The last thing you want to help you sleep is lights flashing in your face. Buy a book, not too interesting but enough to keep you reading for a bit. My go to book for years was Don Quixote. Lately I switched to David Copperfield. The Count of Monte Cristo would also be a good one.

Stardew Valley is $15 USD. It’s pretty laid back. Easy to set down and pick back up. I like to play it when my head is all over the place and want something soothing.

Stray, while relatively short, is the perfect game to fall asleep to, and plays beautifully on deck. Vampire survivors is a great time waster, its pretty fun Slime rancher is colorful, cute and really fun

Stardew Valley is probably the best recommendation being made. 85 percent of the game happens with zero combat and the combat that does happen is pretty simple.

I will say that doing something interactive to try to get to sleep can easily back fire on you if you find the activity too engaging. You may be better off trying to read a book or taking a small dose of melatonin about an hour before bed.

Melatonin is the chemical your body produces to help you go to sleep. If you go this route just be careful to start with a small dose and work your way up if you find you need more. And also, don’t take it too late because it will make it difficult to get up on time if you do.

Easy to recommend Vampire Survivors. It’s not at all as stressful as it looks. All you basically do is walk around trying not to get hit (or try to get hit if you have the right build) and choose the random items on level up. It’s 5 bucks without sales, so the financial entry is low too.

Outer Wilds.

Open World - Puzzle - Exploration - Mystery - Space

Outer Wilds is not small (15-25 hours, + about 10-15h for DLC), but it is a great game to be enjoyed in shorter gaming sessions (even just 30-60min) each night if that’s your requirement. Although if you get hooked I expect you to think about the game during the day as well out of session.

OW is not too mechanics-intensive, nor is it action-based. Most of your time is spent exploring the nooks and crannies of a solar system and following your leads to uncover an ancient mystery. The puzzles are genius, differ between small and large in scale and figuring them out feels rewarding. For the most part, it is far from stressful, maybe excluding certain few parts of the game.

The game is very curiosity driven. Your hand is not held after the first hour or two - it’s only you, your ship and the tools at your disposal. Progression is unlocked via knowledge, not power-ups or new tools, so you need to thirst for new pieces of information.

The game is on sale right now. If you’re intrigued, give it a go!

Here’s where the hard part comes in: It’s gotta be cheap (25 or less)

That’s not hard. I don’t even buy games above 15 € anymore. And I still get tons of great games that way.

(Not that I would need any new games with my unplayable backlog.)

If you like puzzles and open world games, have you tried The Witness? There are a lot of puzzles to complete so it should take you a while!

Not currently on sale on Steam, but it does drop in price regularly. Depending how you feel about key reselling sites, you might be able to get it cheaper.

I’ve been meaning to do a puzzle game recommendation overview on kbin after forgetting to back up an old post on the subject before purging my Reddit account, but I’ll share a few recommendations for the time being. Given that lots of Steam games are a much better deal if you wait for the Winter or Summer sales, I’ll list the regular and expected sale prices as such: (Regular/Sale). Since you’ve played the Portal Games and TSP, other three-dimensional exploration puzzle games in that vein include The Witness ($40/$10), The Talos Principle ($30/$4.50), Quern: Undying Thoughts ($25/$10), and Lightmatter ($20/$7). Among those, I think Quern is the best due to its resemblance to Myst without the solutions to most puzzles being overly obscure. Other three-dimensional puzzle games that focus less on exploration and more on puzzles include The Room Collection ($25/$7) and The House of Da Vinci Complete Bundle ($54/$27), with both series sold as individual games as well.

In terms of longevity, some 2D puzzle games have—in addition to their regular puzzle sets—daily puzzle sets or custom puzzle generation, adding to replay value at the cost of a degree of repetitiveness. These include LYNE ($3/$1.50) and LOOP: A Tranquil Puzzle Game ($5/$2.50), among others.

Here are some more good puzzle games that are not Portal/Portal 2:

• Colossal Cave
• The Entropy Centre
• Hourglass
• Myst
• Obduction
• Pneuma: Breath of Life
• Quantum Conundrum (one of the original Portal developers was attached to this project)
• Quern: Undying Thoughts
• Riven (this is the sequel to Myst, but unlike Myst, it has never been remade since it first came out back in 1997, so you’ll have to excuse the old graphics and gameplay)
• The Talos Principle (the sequel is coming out soon)
• The Turing Test
• The Witness

If you can only play one of the above, then as the other commentors have said, make it The Witness. The recent remake of Myst is also very good.

I would say Stardew Valley or Tetris Connect. I don’t remember the exact price on either but they aren’t super expensive, are pretty laid back and fun, and you can play in small chunks.

Hades is a great game. It’s action though.

Idk about how it runs on the deck, but have you tried undertale? Also, the portal series by valve should run awesome on it

Stray is very laid back, but I will admit it isn’t very long.

• Into The Breach
• Invisible Inc.
• Dicey Dungeons
• Strata
• LYNE
• Mini Metro
• FTL: Faster Than Light
• Wargroove (1 and/or 2)
• Timelie
• Ynglet
• Please Fix The Road
• Firewatch
• Gorogoa
• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy