Games that ask nothing but your attention

Not every game needs to challenge you. Some of the best evenings I've had lately came from games with no fail states at all, where the only goal is to notice things. Lantern Vale is the clearest example. You wander, you light lanterns, you slowly understand a place. There's no timer breathing down your neck and no score to chase. That absence of pressure is exactly what makes it work as a wind-down game. The puzzles still respect you. They ask you to observe carefully rather than react quickly, which is a completely different kind of thinking than a tower defence map demands. Both are valid; they just serve different moods. If you've been playing something tense and want to reset, a calm adventure does wonders. I keep one installed permanently now for exactly that reason.