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?
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.
I’ve found a lot of Roguelikes that I’ve played force you to rebuild your arsenal every game and repeatedly progress through to the same boss that can annihilate you if you didn’t get lucky on your finds or get your timing off.
One of my favorite Rogue-lites is Rogue Legacy since it doesn’t do that. People complain that it’s brutal. But I find it so much more frustrating to mop up hordes for an hour and get wrecked by one tough opponent to restart from square one.
Thats my favorite thing about roguelites and why Rogue Legacy is literally my least favorite one.
In roguelites with stat progression, there’s often little need to actually improve at the game. It’s just mindless grinding until your stats are high enough.
Enter the Gungeon does it best IMO. New weapons and items get added to the loot table, but you never unlock anything that just straight up makes you stronger.
One complaint I’ve heard about Rogue Legacy is how the cost of stat progression increases. To the point that, for some, they find it difficult to make enough during a run to get upgrades.
The problem is that they tried to rely on increasing their stats to get better. Instead they should have tried the more difficult challenges and just gotten better.
I realized after starting a new game just how much better I was than the first time I played.
Hades is a good one. It’s hard to get “unlucky” instead you’re forced to play a different build if you don’t get the powers you want.
Completely different answer to what you’re asking, but I’ve found that the Steam Deck helps a lot with this because you can pause the game at any time, sleep the device, and then come back and be back in the game on that screen in 3 seconds. That helped me clear a lot of games because I could squeeze a game session in any 10/15min window of time I had.
Yup, can confirm. I’ll often start out assuming I’ll have 1-2 hours, but about 10-15 min in, I need to handle stuff (kid is sick, wife needs IT help, etc). It’s fantastic. :)
Can also confirm, my only gaming time is my 25 minute ride in public transit. This makes 50 minutes of gaming time where I used to have none.
I do love my Steam Deck. It has changed the way I play games. Its hackability had only added to its charm.
I would say Outer Wilds is very good. You have the ability to beat the game as soon as you start, but you don’t have the knowledge to beat it.
Without spoiling it as it’s a very spoiler sensitive game, you can spend as long as you want gathering all of the knowledge to beat the game, you aren’t punished for taking your time. And all the knowledge you collect is stored in the games computer as long as you save so you can play for 22 minutes if you want, or multiple hours.
I beat the game over the course of a few weeks playing for various amounts of time. Recently played the DLC too and that went the same.
I really need to get over the early learning curve and get into this game.
I’ve tried a few times and don’t know why it doesn’t engage me.
Give it another try tonight.
You have to want to explore and you have to pay attention. The gameplay is casual but the progression is not
I loved Outer Wilds but I’m surprised to see it get called out in this thread. I still recommend it but once you get like halfway through it’s very easy to spend an entire session making 0 progress and feeling like you “wasted” your night.
There is NO handholding which I personally like in games but I wouldn’t say it respects your time…though I definitely wouldn’t say it doesn’t respect your time either
If you think you’re getting lost or don’t know what to do, it’s okay to follow another lead. Sometimes the solution will come back to you. The signal scope is your friend when finding a new lead, and the ship log is your best friend for tracking it and figuring out what to do next.
I hope you enjoy it, it’s a game you can only experience once.
And it’s SUCH a good game. I got through it with the DLC and cried at the end.
You just convinced me to buy it since it’s on sale on Playstation.
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).
Recently Spider-Man 2. I platinumed that game in 26 hours I think. The story is good, combat is fun, there’s collectables and side missions but each is part of its own side story. They give you plenty of info to find almost all of the secrets too
These games are really good! I completed the first game like 4 times, only got platinum the second times and the other times was for the dlc and fun of it. Amazing game!
Helldivers 2 is online coop and all missions take anywhere between 5-40 minutes. But the objectives are clearly laid out beforehand and players get to choose what optionals they do, if any. So it’s not too hard to plan your day or evening around this.
I thought Final Fantasy XVI was really great with pacing. There’s a bunch of side missions. But just use a guide when doing monster searches (like I did because I respect my time too much), it doesn’t string you along too much (for an RPG).
I mentioned elsewhere, Rogue Legacy. The first one paces really well and is very straightforward. It’s pretty brutal, which is great for quick make or break runs instead of letting you grind easy mobs like a lot of Rogues.
Id love to play FF16, but the bastards made it PS exclusive
What’s your console? It should be coming out on PC this year sometime.
Dirt Rally (1 not 2. Fuck you EA) Noita Gunfire Reborn Doorkickers Brigador Super Hexagon Dungeon Warfare Cultist Simulator Creeper World Post Void Devil Daggers
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!
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.
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.
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
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was unexpectedly great in this respect.
You can save/load virtually any time, and almost every single thing you do adds an icon to the map that you can use for fast travel. I’m really loving it!
That really depends on what you’re looking for. In general, I find shorter games to respect my time more. So here’s my process:
- collect some recommendations (here, reddit, game reviewers, etc)
- look up time to beat on How Long to Beat, and add to wishlist if it seems reasonable (e.g. <10 hours for a puzzle game or platformer, 10-20 for an action/story game, etc)
- buy games when I run out based on reviews on the games in my wishlist
Some examples:
- Little Nightmares, INSIDE, Darq, and A Juggler’s Tale - 2D puzzle-platformers at <5 hours each
- Ori and the Blind Forest, Blue Fire, and Headlander - metroidvanias at 5-10 hours
- Manifold Garden, Return of the Obra Dinn, Portal/Portal 2 - puzzle games a- 5-10 hours
Some longer games are also great, and I mostly look for lack of grinding, ability to save whenever, and praise for the story, such as:
- Yakuza series - can play in 5-10 min increments, but reserve an hour for boss fights (super long and high quality cutscenes)
- Ys series - older games are short (1&2), later games are longer, and saves aren’t super frequent (about 15-20 min between save points), but I think the gameplay and story are worthwhile; favorites are Ys 1 (really old), Ys Origin (11-ish hours per play-through, 3 play throughs needed, but each is satisfying); grinding is quite rare for a JRPG
I find that the more I avoid the super popular AAA games, the happier I am with my limited playtime.
I don’t play Hitman in short bursts, but I think you certainly could. The sandbox is there for you to figure out and mess around in. As long as you get your target killed and get out, it doesn’t matter if you did it quick, slow, in a clown suit, or just happen to kill every other non-target NPC in the map either.
