoughts – cibo per i pensieri).
There are hundreds, or more likely thousands, of people committed to making games, and the stage on which their creations can be showcased is never too wide.
This is also the reason why I decided to switch from an international/English website/project to an Italian one, to get closer to an area that is often unfortunately not covered by the languages offered, and to provide content in my mother tongue.
Note: English is still available, both on the website, on YouTube, and on my social media. I'd love for everyone, developers included, to be able to read!
Therefore, I hope, ~with calm and relaxation~, to succeed in creating an interesting space!
Fighting Toxicity in Gaming
In the gaming world, toxicity is a widespread and deeply rooted problem, especially in the communities of AAA or generally large games, BUT unfortunately not only there.
With Relaxing Gameplaid, I propose to spread a culture of respect, especially for developers, in a world that already has too much negativity.
When you don't like a video game, if you find the quality is poor, or if for any reason you only have negative criticism that is an end in itself: you must avoid it.
Uninstall the demo, remove it from your wishlist, ask for a refund if you can; the important thing is not to vent your bile on people who are doing their best.
If you have nothing constructive to say, be it positive or negative, even after taking a break, it's better to say nothing. Where "constructive" is to be understood in its original sense: to analyze what you think is not working or what you believe could be improved.
An action that should stem from the desire to help, to be useful, not to humiliate or annihilate people who are putting their best into creating their game, whether they are very good or not.
For this reason, on Relaxing Gameplaid, I aim to promote respectful, relaxed, and serene relationships between players and developers.
About Relaxing Gameplaid
Relaxing Gameplaid is a little personal project focused almost exclusively on indie games and, even more, on specific genres of indie games.
The last years have seen a literal explosion in the number of indie games created and published and my interest has grown accordingly, especially for those that end up coinciding with my passions and hobbies: mysteries, puzzles, worldbuilding, creature design and storytelling.
But as much as I love games with some kind of meaning or mental challenge, I'm also a pretty casual and relaxed gamer: I don't particularly like games that are anxiety-inducing, stressful, or that make you sweat a lot to beat a boss (beyond the fact that many of them are as good as any other type of video game, like Soma and those by From Software just to name a few!).
I know there are many gamers like me, who do things like playing Minecraft in Peaceful Mode or that aren't interested in going beyond the "Normal" difficulty or even just the "Easy" one. People who enjoy and love beautiful artistic games just for the sake of playing, with outstanding hand-drawn graphics, it doesn't matter if they will be over in a couple of hours.
It's a play on words that I made up on the spot. It comes from "gameplay" and "plaid" (in Italy the name refers to a very common old-fashioned blanket with a plaid pattern that you use on the couch, ).
Since I already had in mind what I wanted to do, I thought of a name that could be linked to playing in peace and so I found myself combining the general concept of the game as “gameplay” and the blanket that many of us throw on our laps on the sofa when we watch a movie or play a game, while maintaining a sound similar to the original word.
Relaxing Gameplaid came to life around the idea of a collection of indie games that I believe deserve to be known more, with something I consider special: games with meaningful stories or artistic graphics, very surreal or original. But they can also be games created by a very single person, or having nothing super-special beyond being nice games that I've enjoyed playing!
For each game I'll write a technical review in which I tell what I think of it and how I felt while playing. Moreover, when the development level of the in-game world allows it, I'll offer an extended review with the normal technical side but also a second one from the worldbuilding and coherence point of view!
One of my goals is to be able to write reviews and analysis with respect for the developers and their work, explaining frankly what I find good and less good without the desire to be destructive, offensive or even just overly-critical.
Out there there are enough aggressive and toxic gamers as well as "reviewers" that don't care about them and their work and only judge with an unrealistic and disrespectful scale at hand. A little indie game can't be compared with a big AAA one, but I've seen plenty of people following this approach.
So, long story short, this will be my personal achievement about the games I’ll play: to say if I liked them or not and why, strong and weak points in my opinion, if they’re relaxing and soothing or not.
I will build this site a little brick at a time without any rush and bilingual, as a way to communicate with devs and other indie lovers all around the world, and also to improve my English!
After starting out where I followed the flow of what attracted me, during the transition from English to Italian content, I decided to follow my heart and change focus.
Now I focus mainly on what I love: puzzles and point and click.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop covering other games. There are too many great ones I'm waiting to play!
For recorded videos (not necessarily published. Sometimes I publish them long after I've recorded them):
until December 2024
Motherboard: ASRock H85M Pro4
CPU: i5-4440@ 3.10GHz (2017)
Graphic Card: MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z
RAM: 24GB, Corsair Vengeance DD3 (8×2 GB) + DDR3 (4×2 GB)
Power Supply: Corsair CX600
OS: Windows 10 PRO
after February 2025
Motherboard: Asus Prime Z-790-A WiFi
CPU: i5-12600K@ 3.70GHz
Graphic Card: MSI RTX 2060 Gaming Z
RAM: 32GB, Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 (16×2 GB)
Power Supply: Corsair CX600
OS: Windows 11 PRO
At the moment, as far as Italian is concerned, only on BlueSky and YouTube.
My profile Twitter/X is currently inactive, not sharing Elon Musk neither for policies, nor as a person.
Moreover, it was my point of interaction for the English language and to follow/communicate with the developers before the big exodus on BlueSky.
I don't have any other accounts at the moment!
About the site
When I first started developing Relaxing Gameplaid as a project, I had the classic 1-10 rating scale and each section of the review had its own specific rating. In the final summary there was a global one, obtained by averaging all the others.
However, as I was building the framework for the reviews, I realized that I didn’t like it at all.
One of my goals with this is to help indie game developers gather honest feedback, without falling into the caustic and aggressive style that in the gaming world - and not only - is unfortunately all too common.
There are so many small developers out there, proud of their work even when it's not perfect, and all I hope for them is that they can maintain their enthusiasm even when they should know that their game has some issues that should be fixed or some aspect that could be improved.
I have no desire to harshly criticize or rate them and their work, so I decided to stick with this vision and completely eliminate the numerical rating system.
In its place, I created a simpler “traffic light” system: I use green, yellow, and red to communicate my opinion.
The system is very basic and simple.
In the review page, each section has a small colored sofa.
Green: this specific part has no problems, I liked it, it is coherent, it has no technical problems, etc.
Yellow: this specific part has shown some difficulties, the narration has some small hiccups, there were small technical problems, etc.
Red: this specific part has shown major problems or iit doesn't work, it's seriously bugged or there are major glitches that also make it impossible to play, the gameplay is absolutely unclear or too frustrating, etc.
It's the simplest, most universal and intuitive way I've found to explain with a single symbol what I think: it is accessible to both players and developers; it overcomes language barriers and, personally, I find it easier and more “objective” than a numerical value or a number of stars.
Of course, all reviews are solely my point of view, my personal opinions and my gaming experience.
Note: Speaking of accessibility, I'd like to be as inclusive as possible for what my abilities allow, so I've also added an Ok/So-So/No system to use with the colored sofas, to help people who are colorblind.
For two rather simple reasons:
- for my desire to keep the site as cookie-free as possible;
- for GDPR reasons.
Maybe in the future I will open up to subscriptions to the site and the possibility of commenting, but since this is not my job and I do it only as a hobby, I want to be sure of my responsibilities towards national and European laws.
Despite this, I'm active on both BlueSky and YouTube, where the Community Posts are always open to your opinions, questions and comments!
The site of Relaxing Gameplaid is managed by a single person (me), for passion and interest in the world of small indie video games.
And being a so-called “amateur” site and not monetized at the moment, my budget is limited. Consequently the translations are manual: I translate from Italian to English and I do it without relying on AI. Only occasionally I use Google Translate if some steps are too difficult for me. But always for the bare minimum.
And since it's a so-called “amateur” site and not monetized for the moment, my budget is limited and consequently the translations are manual: I translate from Italian to English and I do it without relying on AI. I rely on Google Translate if some steps are too difficult for me or if I have too little time (which still needs to be corrected, it is far from perfect :/)
In any case, if there are some horrible errors and you feel like sending an email about it, any help or advice is welcome!
Note: I know that the translations could be “strange” in the expressions, but I like the idea of maintaining the style that I have in the Italian version and I don't aim to make them seem at 100% the translations of the native speaker that I'm not : D
About YouTube and videos
There are two main reasons for this, one let's say “philosophical” and one practical.
The philosophical one is that, as someone who discovered that I am neurodivergent (ADHD), I have understood that processing sensory input is sometimes difficult. Personally, I usually don't have huge problems, but when I do, I get very fed up very quickly to the point of frustration.
Plus, there’s the issue of attention: watching videos –with attention– where you have to watch the content and simultaneously listen to the person speaking, is extremely difficult due to the amount of different inputs.
Plus, let’s be honest: when I’m interested in a game that I don’t intend to play, but that I like for some reason, I just want to enjoy the game.
Unfortunately, talking about who plays distracts me (and this is not a criticism of the many good players/youtubers who make commentated videos!)
I know that many people, neurodivergent or not, have the same problems as me and maybe use gameplay videos as a background for other activities. For this reason I decided to offer, at least for the moment, silent gameplay.
That practicalone is that at this moment, the environment in which I live does not allow me to have the silence that would be needed. The position of my PC at home is in a shared environment, in an apartment where isolating sounds is difficult. Even just trying would require an investment in money and time and an effort both in production and editing that at this moment, in my opinion, does not make sense to do.
If in the future the channel grows and there is interest in it, or if I come up with some useful ideas, I will definitely think about it!
In the sense that when I choose and start a new title, I try to have as little information as possible.
However, it is not a new concept, it is what in English is usually called “Blind run”.
Even when I buy one, I actually do very little research: I watch the trailer, I make sure it doesn't belong to a genre that's out of my league (like Metroidvanias, for example), that it's not a scam, and if everything's OK, I buy it.
I prefer to discover everything in game, and one of my main satisfactions is seeing achievement notifications when I accidentally discover a hidden or rare one!
Relaxing Gameplaid è iniziato come un progetto rivolto ad un pubblico internazionale e di conseguenza tutto era in inglese, dai giochi alle descrizioni dei video.
Anche il sito era completamente in inglese.
Quando, dopo vari su e giù ed un lungo periodo alla deriva, ho deciso di cambiare e di trasformarlo in un sito in italiano, ho convertito tutto quello che potevo.
Purtroppo però, per ovvi motivi, non posso cambiare la lingua dei gameplay che ho già registrato e ri-giocarli per farlo in italiano non è una soluzione affrontabile per questioni di tempo.
I gameplay registrati dal 2025 in poi saranno in italiano, laddove è disponibile come lingua.
I use, in a very basic way, two free programs:
OBS for recording gameplay
DaVinci Resolve for editing
OBS is very straightforward and quite simple to use, especially since currently I don't stream.
As for DaVinci, if you've never used an editing program, it has a minimal learning curve, just like any other video editor. But if you're already a little familiar with basic dynamics like using timelines, cutting and splicing, and adding comments or subtitles, it will be pretty simple from the start. It's only when you need to use more advanced features that you'll need to learn something new.
DaVinci can seem very complex because it offers a vast range of different tools, suitable even for cinematic editing (many amateur and indie productions use the free version). But if you approach and learn one thing at a time as needed, everything stays smooth!
What indie games will you review/talk about?
THE LISTS BELOW ARE NOT COMPLETE (YET)!
GENRES
(In Italian they're in alphabetical order)
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE
- Exploration
- Poin-and-Click
- Puzzle
I ALSO LIKE
-
Adventure
-
Casual/Cozy
- Visual Novel
- Platformer
- Puzzler-Platfomer
- Sandbox
- Simulation (simple ones, like walking simulators)
I MAY CONSIDER
- Metroidvania
- RPGs
- Simulation (more comples, like city builder, resources management, etc)
- Strategy
NOT MY CUP OF TEA
- Fighting Games
- Horror (if very anxiety-inducing o with jumpscares)
- Roguelike/Roguelite
- Soulslike
- Shooters/FPS
- Strategy (especially if outside Simulation)
- Survival
THEMES
(In Italian they're in alphabetical order)
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE
- Artistic
- Emotional (grief included)
- Folklore, Legends, Mythology
- Mistery and Paranormal
- Philosophy
- Story-Rich
- Surreal
- Weird
- String Theory
I ALSO LIKE
-
Dark
-
Casual/Relaxing
- Interactive Adventure
- Platformer
- Sandbox
I MAY CONSIDER
NOT MY CUP OF TEA
AMBIENTAZIONI
(In Italian they're in alphabetical order)
I ABSOLUTELY LOVE
- Ancient Egypt
- Cyberpunk
- Dystopic
- Post-Apocalyptic
- Sci-Fi
- Solarpunk
- Supernatural
- Surreal
I ALSO LIKE
- Contemporary/Modern Era
-
Original Fantasy
I MAY CONSIDER
- Classical Fantasy
- Medieval
- Non-futuristic "-punk" (eg: Steampunk, Dieselpunk)
- Space Opera
NOT MY CUP OF TEA
- Pure Historical (exception for Ancient Egypt)