What a month. March feels like it started in 2006. I don’t know about you but I’m totally remote-socialed out at the moment. The organised fun of a Zoom quiz or Skype scavenger hunt has run its course. I miss my friends and my family, but there’s an awkward disconnect with video conferencing services that simply doesn’t replace face-to-face contact. So now I’m resigning myself that life indoors can’t emulate life outdoors, and finding ways to entertain myself while getting my government-sanctioned daily exercise.

Mostly, I’ve regressed to playing 2013’s The Sims 4 , which has been subsequently updated via DLCs and has been reduced by 75 per cent over lockdown. It offers a world where I can totally zone out from the strange and scary developments happening every millisecond on the news and instead focus on the normal lives of people that I don’t need to impress or keep in contact with out of obligation. I can see my fake friends, I can start a relationship, I can go to a bar. I can try to learn the total nonsense that is the Simlish language. It’s a nostalgia trip too. One that revels in a slow and peaceful sense of normality that we all, I think, want to recapture right now – as evidenced by the current boomlet in people playing the game.

The Sims 4

The perfect example is the game’s build mode. Building houses has always been my favourite part of The Sims – whether I’m creating some artful mansion or something awful in which to trap my Sim for hours on end like a deranged psychopath – and it’s no different in The Sims 4 . I’ve lost hours to micromanaging individual rooms and trying to create something I myself would want to live in. The build tools are superbly intuitive and make editing your houses – such as picking up and moving entire rooms – a cinch.

I’m even using this time to overlook the game’s many flaws. I never played The Sims 3 , so it’s probably 15 years since I played a proper Sims game complete with all the expansion packs – such as 2003’s memorable Makin’ Magic – which I stole off my friends. Compared to the heyday of the series, The Sims 4 feels a bit empty by comparison. But it’s all providing me with the sense of normalcy and mundanity that I absolutely crave. Coming off the back of frenetic, breakneck games such as Doom Eternal, it’s a terrific respite.

The Sims 4

There are a load of other games also benefiting from that right now. Animal Crossing has me fishing and bug collecting, planting flowers and picking fruit. I spend days creating pathways to get from A to B, linking up my villagers’ houses so there’s a more built-up sense of township. I speak to these little animal characters every day, giving them gifts and helping them find their lost items, all in the name of community. Then there’s the not insignificant task of filling the in-game museum with fossils, bugs and fish. It’s an incredible place to just explore for a few hours – looking at all the different specimens that you’ve managed to bring in. A snapping turtle just hanging out on a big leaf; a beautiful greenhouse filled with butterflies; a massive, completed T-Rex fossil. There’s something lovely in just coming to this silent, atmospheric place and simply, you know, hanging out .

If museums aren’t your thing, what about school? I’m a few hours deep into a new and updated Persona 5 Royal . The game is many things – colourful, flashy, dramatic – but it’s also a deeply engrossing life simulator where you inhabit the role of a student on the cool streets of Tokyo. You go to school, chat with classmates, take exams and become totally invested in the minutiae of being a teenager. In a time like this, such things become more welcome escapism than decapitating demons.

The Sims 4

Of course, for some, action and blood might be the way to stop thinking about the way things are. But for me the boring stuff is the best salve. And there’s a long tradition of games doing boring stuff really well. If you’re not into The Sims , Animal Crossing or Persona , why not build a real-life metropolis in Cities Skylines . Or manage an empire through a golden age of diplomacy and commerce in Civilization VI . Or drive trucks from Dover to Calais in Euro Truck Simulator . You might surprise yourself.

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