First thing’s first: you’re allowed to play on easy mode if you want. Took me too long to realize this.

Emulators let you save anywhere, so if you wanna play Crono Trigger or Donkey Kong Country, go for it!

Holocure is a free bullet heaven with lots of characters to unlock. Recommend boosting your coins first.

Terra Nil (it’s like an anti Sim City) is only as stressful as you make it. Clean the planet and max out the flora and fauna, or just vibe. It even has an appreciation option once you’ve cleansed the area, zooming in to certain sections and letting you see the animals.

Puzzles games could be really great here. Tre Case of the Golden Idol

Voices of the Void has been my go to time waster for a couple years now. Dev is a little weird, but the game is amazingly well done and gets somewhat regular updates that expand the story and add new content. You are essentially a scientist sent to work at a SETI-like site in Switzerland. Your job is to maintain the site and search for signals in space, analyze them, and then ship them out to your colleagues, for which you get paid to buy supplies and other things. As you play, random events occur, some funny, some scary. There’s tons of items to buy and decorate your base with. Lots of locations to discover. Sooooooo many secrets to find. I’m constantly impressed by all the work they’ve done with a very small team.

My only complaint is having to reset my save when an update comes out. It’s generally worth it, as there’s usually new events that you’ll miss otherwise, but having to redecorate the base and lose collectables you’ve spent hours on is a bummer… That and I hate the new drive storage rack. I wish they’d bring back then old one as an additional storage item.

Also, the whole damn game is free.

The ones I’ve played of late are:

Disney Dreamlight Valley

Dungeons of the Endless (Casual, but a tad addictive)

Dungeon Defenders

Slice and dice, a rogurlite played with dice. Huge amount of modes like “demo mode” that makes each run like 40% shorter.
Not only can a run go by pretty fast they last roughly as long as a vs run.

I mean cyberpunk2077 you can by and large pause at any time and you can generally save but there are sometimes where it tells you saving is not allowed. So there are certain points in the story where you can be playing for awhile without a save but its not a super lot. Can be sorta annoying though when you get to them though. Still its not much of the game. Its been awhile but I thought harry potter allowed pausing. Don’t recall it putting me in a difficult position where I could not put it down. Technically elden ring has a hidden pause if you go into a menu in a menu. There are youtube videos on it. Its stressful as heck though as a game. If you quite you are by and large fine to but any enemy that is damage will be at full health when you get back but dead ones will stay dead. Its really not much of an issue except for bosses. I think baldurs gate 3 and starfield allow saving pretty much at any time as well and pause, again its been awhile.

One Finger Death Punch 2. You get two buttons & a solid upgrade path for endless kung fu.

How has noone mentioned Powerwash Simulator yet. There is no pressure (pun not intended), you just walk around dirty scenes and start cleaning them. The amount of satisfaction this produces is incredible. This is mostly because the dirt is actually fairly accurate and washing does not feel like brushing dirt of where the only options is 100% dirt or 0% dirt. All of the intermediates and the complex geometry of the objects makes cleaning a really chilling experience.

Stardew valley just the most super comfy game I’ve ever played.

Snowrunner! Take everything at your own pace, drive around in some beautiful and horrible to drive in sceneries, get paid and upgrade and buy more trucks

Stardew Valley is the embodiment of chill

I am in a similar situation, I get home tired from work and don’t have much time to myself, I can pick up my steam deck for half an hour or so but not long enough to get very involved with something. I’ve been playing doom 2016, you don’t have to commit much time to it at once. I’m pretty shit at it though.

Sounds like you’re ready for the wonderful universe of TBS games (Turn Based Strategy). There a soo many sub genres but you can filter the steam shop for turn-based and read reviews and recommendations. Some personal highlights:

• Civilization (5 and 6)
• Heroes of Might and Magic (get HoMM 3 on GOG!)
• Old World
• Battle Brothers
• Dorfromantik
• Magic: The Gathering Arena
• RimWorld (with pause)
• Cities Skylines 2 (not rly TBS but you can pause)
• For The King
• Total War: Warhammer III (I do auto battles)
• Wartales
• The Last Spell
• Stoneshard
• Age of Wonders 4
• Mechabellum (semi TBS)

Dave the Diver. I had put down gaming because of tiredness and this game was such an unexpected joy of exploration and cute story for me. Easy to pick up and do a quick dive, decent progression based on a mix of skill and leveling up your character, and the writing was excellent. First game I 100% in forever and it was while playing it 30 minutes at a time.

I play Hardspace Shipbreaker when I want to relax.

You are a worker in a spacedock and dismantle ships with a cutting and grappling tool and divide the components into resource bins. It has a chill soundtrack and it’s fun to float around with thrusters and figure out how to separate the different parts.