Join a Discord server for your city if it has one. Make casual conversation with the people there, attend/plan meetups, and suddenly you have real-life friends.
I met most of my closest friends through my school’s Discord server while I was in college.
(It doesn’t have to be Discord, it can be a Facebook/Reddit/etc. community too. Discord is just the most common option for younger people.)
Half-Life 2
I’m too young to have played the original as a kid, but I have fond memories of coming home from school to play HL2 on my shitty laptop.