Not really “pink”, and lacks romance, but very pleasant: Dave the Diver. Cozy-ish game with nifty characters. Only thing would be I don’t know if you meant “no/minimal combat” because you don’t want the mechanics or the vibes. Dave has not particularly challenging combat mechanics, and paw patrol levels of violence levels (although you are catching and eating fish).

If you like park builders, Zoo Tycoon is cozy as hell. Beware the DLC trap though. You can get the base game with a lot of meat pretty cheap, but the DLCs are like $10+ each and not really a good value IMO. But the game has a great vibe with some really neat mechanics that try and imitate real conservation efforts.

What would check the boxes through a “Hot Topic” lens is Promise Mascot Agency. Surprisingly wholesome, completely off the wall, combat is all card/deck builder based… I… it’s a hard one to describe.

Doughnut county checks all the boxes but is rather short. Katamari if you haven’t done it.

I hear good things about, but have not played: Naiad, Tempopo.

Lmfao, that’s what I mean, it makes way more sense to plan for the scenarios where you won’t be forced to, you know, resort to canibalism.

I’m a big fan of just augmenting your floating stock at home. I make a point of buying a few extra cans every-time I grocery shop, a few extra boxes of pasta etc. I focus on things I may actually cook with so I’m rotating stock. Diced tomatoes, canned beans, those tomatoes with green chilies in them. I’ve got some canned meat that I almost never cook with (a just in-case thing), it gets rotated through making dip during football season, but it’s there if I need it. I’ve also got textured vegetable protein (which is more for camping/a vegetarian I dated and tried to learn to cook for). Again, it’s a luxury for some folks (both for budget and space reasons).

But that was my point. This may not be you but it was surprising to me in early covid how many people just didn’t keep food around. Also spices, like it’s great to have rice and beans, but you’ll be a lot happier if you make sure you’ve got chili powder, hot sauce, soy sauce, etc.

Sure there are “grab and go” scenarios, but it is far more likley someone might need to put together some meals in a less than ideal situation. Being able to do, say, mac and cheese with some shredded canned chicken and hot sauce with a side of green beans goes a long way to keeping spirits up.

I didn’t grow up super rural, but it’s just the way my house was. One reason was the weather, the other was my mom was amazing at stretching a dollar. She’d buy when there was a great sale, and we’d have 4-5x of whatever the item was downstairs. So you’d wind up eating Christmas themed breakfast cereal until like May, but it also meant there was just a bunch of reserves.

As someone who is generally on the more prepared side, the use case for most stuff falls far short of “doomsday”. There is a ton to be said about things that are just generally useful in adverse situations. I’ve lived through a dozen or so storms that took out power for a few days (longest I think was 2 weeks). It’s usually not a complete blackout everywhere.

Point being: I can see it being useful to have a bunch of info in something easily portable to say, double check breaker wiring helping your friend fix some stuff after the storm. Look up the emergency AM/CB/NOAA radio freqs. I have a lot of the resources on this thing on a server, but that’s not mobile and would eat a lot of power just booting up. To package it nicely in a form factor like this would probably run me just about $189.

But the overall point is I think this falls on the extreme end of practical preparedness but I can absolutely see the use. Honestly the most practical thing on there are the books. Again, usually if a community gets hit bad you wind up with people that have power having a bunch of people stay over. Being able to allow multiple people stuff to read would help kill time.

All of that being said, its a distant second to the critical items that, again, have a huge range of uses: A solid first aide kit, 2 weeks of food (even if it’s not awesome). I realize that’s a luxury for a lot of people, but money is much better spent there first.

Strayed off topic a bit, but it’s because while I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to plan for SHTF scenarios, I do think we’re going to see a general decay (but not elimination) of public services/utilities and an increasingly pissy climate. I think it’s important for people to not fall into the bunker-prepper fantasy OR write off being more prepared than they’re accustomed to.

hahaha see! All kidding aside as long as you have an RO system you’re probably fine. I went for years making a gallon or so at a time with a sink adapter and collecting rainwater, but my background is in water and control systems, so I got bored and took it to far.

If you DO go for a full bog, I recommend those concrete mixing tubs you can get at home depot, and some bulk head fittings from amazon. A few things to watch out for are:

1. Sizing plumbing to avoid siphoning/annoying gurgling
2. slime mold/algae abatement.

I have all my “residents” in individual pots with sphagnum, so there’s quite a lot of water, and lots of room for algae growth. I’m in the process of replacing one of the bays (the mixing bins I mentioned) with an artificial media I can grow a living moss bed across (no sunlight to the liquid phase means no algae), but I’ve noticed that does encourage slime molds. It also encourages fungus gnats but it being a carnivorious plant bed… that hasnt been an issue.

Don’t listen to OP. This a gateway plant. Before you know it you’ll have an artifical bog with automated RO systems and misters. Stay strong.