Encouragement to me is a larger category than just "self-care", especially because what is actual self-care is unique to each person. So I think of these as "encouraging games." Sometimes I just need encouragement to continue with life, and bubble baths don't do it for me.
This turned out to be a wonderful game where you're encouraged to write in a journal about your real life while earning feathers, drops, and seeds to create a safe space in a separate document. The space can be developed collaboratively with friends, and none of you need to share your journals to do this, just the separate document.
What I like is that Heart Home has been helping me journal in a healthy way for me. I stopped writing a long while back because I had reached the point where spilling blood on the page no longer helped me process my trauma. In Heart Home I'm reminded to write about memories only if I want to hold onto them. It's not toxic positivity nor bleeding on the page, and for that I am grateful.
I also like that even playing solo Heart Home reminds you to connect with friends in a meaningful manner.
Heart Home is a gradual game and I quite heart it.
I saved and saved and saved for this game (no more community copies you see and I am below the poverty line) and bought it, crossing my fingers. This time my gamble paid off. This is a lovely game that, for me, gets me to do some things every day more reliably without being micromanaging nor unforgiving of my high flare-up days.
I don't have room to lay out a plot of mandrakes nor playing cards to spare, so I cut up cards and made an envelope for them, and that works for me. You can also do a pure journaling version if drawing isn't your thing.
I am just growing some flowers from Việt Nam in my sanctuary. You can be very flexible with the theme.
I always have one plant growing in Retort's soil mixture (activates if you survive the day), and that is enough to keep me going even if I wasn't able to activate any of the other mixtures that day.
This bookmark game helps me to keep reading. My CPTSD went inadequately treated for three decades, during which my ability to concentrate shattered. I can't enjoy shows or movies anymore, I can't even track episodic story podcasts. And books
were almost impossible.
But again and again, my first bookmark buddy got me through a textbook. I dunno, I just wanted my smol goat fren to have a good journey, and somehow my brain could even use the photos and souvenirs to remember wtf happened. It took months but it worked.
I hacked the game a little bit and now am guiding a smol capybara fren through their own journey.
Some hard days my executive function flees for the hills and I'm left with extreme difficulty on stuff like remembering to eat, drink water, etc. On those days, this microgame saved me, because I wanted to make the new plant grow, and I could remember the basics through doing things (eat, drink, rest) to add leaves to it.
This won't work for everyone, but it definitely works for me.
This little game surprised me during some of the hard days I had early on in 2021. It helps with realizing that bad days have small good things in them too. For me, it's always been easier to care for others, including smol animal frens, so being able to transmute the good moments in my day into good ones in their life turned out to be an excellent exercise.
The prompts in the zine are excellent and helpful, especially after long days of emotional miasma.
While this can be a drawing and journaling game, as it is for me, you can also take a pure journaling approach too.
