While on the topic of games that change your thinking or give you skills, any recommendations?
A few I benefited from:
Chess: for general lessons of resourcefulness, creativity, calculation, pausing before acting, and practicing being comfortable with irresolution (e.g. when two or more pieces could be traded but you have to resist the urge to simplify if doing so worsens your position). Chess also opened my eyes to how much distractions and inadequate sleep affect cognition (my elo can drop 100 points when badly lacking sleep, and another 100 if playing in a public place with distractions).
Vim Adventures: not exciting enough to recommend for gaming alone, but it made it bearable to repeat vim key strokes for 3-4 hours per day for a few days straight until I had the muscle memory to use it for most coding tasks without too much clumsiness.
DuoLingo: less of a 'game'; more of an educational tool, but still worth the mention as it made learning foreign language much easier than doing so via book/audio.
A few I benefited from:
Chess: for general lessons of resourcefulness, creativity, calculation, pausing before acting, and practicing being comfortable with irresolution (e.g. when two or more pieces could be traded but you have to resist the urge to simplify if doing so worsens your position). Chess also opened my eyes to how much distractions and inadequate sleep affect cognition (my elo can drop 100 points when badly lacking sleep, and another 100 if playing in a public place with distractions).
Vim Adventures: not exciting enough to recommend for gaming alone, but it made it bearable to repeat vim key strokes for 3-4 hours per day for a few days straight until I had the muscle memory to use it for most coding tasks without too much clumsiness.
DuoLingo: less of a 'game'; more of an educational tool, but still worth the mention as it made learning foreign language much easier than doing so via book/audio.