What Makes a Game a "Palette Cleanser"?

There is a particular kind of game that we have come to appreciate at The Mystery Cartridge.

It isn't necessarily the best game we've played that month. It may not have the biggest budget, the most impressive graphics, or a story that we're going to be thinking about five years from now.

Sometimes, it's a game that we play because we need a break.

After spending hours investigating a murder, navigating a psychological horror story, trying to determine which character is lying to us, or generally wondering whether the next room contains a clue or a horrifying surprise, sometimes we want to play something that asks us to do absolutely none of those things.

We call those games palette cleansers.

And no, we don't mean that the game is bad.

Quite the opposite.

A good palette cleanser can be exactly what we need.

What Is a Palette Cleanser?

The term comes from food. If you're eating several courses, something small and refreshing can clear your palate between flavors so that the next course doesn't feel like more of the same.

Games can work the same way.

Imagine you've just spent twelve hours playing a murder mystery. You've interviewed suspects, examined crime scenes, read documents, connected clues and tried to keep track of seventeen characters who all have reasons to lie.

Your brain may not want another murder mystery.

It may want to deliver mail.

That's where a palette cleanser comes in.

A palette cleanser is a game that provides a change of pace, tone, mechanics, or emotional intensity from the games you've been playing.

It might be short.

It might be funny.

It might be relaxing.

It might be completely bizarre.

It might simply be something that doesn't require you to remember the name of every person you've encountered over the previous six hours.

And sometimes, that's exactly what makes it great.

The Lake Test

One of our favorite examples of a palette cleanser is Lake.

You play as Meredith Weiss, who returns to the small town of Providence Oaks and spends some time filling in for her father as a mail carrier.

That's about as far away from investigating a murder as you can get.

You're driving around town. You're delivering mail. You're meeting the residents. You have conversations. You get to know people. There are even a couple of romantic possibilities.

It's deliberately slower.

And that's exactly why it works as a palette cleanser.

After spending hours worrying about who killed whom, there's something remarkably relaxing about climbing into a mail truck and thinking, "Okay. Today's big problem is getting these letters to the right houses."

Lake isn't necessarily trying to overwhelm you with systems or challenge you with increasingly difficult puzzles.

It's giving you somewhere else to be for a while.

The Farming Game Solution

Another obvious category of palette cleanser is the farming and life-simulation game.

Story of Seasons and Stardew Valley are excellent examples.

These games can certainly become complicated if you want them to. There are crops to grow, relationships to build, resources to collect and entire systems you can spend hundreds of hours exploring.

But you can also just... farm.

Plant something.

Water it.

Go fishing.

Talk to someone.

Go to bed.

Repeat.

After you've spent an evening trying to determine whether the seemingly innocent person you met in a mystery game is secretly responsible for a murder, there is something wonderfully uncomplicated about worrying about whether your tomatoes are going to grow.

And yes, eventually your relaxing farming game can become surprisingly demanding.

Suddenly you're calculating crop profitability and planning your entire farm around the best possible harvest.

But that's a problem for tomorrow.

Tonight, we're growing parsnips.

A Palette Cleanser Isn't Necessarily "Easy"

This is an important distinction.

A palette cleanser doesn't necessarily mean a game with no challenge.

You can have a difficult puzzle game that functions as a palette cleanser after playing a narrative adventure.

You can have a complicated strategy game that provides a break from horror.

You can even have a mystery game that acts as a palette cleanser after another mystery game if the experience is different enough.

The important thing is contrast.

If you've spent the last week playing a dark psychological thriller, a goofy detective comedy might feel refreshing even though you're still technically solving mysteries.

If you've spent ten hours wandering through a bleak post-apocalyptic world, a bright farming game might feel like a vacation.

And if you've spent an entire evening trying to determine which suspect committed a murder, maybe you just want to deliver the mail.

Sometimes Short Is Better

Length can play a role, too.

There's something particularly appealing about a game that you can finish in an afternoon or a couple of evenings.

That's not because short games are inherently better. It's because a palette cleanser shouldn't necessarily become your next major commitment.

If you've just finished a 40-hour RPG, starting another 60-hour RPG because you need a break might not actually solve the problem.

A short game can be perfect.

You can start it, enjoy it, finish it and move on.

But short isn't a requirement.

Stardew Valley certainly isn't a short game if you decide to really get into it.

Neither is Story of Seasons.

That's okay.

The point isn't necessarily to spend less time playing.

The point is to spend your time doing something different.

Not every game needs to become a second job.

The Emotional Palette Cleanser

Sometimes the change isn't about mechanics at all.

It's about emotion.

Mystery games can be stressful. Horror games can be disturbing. Some narrative games leave you staring at the credits wondering what the hell just happened to you.

And sometimes you need something cheerful afterward.

That's an emotional palette cleanser.

It's the gaming equivalent of putting on a comedy after watching a depressing movie.

The opposite can happen, too.

After playing something light and cheerful for several hours, a dark mystery can actually feel more effective because you've created some contrast.

Context matters.

The game you play immediately before something can change how that second game feels.

Why Mystery Games Need Palette Cleansers

This is particularly relevant to us because mystery games are what brought us to The Mystery Cartridge in the first place.

We like mysteries.

We like trying to figure things out.

We like noticing details and wondering whether that apparently insignificant object is going to become important later.

But eventually, your brain gets tired.

There are only so many suspects you can interview before you start wondering whether perhaps everyone involved should simply go home.

That's when a palette cleanser becomes useful.

Instead of going directly from one mystery into another, we'll sometimes play something completely different.

We'll deliver mail in Lake.

We'll farm in Story of Seasons.

We'll spend time in Stardew Valley.

We'll find something that lets us stop investigating for a while.

It resets the experience.

And when we eventually return to another mystery, we're ready to investigate again.

So What Qualifies?

We've come up with a few questions that can help determine whether something deserves the title.

Does it feel different from what we just played?

That's probably the most important one.

Can we play it without making a huge commitment?

Not required, but definitely helpful.

Does it give our brains something different to think about?

A change of mechanics can be just as refreshing as a change of story.

Does it have a different emotional tone?

Sometimes that's all it takes.

Did we finish playing and feel refreshed rather than exhausted?

That's the big one.

If the answer to several of those questions is yes, congratulations.

You've probably found yourself a palette cleanser.

There Is No Official Palette Cleanser Genre

You won't find "Palette Cleanser" sitting next to "Adventure," "Puzzle," or "Role-Playing Game" on a store page.

That's because it's not a genre.

It's a relationship between games.

The same game can be a palette cleanser for one person and an exhausting commitment for another.

If you normally play 100-hour RPGs, a 20-hour adventure might feel wonderfully short.

If you normally play five-hour indie games, that same 20-hour adventure might feel enormous.

It's about what came before.

That's why we don't think a palette cleanser can be determined solely by the game itself.

It's determined by the player, the timing and what they just experienced.

And That's Why We Like Them

There's a temptation in gaming culture to treat every game as a competition.

Which game is better?

Which has more content?

Which has the best graphics?

Which has the highest score?

Which one should you buy?

But sometimes a game doesn't need to win anything.

Sometimes its job is simply to give you a nice afternoon.

Sometimes it's there to make you laugh.

Sometimes it's there because you want to drive around a small town delivering mail.

Sometimes you want to grow tomatoes.

Sometimes you want to spend a few days farming, fishing and talking to your neighbors.

And sometimes, after spending six hours trying to solve a murder, you need to put down the magnifying glass and go water your crops.

That's not wasting your gaming time.

That's part of it.

The Mystery Cartridge Verdict

Palette cleansers are games that give your brain a break without asking you to give up gaming.

They don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be short. They don't even have to be particularly similar to one another.

They just have to provide a change of pace when you need one.

And sometimes, the best game to play after solving a murder...

...is a game where absolutely nobody dies.

Usually.

Probably.

We hope.