I don't like the taste of pure water. Filtered, bottled, doesn't matter. It tastes bitter and metallic and it always takes effort to choke down.
I keep a bottle of unsweetened juice and use a splash of that to add the bare minimum of flavor I need to be able to enjoy drinking it at home, and when I'm out and about I just drink it and suffer.
Lots of little things, but the straw that broke the camel's back was the constant pop-ups asking me to try out Copilot in Win10, harassing me daily on both on my personal PC and my work laptop.
Windows has been on thin ice since the trash fire that was Win8, and I'd only stuck with it for Nvidia driver support for gaming. I've been watching Proton development for years now, and putting it through its paces on my older PCs every few months, so I knew I was ready to make the switch for about a year before I finally pulled the trigger. I justified putting it off with the thought that "I can build my next PC around an AMD graphics card amd make the switch then."
Then Win11 and all its garbage was announced, AI took off, and Microsoft started pushing their slop on my machine harder than ever. It was too much. I switched to Mint DE on my current machine and haven't looked back.
It took me a long time to appreciate eggs growing up, too. Used to only be able to eat them scrambled. Fried eggs and boiled eggs would make me nauseous. I hated the taste and texture of a runny yolk.
It wasn't until my mid 20s that someone finally made me eggs over easy and taught me that you're not supposed to just eat the yolk straight, but treat it as a sauce to complement the flavor of the other food on your plate. It was a revelation.
I still don't like sunny side up or boiled eggs, and I still don't like the texture of runny yolk on its own, but I love me some over-easy or over-medium eggs on a burger or over bacon, sausage, hash browns, waffles, or pancakes. Let that shit spread everywhere to mask the texture and maximize the flavor.
Never would have thought of that on my own. I wouldn't mix foods growing up, and I still don't when left to my own devices.
I'm not a super picky eater, but there are some foods I won't touch.
Pickles, kimchi, and beets taste awful. Cottage cheese is a sensory nightmare. I don't think I'll ever attempt oysters again.
I hate how prevalent pickles are in American restaurants. Seems like I have to ask for no pickles in every new place, and half the time they'll have pickles anyway, or they'll include pickles in dishes that have no business including pickles and I wouldn't think to ask for them to be excluded. If I pick them off I can still taste the pickle juices, and it ruins the food. The sandwich and burger places think they're so fancy for including a pickle spear in the plating, and it's a crapshoot whether they keep it isolated off to the side or drape it across the food where it can contaminate everything. Miserable.
Pickled jalapeños, lettuce, and mustard are on thin ice.
I don't like ranch dressing or ketchup, but I'll only grumble a bit if I find them in my food.
I'll try anything once, and I do go back to foods I hate every now and then to see if my tastes change. I used to have a hard aversion to seltzer water, sour cream, and hoppy beers like IPAs, but I've come around on them. I have a much better appreciation now for bitter and sour flavors than I did as a kid.
It just released late last year, and it is one of the finest puzzle games I've ever played. It took me around fifty hours to get the ending, and I've got a folder full of notes and screenshots from putting together puzzles.
Go in blind if you can, and do your best to avoid spoilers if you need to look up any puzzle solutions. This game has more depth than Outer Wilds.
Psychonauts (the original, not the sequel, though the sequel is also good) is a Summer Camp themed 3D platformer. It doesn't quite meet your "low stakes/chill gameplay" criteria as it does have combat and mildly challenging boss fights and platforming, but it nails the rest. It's easier than Tunic. Maybe worth checking out.
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons strictly meets all the criteria listed, but it's ultimately a tragic story. If "some kind of impact" includes leaving you in tears, check it out.
Okami is a Zelda style adventure set in feudal Japan with immaculate vibes. You play as the sun goddess Amaterasu in the form of a wolf bringing light and life to a land ravaged by demons. The world is cold and dark at first, but you bring spring and summer on your heels.
Finally, two favorites from my childhood are the Spyro series and the Ty the Tasmanian Tiger series. These are 3D Platformer collectathons and neither of these series are even close to any of the examples you provided, but they are bright and colorful and in my heart they have feelings of Summer Vacation and staying home all day to play video games.
I was pulling an all-nighter reading fan fiction serials while drinking Kraken mixed with Orange Juice and had also eaten a whole frozen pizza around midnight. I was not ok. The incident happened around 3am.
First time I'd ever vomited while drunk. I know my limits better now.
It was running Vista when I bought it, then upgraded to Win 7, and now runs whatever flavor of Linux I feel like installing.
Battery is shot. Screen connection is iffy, but works if you wiggle it. Several keys stopped working after I accidentally threw up on it, but I can use an onscreen keyboard for those.
I remember having the Batman Forever and Batman Knightfall audio books on cassette back when I was a kid.
I listened to them so many times the voice and cadence of the narrator is permanently burned into my subconscious. I still quote them from time to time without really thinking about it.
Bought a used '96 Mazda Protégé off a coworker for $700. Ran it into the ground. Scrapped it for $300 when I could finally afford a better car. Definitely got my money's worth.
I got to learn what driving without power steering felt like after the compressor locked up and the drive belt shredded. Ended up replacing it with a smaller belt just for the power steering since I couldn't afford to replace the A/C. Drove with the windows down for a few months. Good times.
The Witness just starts right back off at the beginning unless you figure out the secret ending.
Returnal does this with several of its "endings", but I haven't been spoiled on all endings so I can't say if it strictly fits.
One of Bastion's two endings is a global reset.
I Was a Teenage Exocolonist plays with this in some interesting ways.
Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2 both have maintain the status quo endings.