Do you have a game you play over and over, when nothing else fits your mood? That game that is infinitely re-playable, somewhat the same every time and somewhat new and interesting?
For me it’s the games in the Orcs Must Die series. But mostly OMD 3. I play the mode called Scramble, where you have to beat 5 rounds of orcs, and they get harder and harder as you progress. There are random things to make it harder (nerfs) and you can choose 1 thing per round to make it easier (buffs). I’ve probably played that something like 300 times now since I beat the main game + DLCs a long while ago. I go into a special mental state while playing, since I know it all so well, and just zone out for about an hour each time.
Patient gamers, what’s your “I will keep playing this game for the rest of my life” fallback?
Helldivers 2 is great for short to medium sessions.
Probably Fortnite. It’s not just one battle royale game anymore. If I feel like racing, I can play Rocket Racing. If I feel like building, I can play Lego Fortnite. Festival if I want a Guitar Hero experience, Ballistic if I want a Counter-Strike experience, and so on. It’s all tied to Epic’s servers though, so it’s not for life.
Balatro is my current go-to game. Not sure if it is patient gamer material since it came out relatively recently but it is cheap and on all platforms. Poker themed maths game.
Risk of Rain 2. And if that doesn’t work, Risk of Rain 2.
The Warhammer tide games, either Vermintide 2 or Darktide. Best melee combat in a video game, relatively short rounds, and super satisfying to just genocide some heretic/xeno hordes for the Emperor/Sigmar.
You just alerted me to the existence of Orcs Must Die 3, and I am going to check it out after absolutely loving the first 2.
I’ll have to check those out. I played Vermintide when it first came out and wasn’t very impressed. I’ll give it another go.
My son plays some Warhammer games. I should check it out.
Good news about OMD, there’s a new game due next month, Deathtrap. I’m super stoked.
OpenTTD.
FIFA, a lot of the time. Lately it’s been Rocket League.
I’ll play a multiplayer shooter or civilization 6
Civilization V.
Humankind for me lately, but same vibe
this is a smartass answer but if no video game is catching your attention, don’t play a video game. do anything else. pick up a new hobby or revisit an old one.
I got a laugh from my Steam recap because I couldn’t find anything to play this summer so I got really into ice cream making. Then Satisfactory came out.
Yup. I like reading and working on coding projects.
That said, sometimes I get a hankering to play a game, but none of the dozens I have installed look interesting, so I’ll go play one of my favorites (EU4, C:S, Mount & Blade, etc).
Guild Wars 2 and Dear Esther
I did that a lot with Subnautica but I think I’ve worn it out. I would make up challenge runs for myself to spice it up and I’ve run out of those. It was my “I want to play a video game right now” game. I kinda wish I had fewer objections to Subnautica 2, because there’s things I like about that game and things I don’t and the don’ts slightly outweigh the things that do.
I’ve had Subnautica on my wishlist forever. I should get to that soon
It’s great, go play it, and I suggest going in as blind as you can.
I once saw a playthrough by Let’s Play Easy Mode, I don’t know how he acquired a copy of the game while knowing as little as he did about it. He correctly guessed there’d be swimming in it and realized about six minutes in that it was a survival game.
I like to give this one hint, which I think is enough guidance to keep you from looking up the wiki and encountering actual spoilers: The answer to “well, now what?” is “go deeper.”
I’ll load up Spider-man a couple times a month just to go on patrol, and stop random crimes.
Been doing this since Spider-man 2 came out on the original Xbox. Glad the new one came out, and I don’t have to chase that kid’s damn balloon anymore.
I have no idea why, but Wurm Online always manages to draw me back. Guess it’s a Zen and the Art of Imping addiction.
Rogue-lites are basically made to be infinitely re-playable and if I find one I like then I keep going back to it. Enter the Gungeon is a game I’ve played for years. Then there was a while this spot was taken by Slay the Spire and Balatro in turn. Now I’m back to Enter the Gungeon.
Enter the Gungeon
I had to look it up but that looks cool! Thanks for the idea.
A warning before you jump in: it’s crazy difficult. It took me about 70 hours of gameplay to be able to finish a play through…but after that it became pretty repeatable once I had learnt how to do it. This is pretty standard, but the failed runs are all fun and the gameplay is excellent and hilarious. I can give some generic starter tips if you want, things I wished I knew before having to learn the hard way (equally learning the hard way is the way rogue-lites are intended to work, so up to you).
The enemies are bullets that are holding guns and shooting bullets at you. You can unlock a gun that looks like a bullet, that shoots bullets that look like guns, that shoot their own bullets. Everything in the game is a pun.
Fucking love Enter the Gungeon. My favorite rougelike/roguelite
