Sorry I haven't replied to anyone, life got a little crazy. I did not expect this many replies on lemmy! Thank you everyone, and I will be checking out a bunch of these! Thank you so much. :) I really appreciate it.
So, I hope this allowed, if not, I'll remove.
I have a small problem, y'all. I'm a filthy casual, and don't game often. But right now, due to a lot of very stressful things going on, I'm having trouble sleeping. I'd like a game I can play on the deck for an hour or two at night to get sleepy. Here's where the hard part comes in:
It's gotta be cheap (25 or less)
It needs to be not-stressful to play, as in, it works well on the deck, with no fiddling, because I am a dumb and don't understand things
I don't actually know what kind of game I want. I don't care for FPS games, I don't have the time/patience/money for online multiplayer stuff, and I'm not super in super heavy action games.
I like puzzles, platformers, laid back games. Open world is great. Very small games are fun, but I need something that I can play pretty much every night for a while. I loved portal and the Stanley parable, but I'm burnt out on TSP and I've played both portal games several times. I need something with a little more longevity.
Can anyone help with this not at all reasonable request?
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.
Unfortunately splitscreen and local multiplayer games are getting pretty rare. There are some steam curators that make lists of them, here's one that I know of for local 2-player games:
A remake of Riven in the same vein as the latest Myst remake is among the next projects that Cyan Worlds is working on, so it might be worth waiting until it releases to play Riven.