When I was kid, I could sit in front of TV for hours and sink a day or two away into a game and have no problem having to start the game over from the beginning. Time meant nothing to me and I wasted it like it was a near infinite resource.
Now I am a parent and ain’t got time for some of the nonsense that’s in games nowadays. I’m lucky if I have even an hour to play each night.
A good example: Forza Horizon 5 allows you to switch cars mid game without traveling back to a house. That to me is a huge time saver compared to the recent NFS games.
Contrarily, Forza Motorsport (2023) makes you do qualifications every round. While realistic, a big time sink.
That said, what are some of your favorite games that have respect for your limited time?
Not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I’ve been enjoying Idling to rule the gods. (Steam/Android cross save)
It’s an idle game that could take years to “beat”, has a pet collection/dungeon game that’s pretty fun.
You can progress only checking in a couple times a day for a few minutes, some challenges (for progression/QOL upgrades) require more activity, but overall has a nice feeling of day to day improvement.
Armored Core 6. Missions are pretty short, attempts on them can be abandoned without losing anything but your progress in that attempt, and there is absolutely no slack time–start to end it’s densely packed with new content.
Totally different genre, but I liked how Celeste approached this.
If you struggle to complete it there are tons of accessibility options to make the game more approachable.
And the content necessary to finish the games story is not too much, while giving challenging -well- challenges to anyone who wants to spend more time with the game.
And you clear the game screen by screen making it possible to only play it a short bit at a time.
It’s almost a bonus that the story and soundtrack are fucking beautiful.
Rocket League. Games are quick, you can play one or many in a session. I don’t know if epic has ruined it yet, but last I played the good old core game was still there.
This one is misleading though. It’s a bit like, “Who would ever want a second hit of meth!? Just try it this once! Only takes 5 minutes!”
I realized I only have the patience for (relatively) short singleplayer games (I just hate grinding in general in video games).
Some of my favorites are:
NieR:Automata (around 40-60 hours of playtime. This one might seem ironic, as it does have some repetition, but it has no grinding and always something interesting new. It also has by far the best story of any game I’ve ever played)The Beginners Guide (~4 hours of gameplay. It is super unique and has a cool take on psychology, which I haven’t seen in any other game or movie. But you need to play it all the way to the end for it to make sense)
Noita (hard rouge like, and the only one I really enjoy. It’s also very unique in its genre and you can always save and quit.)
Balatro (technically also a rouge lite, but with playing poker hands. It has short rounds and is a casual game, if you only have a few minutes ans don’t know what to play)
Roguelike games are generally pretty good for this as they will have shorter run durations with some kind of metaprogression. Slay The Spire is the first one that came to my mind.
Also games that have some smaller unit of progression which can be measured independently of the larger game, like Darkest Dungeon, which takes ages to finish, but each individual delve into the dungeon is relatively short and straightforward.
Hijacking this comment for recommending my two favorite rouge lites Noita and Balatro. Both have the possibility to save and quit at any time.
noita
Yes but what really is progress?
Hellcard is an isometric dungeon looter that lets you customize how long the dungeon should be, time-wise. So, of you’ve got, say, 15 minutes, bam! 15-minute dungeon run.
I’m not sure how precise it is, but the devs really went out of their way for the feature!
Roguelikes, such as Hades. A single run won’t take you longer than 30mins (and often far, far less than that – you’ll die, a lot).
Every run is progress. And if you feel like you’re not progressing fast enough, you can turn on “God Mode” (the protagonist is a god) and gain 2% damage reduction after each death, to make subsequent runs a little easier (no penalty in doing so, either).
i think bethesda games do it well but you gotta make sure you dont stop playing in the middle of a dungeon because then you will forget what the hell you were doing. but going at it like 1 dungeon or quest at a time is rather nice, its how ive played it for the last couple years
Sea of Stars is broken up into nice little chunks between save points. Also has ‘relics’ which can modify the game to be more your speed.
