Flight of Nova (2022)

Story time: I was playing Chorus' demo, a sci-fi dogfighting game with spaceships and my girlfriend saw the screen and commented that she liked the aesthetics and the flying around in space but she doesn't like combat, so maybe there's a game in which you do deliveries in a spaceship. Like a Lake but in space.

I also liked the idea so I did some searching and ask some folks. One of the recommendations was this game. An early access game by a solo dev that is literally running deliveries in space. But, this is not an arcadey experience; as it says in the description, this is a simulation "based on newtonian mechanics". That peeked my interested so I downloaded the demo and was hooked. This is like Kerbal Space Program but without building ships and having to worry that much about delta-v. It's awesome. You need to think about orbits, inertia, careful docking, launch windows and angle of re-entry to not burn your hull.

I broke my rule of no early access and I even got an used flightstick and IR head tracking. The game feels amazing to play that way. It's a perfect podcast game, asking enough of your brain and hands to keep you occupied but with enough lulls while waiting for orbits to align so you can also pay attention to something else.

My girlfriend still hasn't played any of the other possible games, like Elite Dangerous or Star Trucker.