Slow-paced, no-death video games?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Ocean and its http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endless_Ocean_2:_Adventures_of_the_Deep for the Wii are both very relaxed. There's not really any such thing as death/restarting, basically no violence, memorization, or resource management. Essentially, they're SCUBA diving simulators with a plot to link together the places you dive. There's a lot of open exploration, but not much pressure. Very relaxing, and very much unlike most games.

I don't know if you're open to PS3 suggestions, but if so, there's a compilation coming soon with all three of Thatgamecompany's downloadable titles (Flow, Flower and Flowest Journey). All three are relaxing and meditative, quite pretty, and more or less frustration-free.

Oh, and I'd actually warn against Braid. I found it frustrating and the overwhelming dark tone of impending doom wigged me out.

Portal, on Steam for Mac, absolutely.

I don't know if Okami is your ideal game but I thought it was really pretty great. There is fighting, but the game's central mechanic is drawing on the screen. It's really more about cleansing corruption, feeding animals and generally making the world a brighter place. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZloCD06QjiE). It is pretty easy, I beat it and never died once. It was originally a PS2 game but was ported over to the Wii. It is 3D, but has an awesome art style.

Please yes, get Journey and flOwer immediately. You will not regret it. If you don't like them as "gaming" experiences then try thinking them as interactive poetry instead. Still worth it. Braid drove me crazy. A little out of left field but you might enjoy the Fable games. Particularly Fable III, which cut down on a lot of the grinding, I thought. They're relatively easy and quite funny and can be played at any pace. You might consider them too violent? But there isn't actually much blood and I think the violence is fairly subdued. The dark themes are not, but it's a sarcastic, self aware sort of dark. If you go for swords you get quite swashbuckly. Every niche can be explored. You can do so in a chicken suit. I love Okami but found it too hard in the end, and too stressful. (Omg my puppy noooo!) But its sequel, Okami-den, for Nintendo DSi, was perfect for me. The stylus turned the inking mechanic into something much less tedious. The game was still incredibly funny and, if possible, thousands of times cuter. You can run around and explore as much as you want. The only problem is that it was kind of short.

You need to play Machinarium! Hands down the funnest, funniest en most gorgeous point-and-click adventure ever. I was just going to recommend this one. It's only superseded in gorgeousness by http://amanita-design.net/games/botanicula.html made by the same people.

I don't want to say I have direct suggestions, but I do have some games I want to share. - Civilzation 5 The game's difficulty starts of very forgiving, and there is a very large amount to the game, you rarely have to fight and you generally don't have to save/reload as if you died in another game. The better players think more between turns than having to make snap decisions. I feel like the game is like playing an homage to human history focusing on highlights on a global scale. It is complex, it takes time to learn but does its best to reward lesiure time investment if it is in a style you can appreciate. - Deus Ex: Human Revolution A wonderful sequel to a pillar of PC gaming history that was made with talent and love. It has carefully orchestrated music, plot setting and graphics that make it a real experience. If you quick-save a lot you have minimal re-treading, everything I've seen so far you can really take at your own pace and the game offers a lot of variety on various ways of playing it. The demo videos may look flashy if you look at some online and the game more than most any I've played deliver exactly the experience you see. A controversy when it came out was that people were trying to play the entire game without killing a single person and complained you had to kill a few required 'boss' enemies through the plot. I considered it a feather in the cap of the developer that so few enemies had to be killed. - LA Noire It is now out on PC and I love the idea of 'playing' a detective-style movie game where much more weighs on your interactions with people, intuition and problem solving than any 'action' scenes. If anything I hear the action scenes are more bolted-on to the game, and you have the option of passing the action scenes if you wish. I haven't played this game but only heard good things about it and I want to buy it and play through a 'story-only' mode with my girlfriend for fun, it seems like it has some great ideas on where gaming and media could go. - Minecraft This is a very hard game to describe but I think it has wide appeal for all the right reasons. The easiest description of it is 'first person legos', but it doesn't really do it justice. It is something like a retro open world simulator. It is very quaint and you have pigs and zombies wandering around and you get interesting relaxing instrumental music as you play doing whatever you want. About half the people I speak to about it can't fathom it and the other half think it is wonderful. The key point is you get what you want out of it, or leave it. One friend makes stuff like houses and farms with his kids, other people build things and share them online. I tend to be more of a competitive hard-core type gamer and have been playing through Vech's Super Hostile maps - Vechs makes worlds you can download and play that ration your resources in a difficult world and you try to reach the end. In a lot of ways now that I think about it his maps are very like zelda games but I think his maps are a bit more difficult than you intend. Also I only get my jollies out of this by doing it multiplayer with friends on a server I host. Like the civ series I think this is a beautiful game and well worth the fame and insane amount of money it got a previously unknown dreamer/game programmer. - Nethack This of course is by far the most off-beat suggestion. This might be the most difficult game ever created within reason, but from another angle the answer for every situation is easy to grasp if you know how the game works. The default means of playing you use weird keys to navigate and have to interpret simple coloured letters as various monsters. For ages I never cared to approach it, but after finding nethack.wikia.com and finding nethack.alt.org to telnet into I devoted a large amount of time to the game, and even shared many sessions with my brother on mumble voice chat and using a shared 'screen' session. Somehow this might appeal to you if you found the same zen way to approach the game as I did, where the intial understanding of how to play the game is the first puzzle you face. You never have to worry about reloading after deaths because each death is final. There is no reload or checkpoint, you simply have to start the game again. It is hard, but if you can accept and deal with those limitations this game has a lot you might be looking for. It is completely turn based. An amazing percentage of every game is actually 'winnable', my guess is easily 95% of games are winnable, if you just think and choose the logical course of action. There is always that 1 in 20 chance that tells you this time just wasn't your time to win. The maps are randomly generated and the resources you scrounge are random, but if you are smart and roll with chance you get what you need to survive. These are the reasons I love the game. There have been many nethack threads on mefi. I didn't want to mention on preview I'm a fanatical PC-only macs/consoles must die gamer. I'm sorry if any of these titles aren't available on your preferred platforms!

Seconding: *Phoenix Wright *That Game Company (Flow/Flower/Journey) *Portal 1 & 2 *Braid ...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katamari_Damacy You are a little guy who rolls things up into a ball to make stars. You start with paper clips and get bigger and bigger items like books then cats then people then cars then trees then buildings then ferris wheels then theme parks then cities then countries then THE MOON. It's endlessly entertaining, super funny, no death/penalties/scoring. There is a time element on the levels and a rather alarming BZZZT BZZZT BZZZT that sounds for the last 30 seconds, but other than that I think you would love it.