What do you suggest for someone who likes to play with himself, but no violence or competitions, and offline, like during a lunch?
something something low hanging fruit something
My #1 stupid waste of time games are Breakout or
Bubbleshooter type titles.
I like this one for Android and understand that I tried dozens before I picked that one. These games work really well for those "It's going to be a couple minutes while I wait for a progress bar"-times.
Another non-violent game that I adore is Sherlock: A Game of Deduction, which I started playing while I was still in high school. The original developer updated it from DOS all the way to Win32 and still sells a version made for Windows 95 on his web site, but I'm
more likely to play it on my phone at this point. There's a free version as well.
I might also suggest a couple tabletop games that have a digital version: Pandemic, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Gloom and Majesty (all can be played on mobile or desktop). Pandemic is a game about, duh, trying to stop a pandemic. It notably predates our real life horror by more than a decade, and the tabletop version includes variations where the state of each game session causes permanent changes to the rules of the game. Sentinels of the Multiverse is a 100% cooperative game involving a team of unique super heroes represented by decks of cards work to defeat some equally unique villain and setting. The characters and settings are unique creations, and it's actually one of my favorite in-real-life tabletop games. Majesty is game about collecting and trading gems. Very straightforward. Gloom is a card game in which you are trying to guide your family to its most terrible fate, while trying to improve the circumstances of your rivals, with the aesthetic of an Edward Gorey cartoon at all times. All four games can be played alone against or with friends.
A game I bought on disc a zillion years ago and still kind of love even though I can beat it in my sleep now is
Ghost Master, where your job is to scare all the living souls out of a given environment. You have a roster of different sorts of scary spirits for this. I wish there were more maps or some sort of spiritual update for this one, pun intended.
To Be or Not To Be is a game by Ryan North, writer of the comic strip Dinosaur Comics and also closely associated with Marvel's extremely charming Squirrel Girl comic. To Be or Not to Be is the Choose-your-own-Adventure version of Hamlet, in which you can play as Hamlet, Ophelia, or Hamlet's dad. It is actively hilarious. I played this on Android. It is also on Steam.
My partner suggests
Spiritfarer, a game where you are a psychopomp, a being who guides the deceased to their afterlife. Your job is to help them find happiness while you carry them to their rest aboard your seaship. This is a surprisingly serene game.
Dorfromantik is a tile-placement game that lets you build charming little villages and forests. This game is kind of a peak serenity experience.
Timberborn is a city-building game, except your cities are for beavers.
She also had some suggestions for spot-the-difference or puzzle solving games that she played on her ipad but I'm not familiar enough to go looking at that stuff. She plays WAY more games than I do.
Her current fixation is actually an older game called
Darkest Dungeon, a game about managing groups of absolutely doomed adventurers who are tasked with exploring your family's ruined estates filled with Lovecraftian nightmares. This game ALSO has a very Edward Gorey vibe, but most particularly has striking narration by
Wayne June, who is the platonic ideal of a narrator for horror stories. This IS a violent game with very strong elements of body horror as well; each sortie by the adventurers includes management of their personal needs as well as the afflictions of madness as stress overtakes them. It's a game I could never actually play. It stresses me out just to watch it; every turn could lead to some terrible malady. Even the adventurers themselves have these
tragic backstories for how they came to your estate. My partner has been talking about livestreaming it in her full goth bondage librarian wardrobe (aka the stuff she used to sort-of wear to work), just for the vibe of it.