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?
I play the “What’s that black dot on the wall and is it moving?” game.
Very fun until one actually starts moving.
Stellaris with the Star Trek: New Horizons mod. Currently doing a Borg run, at war with the Dominion right now, but of course, resistance is futile.
Creeper World 4, the daily map usually has a good duration. Takes your thoughts off everything else pretty well, yet is not too demanding. And you can vary your play style yourself a bit / set your own limitations, depending on how much of a challenge you want right now or how much time you want to spend.
Dead Cells. I’ve been stuck on 3BC for years, but someday I’ll beat it! Someday…
Lighthouse is my current white whale. Going to finally check out the Cavern next time I go back.
Helldivers 2 is great for short to medium sessions.
yeah, being able to hop in and out it’s great thing for me
I also like the lack of pressure to finish a round if you have to be drug away by life. I know they’ll likely be able to finish without me or someone will pop in after me to help.
Risk of Rain 2. And if that doesn’t work, Risk of Rain 2.
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.
I was trying Terraria, which has a lot of creativity possibilities. I was trying to earthwork/terraform a small world (i.e. trying to make it level from ocean to ocean), while simultaneously “voidforming” another small world (i.e. digging out every single “removable” block before Hardmode, which obviously excluded Lihzard temple blocks, Dungeon blocks and Crimson/Corruption altars; for lava, I was using the infinite bucket trick to replicate honey in order to consume lava from the Underworld; I don’t plan on reaching Hardmode for such world). I was taking blocks from the second world (the world to be voidformed) and “smuggling” them into the first world (the world to be terraformed) in order to compensate for the need for additional blocks (e.g. sand, ice, mud, etc) when biomes were generated below ocean level.
Turns out that I was doing this not exactly for fun and enjoyment, but something to “try to keep myself busy and away from bad thoughts”, and that was not really a good goal for myself. By now, it has been weeks since I last played.
X-Com (1993)+Mods, Jagged Alliance 2, Master of Orion 2, Starsector, Avorion and lately Balatro and Peglin for mindless fun.
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.
Modded Minecraft for sure. But there are a handful of games I keep going back to and common theme for those games that I can listen to a podcast or audiobook while I’m playing them, like Rimworld, No Man’s Sky, Stardew Valley, Skyrim.
OpenTTD.
I so want to like that game, but that UI is so hard for me to get used to, I never have (after a few tries). Always glad to see it mentioned online though.
Yeah I can imagine it taking time getting used to as a new player. I played the original as a kid on DOS so the UI is deeply ingrained lol.
For me its titanfall 2. Simply because its quite casual and the rounds don’t take too long. Just hop on and if you get absolutely obliderated the next round will be better.
Crawl: Stone Soup. Classic rogue like. You can play it in the browser so it’s very fast to get going. Minotaur Berserker is a nice semi brainless flow.
I’m partial to Gargoyle Fighter, slam maces into everything
Yeah Gargoyles! My first ascension was Gargoyle Earth Elementist, but I think EE has been nerfed since that ascension.
I never really clicked with EE, when I felt like magic I was usually doing something like Deep elf conjurer, or sometime High Elve (rip them) and go for a sword and sorcery style I really enjoyed
Gargoyle Fighter Gang! My first and only escape (3 rune) was a gargoyle fighter dedicated to The Shining One. I relied completely on shield for defense and apparently that was weird as I got a lot of shocked comments on my lack of evade
It’s been a minute since I was last plugged into the dcss community, but that seems very standard for me. My best run was also a TSO fighter gargoyle, but something like 8 or 9 runes which was neat. Golden dragon armour, kite shield, and the awesome blessed whip courtesy of TSO is my end game objective
