So, I’m a gamer now.

I’ve never been much of a “proper gamer”.

I mean, I trapped Lara Croft’s butler in a cupboard a couple of times, but then I kept drowning her in her own swimming pool so I tended to just watch my dad play rather than pick up a controller myself.

I’ve never actually owned a console myself - not even a Megadrive, although - again - I used to watch my cousins play Sonic on theirs quite a bit when I was a kid.

There’s a pattern emerging already, isn’t there? Well, it gets worse: as a teenager one of my favourite things to do was watch my friend Cal play Fable, and even as recently as 2016 I could be found curled up on my (at the time) boyfriend’s sofa watching as he played games. Not playing myself - just watching. That’s how I’ve been exposed to classic games, really, by watching friends, boyfriends, and my dad and stepbrothers play. Abe’s Odyssey, Crash Bandicoot, Street Fighter (which I was only interested in for the narrative cut scenes)… passive observer.

This isn’t to say I never played any games, but I didn’t really tell people about the games I played. They didn’t feel like ‘real’ games, somehow. I mean, I’ve been playing The Sims since I was about 14, on and off, and I think I liked it because I like inventing stories, which frankly is what The Sims is designed for. I also really enjoy hidden object games set in creepy, abandoned carnivals and haunted mansions. But that, for the longest time, was my limit.

A few things changed this for me.

Firstly, a different boyfriend. My partner now (Panda) is always looking for games I might like. He got me started on Little Inferno as far back as 2019, and honestly that game is one of the most ridiculously fun things I’ve ever come across. I also played my first multi-player with him over a Christmas and New Year when we mainlined Stardew Valley for about four days solid. Then he scoured review sites for a game he thought might appeal to me and found Yonder: the Cloud Catcher Chronicles. My gosh, I love that game so much. I intend to write about it on its own.

Secondly, we had a pandemic. Yeah, I’m sure you noticed. Well, I was working from home, and Panda was on furlough for about eight months. And we were living in a tiny studio flat, so I was trying to have confidential conversations with worried clients while Panda kept his headphones on for several hours straight, because that’s the closest we could get to being in different rooms. And I had no way of separating work from home, because the place I worked was also the exact same spot I had my leisure time in, because there was nowhere else.

So, I started playing more games. I was genuinely surprised to learn that there were a bunch of games that suited me, something I would have assumed wasn’t the case if it wasn’t for Panda helping me find them. I stopped playing The Sims 4 when I discovered My Time At Portia (sorry, EA, but you have had plenty of my money) because I loved the freedom to explore Portia but also the fact there were specific goals to hit and a storyline to follow. I rediscovered my love for puzzles and point-clicks playing Darkside Detectives and Call of the Sea. I discovered that it didn’t matter that I wasn’t reading as much, because I could play Firewatch or Gone Home and experience a narrative just as affecting as my favourite horror novels and adventure stories.

I didn’t have an at-home PC until I was 15, and only then because a friend’s dad took pity on my for how often I asked to come to their house to type up my homework, so gave me their old one when they upgraded.

Maybe this is why it took me so long to get into games as something that’s not just occasional?

I played The Sims 2 on a friend’s PC when I visited her house, which in hindsight was SO antisocial and I can’t believe she kept letting me do it.

But now I have my own gaming PC. It doesn’t have a graphics card but I’ve so far not found a game it won’t play; I’m not a graphics snob. We’ve also moved out of that tiny flat, so now I have my own little space in the bedroom to play when I want, and I’ve found that I still want to.

Maybe because I’m not a ‘traditional’ gamer, I’m far more drawn to indie games that are doing different things with story, or with puzzle. Maybe that’s why this week Panda is watching the Valorant LAN tournaments while I am solving murders in Paradise Killer.