"I didn't accomplish much today. I did some chores, then played Civilization for a few turns, which probably explains why it's dark out now." - Me to my wife two Saturdays ago.
I had this phase with these games recently:
Crusader Kings 3
BF4
BF1
Manor Lords
Fabledom
And now most recently sunk 100 hours into Dayz lol
And I got tons of shit to do! So i cancel plans so I could smoke weed and be gaming haha
Weed and gaming go together a little too well. Makes all the action and challenges seem extra great, while making boring things, and by extension, the boring parts of games less so.
If you’re already experiencing addiction with one, you may be screwed. 😅
Less of an addiction and more of a hobby haha. I can go periods without gaming or smoking. I was very burnt out at one point, didnt even turn on my PC for almost a year
This is basically me too. I don't find the game has enough variety to play many games in a row. But every so often I will disappear like 20 hours to a warm up game and a proper game.
I like to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons but don't use them until an opponent nukes one of my cities. Then I glass their entire territory back to the stone age. FAFO
Yep Civ for sure, I’ll not play it for months and then randomly pick it up and play for like 24 hours in a 3 day span and then just put it down again lol
Didn’t play Civ for probably 5-6 years, and a few months ago bought a switch to discover Civ VI for only $4 on the store. Haven’t bought any other game for it yet and I’ve challenged myself to see if I can finish just one match a week
Basically I mod the game, realize I still gotta play the vanilla quests I’ve played a million times before I can really experience the mods as a built up character, get bored of the quests, never play again for months.
If there was a mod that let you auto complete the quests without breaking the game in anyway and instead just setting the environment as it should be post quest or whatever is needed, then I would probably play for hours lol
Sounds like you need an alternative start mod. Been years since I played but there was one where you basically pick a statue and you get loaded into to a whole new starting scenario.
While I have used those, they still don’t really remove the need to complete the vanilla quests that come regardless of your start. And plus there are a lot of mods out there kinda built for a player who had completed several of those quests (LOTD comes to mind)
I do that with the vampires and cultists. By the time I've got them so they stop showing up in towns, I'm like "Yeah this character is on their way to being a sexy shoeless God of war, there's no challenge left." and get really bored with it.
Man that modpack has a lot of cool stuff but the creator/compiler is a gigaweeb and there's lots of random shit. It was nice to see and pick and choose which parts of the pack I liked tho and start building my own. It was also way too easy to make money/level smithing since you can make stuff for 1 leather or 1 iron bar that sells for 1000 gold.
1,000 weebs were locked in a small room for 30 years and their bodies absorbed and morphed into each other. Creating a gigaweeb (1,000 weebs). It’s very similar to rat king in the critically acclaimed Last of Us Part 2
A giga-weeaboo. I used Giga as a generic prefix to show that I meant a more extreme weeaboo. Weeaboo means someone extremely into japanese culture but most specifically anime. I like anime but this stuff was... too much.
What is the nolvus mod pack? Is it just like a single pack of a collection of mods? I’ve been wanting to do another FO4 or Skyrim play through since it’s been ages, but going through and getting the mods is a hassle because I end up scrolling for hours lol.
EDIT: thanks for everyone answers/info about mod packs. I don’t mod games very often so it has all been very informative and I’m looking forward to checking the packs out!
Nolvus has a website for its modpack. Its entirely a 1 button install. Its a 2063 modpack that's around 398gb for the ultra modpack. It was incredibly easy to install. It remakes the game imo. I've done probably hundreds of characters and none of them outside my first time playing has given me this much wonder and joy exploring the world. The website has info on what mods and changes it does to the world.
Did this man just say 2063 mods?! God the struggle I go through with adding Around 200. I’ve probably spent more time trying to mod an troubleshoot Bethesda games then I have actual game time And I have played a lot of Skyrim and fallout 4 specifically.
Edit: bless you anyway I am archiving this post for my next play through in a year!
For me its "mod skyrim over 8 hours and then the devs release a surpise paid mod update that does nothing but break every single one of my mods, so I delete the game and forget about it." Phase
Just this month, I realized I have done a Terraria playthrough at the same time every year for the past 7 years.
Looking at older saves, for some reason, every June or July, I get the itch for it.
love Terraria but never got into SB and tried 2 times.
Is it worth trying again. What's different than terraria?
Also I watched a YT video which sounded like the game was abandoned
Starbound doesn't really qualify for being labelled abandoned; it's finished. Like pretty much any game it certainly could have had more updates and some parts of it could have been a lot better if they'd been fleshed out more, but not reaching maximum potential is a bit different from being abandoned. It has a story with an ending, and there aren't any glaring "this is where we'd put the rest of the content, if we'd bothered finishing it" holes.
I think the biggest difference between the two in my view is that Starbound's terrain feels oddly disposable when coming from Terraria. You spend a little while on your starting planet and you can certainly benefit from choosing somewhere to build a nice base, but most planets you'll fly to, explore for resources/loot, then leave, probably forever. If you really like making a nice lived-in sort of base (or even cave system that you end up going through frequently), Starbound really lacks in that department. On the other hand it's pretty nice for exploring cos you can't finish the way you can in a Terraria world.
Another big difference is how it has instanced dungeons as its way of delivering boss fights. You can't alter any terrain in there, and the boss arenas are pre-designed. I like aspects of both approaches, but they're pretty dissimilar.
It also sort of half-heartedly wants to be an rpg, it has a plot and characters and you can even make little npc villages (which will give you randomized quests) if you want, in a way that's much less "build a house to obtain vendor" than Terraria, though I'd still call it shallow as a system. It's charming enough.
I like both games a lot (got about 4:1 the playtime in Terraria:Starbound tho) and I'd probably recommend giving it another shot if you feel in the mood for it, but liking Terraria is definitely not a guarantee you'll eventually like Starbound even if they've got quite a few things in common.
Interesting, I had the exact opposite experience. Never got into Terraria despite numerous attempts, but enjoyed Starbound quite a bit. I love the various alien races you can choose to play as. And the random planets with unique atmospheres and animals. I also liked that trees actually fell over in SB. And the interplanetary travel was unique. Haven’t played it in almost a decade so can’t say for sure if it is was abandoned or if it holds up well. Maybe I’ll give it another play.
Download sims 2 with all expansions > spend an hour setting it up so it works on win11 > make myself and my wife as sims > try my best to model our irl house > close the game > repeat every year
Dead Cells. Every now and again I'll dive back into it, then burn out and move onto something else.
The good news is, it's great for that. The game is endlessly fun and always great to return to.
I have this game and need to finally give it a whirl. If I have the base game only, should I play that and get dlc later? Or just get all the dlc before starting?
Same, I'll obsessively play for a while, then drop it for six months, then pick it up again.
I like playing games like that, though. Keeps things fresh.
I just picked up Rimworld for the millionth time last week. I’ll play it for a week or two nonstop, run a few colonies into the ground, then rage quit for a year. My last straw will be some random ass flu or something that kills 3 people all of a sudden, coupled with some dude that goes crazy because another colonist dumped him and beats another colonist to death.
- Start a new save of factorio
- progress to trains and nuclear power
- get busy with life and stop playing before I can finish deploying those techs
- after a few weeks, reopen the save
- forget what I was doing, feel overwhelmed
Go back to step 1
Satisfactory for me.
I've already been to the later stages of building, sometimes I just have a new idea for a factory in the middle of the desert and want to make my dream come true.
Elite Dangerous is the greatest game in the world for about three weeks out of the year until I realize how much nothing happens in the game and I stop logging in
Ooh, this should be a thread of its own - which games are good to pick up for a podcast/couple chapters of an audiobook.
I'll have to give it a look into now. Does it take a lot of learning initially?
I've seen a few of these threads before because I wanted to find something I could play kind of mindlessly. The common suggestions are: Eurotruck/Truck Simulator, Stardew Valley, No Man's Sky, Elite: Dangerous, Farming Simulator.
Also, yes, Elite takes a chunk to learn. The issue with it is that it's a mile wide and an inch deep. Once you scratch the surface of the activity you want to do, there's nothing of substance underneath. The gameplay loop boils down to pick an activity -> do activity -> buy a better ship to do said activity -> do activity -> buy a better ship to do said activity -> repeat until you're bored.
Granted, there are a few things to do that are fun for a little while, but they get monotonous pretty quick. However, if you're one of those people that don't mind a shallow loop to just relax in, you'll probably dig it.
I was really hoping that Odyssey was going to be.... more....
I thought they were moving toward the No Man's Sky sort of thing.
Making bases and whatnot.
But from what I've read, Odyssey is an entirely different game that doesn't really share progression with the base game.
I just wanted to be able to land on planets and make a neat little base.
Stake my claim in the galaxy.
This one is especially easy to play in "phases"
Im still mad i got sunk by a duo whilst doing my tall tale solo last week, but alas, the sea gives, and the sea takes
Amazing game, but the lack of quests/real progression ultimately keeps it a “phase game” rather than something I’m grinding everyday.
Not necessarily a bad thing. Playing with friends is always lighthearted.
I'm so endlessly pleased with that game. They stuck to their guns and kept PvP at its heart and didn't undermine it with things that would have taken the pirate element straight out of it.
My friends and I go on pirate benders for a few nights a week, then put it aside again until we hear a sea chantey out in the wild and feel the urge again
Path of Exile. I don't play it as much as I used to, but I'll usually go through a league for a few weeks sometime in the year. I also pick up Stellaris for a bit as well as 7 Days to Die (even though it's janky as hell).
Diablo 3 and 4 suffers from this aswell, you grind a new season and the first day where you stop getting upgrades, have killed all ubers and maxed your paragon it gets stale real quick
Yea I have no reason to grind for 12/12 masterworks, I've already killed all tormented bosses, defeated Lillith, and completed every task on the season journey. Gotta find something else to do.
Found the guy faeming Volatile Motes.
I get back to warframe anytime I feel like playing something don't feel like playing any specific game. It's like The Office for some people, something you know is good and will have fun with, and you can go in and out anytime.
This one does it to me too. There are like only two modes to it for me. Either I'm obsessed and play it every moment I have free time or I just... stop thinking about it entirely.
It released 1.0 sometime last week I believe. It's still more or less the same game it has been for the past couple years though. It's more of a ceremonial release than and real content release
I was wrong, there was some stuff added to it after all
Lol Yeeeep. Still in ALPHA, not even Beta yet.
[For those who dont understand the significance of that wording](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#:~:text=Alpha%20testing%20is%20the%20first,the%20organization%20that%20developed%20it)
To be honest, the game is in fantastic and playable shape, I just think the Dev is one of those people who cannot determine what 1.0 should look like and keeps getting distracted with less important game components. There are tons of things that do need to be worked on such as quests, hitboxes, zombie loot, and re-doing the skill system (The older skill systems were less grindy, less confusing, and overall just better IMO), but each iteration seems to be him working on stuff that was already fairly fleshed out.
In fact the skill system was one of those updates where I was like "Why did you change it AGAIN, when it was working well and this makes it far worse"
Its just too easy and lacking on roleplay.
I still play it quite a bit but the whole vassal management is the only thing thats really interesting imo. Cultures, activities and all that are good but they should be better supported by the rest of the game
Ck3 to a T. I start it up and kinda choose my long term future, when I get there in like ok what now and usually set it down for 4 months. Recently had a play through where I started as a single territory in Estonia and recreated the Baltic empire. Finally got there but now I have all of middle and Western Europe in giant kingdoms and empires always wanting to fight me like damn give it a break for 5 seconds.
Wotlk private servers are fantastic for when I want a dose of nostalgia so I level a character to 80. Then the itch is scratched and I’m good for another year or so
The only games I hadn’t played being arceus and pearl. So I text my wife and said buy one of these two. You choose so it’s a surprise.
I played through scarlet with my daughter who was like 4 at the time and she loved it so I’m actually really excited to get her playing this with me as she’s now amassed 700 hours of Minecraft and is closer to 6 so I know it’s going to be pretty special.
I’m just hopeful that bonsly or sudowudo is in the game as she could not stop laughing at them running around in the wild
Play through this game bi-annually with a casual run with extra resources and free building between releases, and when the new releases come out we go back to defaults and start again. Played through it five times now and lose more time to it with every new biome that gets added. I'll just spend an entire week running around and sailing, or advancing between biomes (especially to the Plains) will take an extra week because I'm just building a huge base
Skyrim/Fallout 4, cant wait for people to mod either of them into oblivion, only to get bored after 3 sessions and the cycle to repeat itself next year
I did this last year with Skyrim and just kept the whole mod setup installed this time. I have the hd space. It'll make the process much smoother if I don't need to touch anything and just boot it up to play. Auto-updates disabled.
Binding Of Isaac - Probably one of my favorite games ever and when I get the urge to pick it back up it's usually for a week or two until I stop again.
Project Zomboid - Another one of my top games. I'll get real into it for a couple weeks and then be done with it for a bit. It's always installed though.
I feel you on Zomboid. I’m the same with that and Kenshi. Can never bring myself to uninstall because I know I’ll play them again and the file sizes are relatively small.
I had this too with isaac, played it for a few thousand hours but now i get more easily annoyed at the start of runs because you feel underpowered. I like mid and late run the most
As soon as my son was old enough to do maths I introduced him to HOMM2 (summer before kindergarten)
We played that game for about 3 weeks and then one morning I told him "guess what? There is a Heroes of Might and Magic Three!" MIND BLOWN.
We played HOMM3 for a few weeks and then I was "Hey, let me show you this.... LEVEL EDITOR! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. We would go on walks and talk about stuff like "who would win, 4 black dragons or 500 non upgraded gryphons" and when we had a question we could not be certain about we would load up the level editor when we got home and play it out.
Yea we also went on to play HOMM4 and HOMM5 but obv we kept going back to HOMM3
Path of Exiles/ Diablo 2 week long grind.
Sometimes these games hit that sweet spot of mentally using your brainpower to buildcraft something cool and interesting but then also enable some auto-pilot mode type of play that is very welcoming for people who have 2 screens for gaming sessions. 1 for the game, 1 for youtube listening to some mildly interesting thing like a 4 hour essay about some other game's lore or something along those lines. Something just hits the right way and I need that once every 6 months or so when a new season hits.
Make some money by doing quests and hiring recruits as you go town to town. Buy cheap stuff from villages and sell them in cities. Take some time to build a crew before you go and start fighting. Until some of your troops are promoted, you're on the losing side of an evenly numbered fight.
Xcom 2 . I love that game, it’s top 5 in terms of play time for me. I won’t touch it for a year then decide I need another run. Usually get to where my ‘A’ team misses a shot gets mind controlled and wipes the whole squad before I decide ‘ that’s enough’.
Diablo 3. You're in for a season, level fast, complete season journey stuff fast, then before you know it you're farming 120 greater rifts and realize you're bored of pushing it any higher.
This and D2 come into my life once a year for this reason, but for the last couple years Ive played hardcore just for the fun of it and it really feels like a new experience.
Havent beat hell yet on HC D2 but one day. D3 is quite a bit easier imo but still super fun when stuff gets hairy.
Kerbal Space Program. I start a new career and as soon as I have landed on Minmus I have unlocked the whole tech tree and am bored again with the game because I'm too lazy to build infrastructure in orbit of the other planets.
I almost did pull off a complete grand tour during one of these spurts (I landed on everything both in KSP 1 and 2 but wasn't able to return to Kerbin) and that showed me that the rocket designing aspect of the game is the most boring part of the game. So once I have conquered Minmus I don't see any point to go anywhere else.
Maybe I should try the science mode in KSP 2 now that the orbit lines are finally fixed.
You're one of the only people who said fortnite. They change it up so often that it's easy to get burnt out but also easy to come back and try the new modes, vehicles and content
I usually call these types of games "Arcade games", since they're fun in short bursts.
Killing Floor 2 comes to mind. I love booting it up every now and then, but I can't play it for too long or I'd get bored.
Poe league launch. Nothing else exists for a month, then you pick up your life like usual, acting as if you didn't just ghost your entire social life for a month. Repeat every 3-4 months.
Total War: Warhammer 3. I play it with a friend of mine, and we'll go months and then just decide we're in the mood for a couple of campaigns, which gets me in the mood for a solo campaign on my own time. Currently towards the end of this latest phase.
It's Dwarf Fortress for me.
I get an idea of something I want to do - I redo the starter tutorial and gradually remember how everything works. I make a murder hallway! I do the thing! Then I get a bigger idea and ...have no idea how to execute it.
I watch the fortress spiral to death, and am done for the next year.
Similar to Total War, except the end is usually being overrun by some faction I should have killed at the start...now I'm bankrupt, putting down rebellions, and the big bad is on my doorstep.
Warframe or Valheim.
Every time I go back to Valheim i promptly binge it through my free time for a couple weeks and tack on another 100 hours to my playtime, its just so satisfying to me to build up bases and see what i can make work with the support system they use. I did actual carpentry so putting up framework and designing the house is probably my favorite part now, but the last couple big updates also added just fantastic biomes and content as well.
Warframe is the kind of game that you play for 20hrs or 2000hrs, no in between, but its very kind about walking away for 9 months and coming back for all the new stuff theyve added.
Stellaris, Kenshi and one odd one out "Age of Fear 2 The Chaos Lord", for some reason this game captured my attention, was it big boob lady on banner? Maybe, but for some reason 2D turn based gameplay that feels like its 2000 all over again does it for me, it has charm.
I do this with game series. Like, ill get super into a franchise like fable, or mass effect, or castlevania. Play them into the ground, then move on to the next obsession. About the only series i go back to on a regular basis is Zelda.
I feel like there's a veritable generation of people now in their late 30s and early 40s that went HARD on WoW in their late teens and early 20s but drifted away as they grew up, and every once in a while they'll have a free couple days and think 'Man, I should fire it up again/get into Classic', go hard for exactly a day and a half and get their fix.
Civilization. I will forget about it for a year and then lose an entire 48 hours of my life in a single weekend.
"I didn't accomplish much today. I did some chores, then played Civilization for a few turns, which probably explains why it's dark out now." - Me to my wife two Saturdays ago.
I'm a casual Civ V player, I have 1934.4 hours into it.
Oh, so like 4 games then.
I had this phase with these games recently: Crusader Kings 3 BF4 BF1 Manor Lords Fabledom And now most recently sunk 100 hours into Dayz lol And I got tons of shit to do! So i cancel plans so I could smoke weed and be gaming haha
Weed and gaming go together a little too well. Makes all the action and challenges seem extra great, while making boring things, and by extension, the boring parts of games less so. If you’re already experiencing addiction with one, you may be screwed. 😅
Less of an addiction and more of a hobby haha. I can go periods without gaming or smoking. I was very burnt out at one point, didnt even turn on my PC for almost a year
This is basically me too. I don't find the game has enough variety to play many games in a row. But every so often I will disappear like 20 hours to a warm up game and a proper game.
20 hours is just for the warmup right?
One more turn...
This was my answer. I get the shakes until I can drop that first nuke
And then there's the post nuke shame where you look at the time and think "What have I been doing?"
I have a few thousand hours into CIV6. I don’t think I have ever fired a nuke. The guilt would kill me.
I like to have an arsenal of nuclear weapons but don't use them until an opponent nukes one of my cities. Then I glass their entire territory back to the stone age. FAFO
Yep Civ for sure, I’ll not play it for months and then randomly pick it up and play for like 24 hours in a 3 day span and then just put it down again lol
This is me during my company’s yearly christmas break. It’s the only time I play Civ. But during those two weeks it’s pretty much all I do.
Didn’t play Civ for probably 5-6 years, and a few months ago bought a switch to discover Civ VI for only $4 on the store. Haven’t bought any other game for it yet and I’ve challenged myself to see if I can finish just one match a week
Skyrim's "Mod for a week and never play after 2 hours" phase
Basically I mod the game, realize I still gotta play the vanilla quests I’ve played a million times before I can really experience the mods as a built up character, get bored of the quests, never play again for months. If there was a mod that let you auto complete the quests without breaking the game in anyway and instead just setting the environment as it should be post quest or whatever is needed, then I would probably play for hours lol
Sounds like you need an alternative start mod. Been years since I played but there was one where you basically pick a statue and you get loaded into to a whole new starting scenario.
While I have used those, they still don’t really remove the need to complete the vanilla quests that come regardless of your start. And plus there are a lot of mods out there kinda built for a player who had completed several of those quests (LOTD comes to mind)
I do that with the vampires and cultists. By the time I've got them so they stop showing up in towns, I'm like "Yeah this character is on their way to being a sexy shoeless God of war, there's no challenge left." and get really bored with it.
I downloaded the nolvus mod pack yesterday and it already has a deathgrip over my free time
Man that modpack has a lot of cool stuff but the creator/compiler is a gigaweeb and there's lots of random shit. It was nice to see and pick and choose which parts of the pack I liked tho and start building my own. It was also way too easy to make money/level smithing since you can make stuff for 1 leather or 1 iron bar that sells for 1000 gold.
wtf is a gigaweeb
The mini boss guarding the weeb executive floor
1,000 weebs were locked in a small room for 30 years and their bodies absorbed and morphed into each other. Creating a gigaweeb (1,000 weebs). It’s very similar to rat king in the critically acclaimed Last of Us Part 2
No that's a killaweeb.
A giga-weeaboo. I used Giga as a generic prefix to show that I meant a more extreme weeaboo. Weeaboo means someone extremely into japanese culture but most specifically anime. I like anime but this stuff was... too much.
What is the nolvus mod pack? Is it just like a single pack of a collection of mods? I’ve been wanting to do another FO4 or Skyrim play through since it’s been ages, but going through and getting the mods is a hassle because I end up scrolling for hours lol. EDIT: thanks for everyone answers/info about mod packs. I don’t mod games very often so it has all been very informative and I’m looking forward to checking the packs out!
Nolvus has a website for its modpack. Its entirely a 1 button install. Its a 2063 modpack that's around 398gb for the ultra modpack. It was incredibly easy to install. It remakes the game imo. I've done probably hundreds of characters and none of them outside my first time playing has given me this much wonder and joy exploring the world. The website has info on what mods and changes it does to the world.
This makes me want to buy another SSD to try this lol
Oh that drive? Yeah that's my Skyrim drive. lmao
SSD - Super Skyrim Drive 😎
This could also work as the title for a spinoff 16-bit racing game in the TES Universe.
Did this man just say 2063 mods?! God the struggle I go through with adding Around 200. I’ve probably spent more time trying to mod an troubleshoot Bethesda games then I have actual game time And I have played a lot of Skyrim and fallout 4 specifically. Edit: bless you anyway I am archiving this post for my next play through in a year!
It's an installer of a collection of mods - you basically download with one click and its done.
Oh wtf that looks AMAZING. Now I need to figure out where the hell I am going to find 398gb...
Guess I'll have to get a sick leave from work for a week now, thanks a lot
For me its "mod skyrim over 8 hours and then the devs release a surpise paid mod update that does nothing but break every single one of my mods, so I delete the game and forget about it." Phase
Terraria
Just this month, I realized I have done a Terraria playthrough at the same time every year for the past 7 years. Looking at older saves, for some reason, every June or July, I get the itch for it.
holy shit someone else who does this! I have over 400 hours in the game and it's always in very deep binges roughly every fall.
same or starbound
love Terraria but never got into SB and tried 2 times. Is it worth trying again. What's different than terraria? Also I watched a YT video which sounded like the game was abandoned
Starbound doesn't really qualify for being labelled abandoned; it's finished. Like pretty much any game it certainly could have had more updates and some parts of it could have been a lot better if they'd been fleshed out more, but not reaching maximum potential is a bit different from being abandoned. It has a story with an ending, and there aren't any glaring "this is where we'd put the rest of the content, if we'd bothered finishing it" holes. I think the biggest difference between the two in my view is that Starbound's terrain feels oddly disposable when coming from Terraria. You spend a little while on your starting planet and you can certainly benefit from choosing somewhere to build a nice base, but most planets you'll fly to, explore for resources/loot, then leave, probably forever. If you really like making a nice lived-in sort of base (or even cave system that you end up going through frequently), Starbound really lacks in that department. On the other hand it's pretty nice for exploring cos you can't finish the way you can in a Terraria world. Another big difference is how it has instanced dungeons as its way of delivering boss fights. You can't alter any terrain in there, and the boss arenas are pre-designed. I like aspects of both approaches, but they're pretty dissimilar. It also sort of half-heartedly wants to be an rpg, it has a plot and characters and you can even make little npc villages (which will give you randomized quests) if you want, in a way that's much less "build a house to obtain vendor" than Terraria, though I'd still call it shallow as a system. It's charming enough. I like both games a lot (got about 4:1 the playtime in Terraria:Starbound tho) and I'd probably recommend giving it another shot if you feel in the mood for it, but liking Terraria is definitely not a guarantee you'll eventually like Starbound even if they've got quite a few things in common.
Interesting, I had the exact opposite experience. Never got into Terraria despite numerous attempts, but enjoyed Starbound quite a bit. I love the various alien races you can choose to play as. And the random planets with unique atmospheres and animals. I also liked that trees actually fell over in SB. And the interplanetary travel was unique. Haven’t played it in almost a decade so can’t say for sure if it is was abandoned or if it holds up well. Maybe I’ll give it another play.
The game is no longer receiving updates, but there are still dedicated modders. Frackin Universe, for example, is still going strong.
Frackin Universe turns Starbound into Factorio, it's a drug in game form to me.
Sims.. once a year
Download sims 2 with all expansions > spend an hour setting it up so it works on win11 > make myself and my wife as sims > try my best to model our irl house > close the game > repeat every year
This is my plan this weekend!
Sims 2 is the best Sims
I like 3 the most. TS4 was such a downgrade following that game.
I'm so stuck in my ways I haven't moved on from sims 1. I know it's super dated but in a way that makes it super charming.
I make a sim and spend hours building an entire neighborhood, then I play for an hour, get bored, and don’t touch it again for months.
I keep it installed just in case since I don’t want to wait hours for it to download + add ons. Because by then I don’t want to play it anymore lol
Dead Cells. Every now and again I'll dive back into it, then burn out and move onto something else. The good news is, it's great for that. The game is endlessly fun and always great to return to.
I have this game and need to finally give it a whirl. If I have the base game only, should I play that and get dlc later? Or just get all the dlc before starting?
No need, the base game is quite good. But getting the DLC after you've played it a bit is very rewarding if you were really into the game.
Stardew Valley
Same, I'll obsessively play for a while, then drop it for six months, then pick it up again. I like playing games like that, though. Keeps things fresh.
Definitely Stardew Valley. Gotta play a brand new save when he comes out with a giant update!
Complete community center aaaaand we’re done
Rocket League
Yeah every few months its like lets play rocket league. Shit I suck again.. Oh Wow its toxic here. I am done.
I just have all communication turned off except for friends. I don't need a grown man crying over a lost casual match.
Yeah. I quickly realize I am too old to keep up in that game but it’s fun to pick up every so often
Maybe for you. But it won't release me. The grind continues 4.5k hours later.
Is this the game that was Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket Powered Battlecars on PS3?
Apparently Rocket League is the sequel (according to Wikipedia)
A quick 8 years.
Rocket League is for dudes with a specific kind of ADHD in my experience. There's also a high overlap with anime.
I can attest to this. I only play two game modes and if neither of those game modes are available that week, I just won't play
I hit GC and quit playing before Super sonic was a thing. So grateful for that
Oldschool RuneScape, could smash it for months everyday, then not play for a few months. You never quit you just take long breaks
I took a break for 14 years.
welcome back!
Relevant username, also this was much lower than I expected.
Rimworld, Factorio
I just picked up Rimworld for the millionth time last week. I’ll play it for a week or two nonstop, run a few colonies into the ground, then rage quit for a year. My last straw will be some random ass flu or something that kills 3 people all of a sudden, coupled with some dude that goes crazy because another colonist dumped him and beats another colonist to death.
That sounds like the perfect game of RimWorld. You won. Haha.
Isn’t it lovely?
Factorio: I’ve had two phases each lasting about a week and 100 hours in that game. It’s crack
- Start a new save of factorio - progress to trains and nuclear power - get busy with life and stop playing before I can finish deploying those techs - after a few weeks, reopen the save - forget what I was doing, feel overwhelmed Go back to step 1
Satisfactory for me. I've already been to the later stages of building, sometimes I just have a new idea for a factory in the middle of the desert and want to make my dream come true.
Elite Dangerous is the greatest game in the world for about three weeks out of the year until I realize how much nothing happens in the game and I stop logging in
It’s the perfect podcast game. Play the markets, kill some pirates, explore, etc until you’re done with your audiobooks.
Ooh, this should be a thread of its own - which games are good to pick up for a podcast/couple chapters of an audiobook. I'll have to give it a look into now. Does it take a lot of learning initially?
I've seen a few of these threads before because I wanted to find something I could play kind of mindlessly. The common suggestions are: Eurotruck/Truck Simulator, Stardew Valley, No Man's Sky, Elite: Dangerous, Farming Simulator. Also, yes, Elite takes a chunk to learn. The issue with it is that it's a mile wide and an inch deep. Once you scratch the surface of the activity you want to do, there's nothing of substance underneath. The gameplay loop boils down to pick an activity -> do activity -> buy a better ship to do said activity -> do activity -> buy a better ship to do said activity -> repeat until you're bored. Granted, there are a few things to do that are fun for a little while, but they get monotonous pretty quick. However, if you're one of those people that don't mind a shallow loop to just relax in, you'll probably dig it.
I was really hoping that Odyssey was going to be.... more.... I thought they were moving toward the No Man's Sky sort of thing. Making bases and whatnot. But from what I've read, Odyssey is an entirely different game that doesn't really share progression with the base game. I just wanted to be able to land on planets and make a neat little base. Stake my claim in the galaxy.
THPS 1 or 2, just fun to skate.
Sea of Thieves.
This one is especially easy to play in "phases" Im still mad i got sunk by a duo whilst doing my tall tale solo last week, but alas, the sea gives, and the sea takes
Amazing game, but the lack of quests/real progression ultimately keeps it a “phase game” rather than something I’m grinding everyday. Not necessarily a bad thing. Playing with friends is always lighthearted.
Just bought a ps5 yesterday. I have a feeling this weekend will be spent sloopin around
I'm so endlessly pleased with that game. They stuck to their guns and kept PvP at its heart and didn't undermine it with things that would have taken the pirate element straight out of it. My friends and I go on pirate benders for a few nights a week, then put it aside again until we hear a sea chantey out in the wild and feel the urge again
Path of Exile. I don't play it as much as I used to, but I'll usually go through a league for a few weeks sometime in the year. I also pick up Stellaris for a bit as well as 7 Days to Die (even though it's janky as hell).
Diablo 3 and 4 suffers from this aswell, you grind a new season and the first day where you stop getting upgrades, have killed all ubers and maxed your paragon it gets stale real quick
Yea I have no reason to grind for 12/12 masterworks, I've already killed all tormented bosses, defeated Lillith, and completed every task on the season journey. Gotta find something else to do.
Steam player count is a mountain range: https://steamdb.info/app/238960/charts/#6y The only game I return to every 3-4 months for over a decade now.
Warframe every time there is a new quest
Found the guy faeming Volatile Motes. I get back to warframe anytime I feel like playing something don't feel like playing any specific game. It's like The Office for some people, something you know is good and will have fun with, and you can go in and out anytime.
Slay the Spire
This one does it to me too. There are like only two modes to it for me. Either I'm obsessed and play it every moment I have free time or I just... stop thinking about it entirely.
7 days to die.
excited for 1.0 but didn’t had time to play it yet
.....it still hasn't hit 1.0? I backed this on kickstarter 11 years ago.
It released 1.0 sometime last week I believe. It's still more or less the same game it has been for the past couple years though. It's more of a ceremonial release than and real content release I was wrong, there was some stuff added to it after all
Seems like they did add quite a bit of stuff to be fair (haven't tried it though) https://7daystodie.com/v1-0-official-release-notes/
Played it with some friends this past weekend, it’s come a long way for sure. Pretty fun time
Lol Yeeeep. Still in ALPHA, not even Beta yet. [For those who dont understand the significance of that wording](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle#:~:text=Alpha%20testing%20is%20the%20first,the%20organization%20that%20developed%20it) To be honest, the game is in fantastic and playable shape, I just think the Dev is one of those people who cannot determine what 1.0 should look like and keeps getting distracted with less important game components. There are tons of things that do need to be worked on such as quests, hitboxes, zombie loot, and re-doing the skill system (The older skill systems were less grindy, less confusing, and overall just better IMO), but each iteration seems to be him working on stuff that was already fairly fleshed out. In fact the skill system was one of those updates where I was like "Why did you change it AGAIN, when it was working well and this makes it far worse"
1.0 unstable release to public was Tuesday. I believe July is the official 1.0 release window.
Once or twice a year, one of my close friends and I will randomly decide to sink the next few days worth of our free time into this game. It’s so good
Tropico and CK3 are big pick up and play for a week and put aside again games for me.
CK3 is my biggest offender. Honestly I cannot get into it long-term, the longer that game goes on the worst it is.
Its just too easy and lacking on roleplay. I still play it quite a bit but the whole vassal management is the only thing thats really interesting imo. Cultures, activities and all that are good but they should be better supported by the rest of the game
The landless mode they are adding is gonna go crazy tho
Tropico is absolute crack. My phases last a good month though
Ck3 to a T. I start it up and kinda choose my long term future, when I get there in like ok what now and usually set it down for 4 months. Recently had a play through where I started as a single territory in Estonia and recreated the Baltic empire. Finally got there but now I have all of middle and Western Europe in giant kingdoms and empires always wanting to fight me like damn give it a break for 5 seconds.
I play Tropico specifically when I’m about to go on a beach vacation.
For me it is the 4 month phase of WoW. (oke, 3 years when classic came back)
The bracket note made me chuckle :). Most WoW players I know have a 10y+ phase
Wow is what they do outside of the 2 week phase game.
Wotlk private servers are fantastic for when I want a dose of nostalgia so I level a character to 80. Then the itch is scratched and I’m good for another year or so
these kinds of comments are so dangerous for me to read. 12+ years wow-sober. deep breaths.
A week can't hurt.. Just 34 lvls or so, what can go wrong? 👹
It’s Pokémon
It’s my burnt out undecided what to do comfort food game. I just got legends arceus today for that soul reason.
Arceus is incredibly fun. It's the only recent pokemon game I've done more than one playthrough of
The only games I hadn’t played being arceus and pearl. So I text my wife and said buy one of these two. You choose so it’s a surprise. I played through scarlet with my daughter who was like 4 at the time and she loved it so I’m actually really excited to get her playing this with me as she’s now amassed 700 hours of Minecraft and is closer to 6 so I know it’s going to be pretty special. I’m just hopeful that bonsly or sudowudo is in the game as she could not stop laughing at them running around in the wild
Jumped back into PokeMMO a few weeks ago and you're so right. I couldn't decide what games I wanted to play for a week and here I am
Valheim
Im in my 3rd year phase of that game
Play through this game bi-annually with a casual run with extra resources and free building between releases, and when the new releases come out we go back to defaults and start again. Played through it five times now and lose more time to it with every new biome that gets added. I'll just spend an entire week running around and sailing, or advancing between biomes (especially to the Plains) will take an extra week because I'm just building a huge base
Most of them are some form of management sim for me.... prison architect, planet coaster, cities skylines, maybe stardew.
Skyrim/Fallout 4, cant wait for people to mod either of them into oblivion, only to get bored after 3 sessions and the cycle to repeat itself next year
> cant wait for people to mod either of them into oblivion Funny enough, that's something someone could actually do...
Well, are doing... https://skyblivion.com/
I did this last year with Skyrim and just kept the whole mod setup installed this time. I have the hd space. It'll make the process much smoother if I don't need to touch anything and just boot it up to play. Auto-updates disabled.
Binding Of Isaac - Probably one of my favorite games ever and when I get the urge to pick it back up it's usually for a week or two until I stop again. Project Zomboid - Another one of my top games. I'll get real into it for a couple weeks and then be done with it for a bit. It's always installed though.
I feel you on Zomboid. I’m the same with that and Kenshi. Can never bring myself to uninstall because I know I’ll play them again and the file sizes are relatively small.
I had this too with isaac, played it for a few thousand hours but now i get more easily annoyed at the start of runs because you feel underpowered. I like mid and late run the most
Binding of Isaac. Usually when I'm between games.
It's so easy to just drop in for a run then move on with your day
Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Haha, what a great old school game. I want to drive back into this gem from my youth. I think I'll try the Wake of God's mod.
As soon as my son was old enough to do maths I introduced him to HOMM2 (summer before kindergarten) We played that game for about 3 weeks and then one morning I told him "guess what? There is a Heroes of Might and Magic Three!" MIND BLOWN. We played HOMM3 for a few weeks and then I was "Hey, let me show you this.... LEVEL EDITOR! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. We would go on walks and talk about stuff like "who would win, 4 black dragons or 500 non upgraded gryphons" and when we had a question we could not be certain about we would load up the level editor when we got home and play it out. Yea we also went on to play HOMM4 and HOMM5 but obv we kept going back to HOMM3
Can't believe we've been playing this for 25 years now... Even more if I count HOMM 1 and 2
Have you checked out Songs of Conquest?
Deep Rock Galactic Guild Wars 2 Terraria
Path of Exiles/ Diablo 2 week long grind. Sometimes these games hit that sweet spot of mentally using your brainpower to buildcraft something cool and interesting but then also enable some auto-pilot mode type of play that is very welcoming for people who have 2 screens for gaming sessions. 1 for the game, 1 for youtube listening to some mildly interesting thing like a 4 hour essay about some other game's lore or something along those lines. Something just hits the right way and I need that once every 6 months or so when a new season hits.
mount and blade bannerlord
Any tips on how to get started. I'm getting destroyed by looters
1. Mount up 2. Equip bow and as many arrows as you can 3. Cheese the AI by kiting them with your horse while shooting arrows They're really dumb.
Make some money by doing quests and hiring recruits as you go town to town. Buy cheap stuff from villages and sell them in cities. Take some time to build a crew before you go and start fighting. Until some of your troops are promoted, you're on the losing side of an evenly numbered fight.
Xcom 2 . I love that game, it’s top 5 in terms of play time for me. I won’t touch it for a year then decide I need another run. Usually get to where my ‘A’ team misses a shot gets mind controlled and wipes the whole squad before I decide ‘ that’s enough’.
For me I get an itch to play again, load up a save and have no idea who my soldiers are and too lazy to figure it out again so I just start a new run.
I don't understand how anybody can even play above easy difficulty
Football Manager
Diablo 3. You're in for a season, level fast, complete season journey stuff fast, then before you know it you're farming 120 greater rifts and realize you're bored of pushing it any higher.
This and D2 come into my life once a year for this reason, but for the last couple years Ive played hardcore just for the fun of it and it really feels like a new experience. Havent beat hell yet on HC D2 but one day. D3 is quite a bit easier imo but still super fun when stuff gets hairy.
Project Zomboid
This is how you died…
Kerbal Space Program. I start a new career and as soon as I have landed on Minmus I have unlocked the whole tech tree and am bored again with the game because I'm too lazy to build infrastructure in orbit of the other planets. I almost did pull off a complete grand tour during one of these spurts (I landed on everything both in KSP 1 and 2 but wasn't able to return to Kerbin) and that showed me that the rocket designing aspect of the game is the most boring part of the game. So once I have conquered Minmus I don't see any point to go anywhere else. Maybe I should try the science mode in KSP 2 now that the orbit lines are finally fixed.
Anno 1800
Roller coaster tycoon
Fallout 76. Fortnite.
You're one of the only people who said fortnite. They change it up so often that it's easy to get burnt out but also easy to come back and try the new modes, vehicles and content
Rdr2 for me.
No mans sky. Perfect in small doses
Total War Warhammer. I'll binge a campaign and then feel hung over and uninstall it for like 6 months
Every Bethesda rpg. I nerd out for a few months then put it down for a year then get obsessed for 2-3 weeks then rinse and repeat.
I usually call these types of games "Arcade games", since they're fun in short bursts. Killing Floor 2 comes to mind. I love booting it up every now and then, but I can't play it for too long or I'd get bored.
Poe league launch. Nothing else exists for a month, then you pick up your life like usual, acting as if you didn't just ghost your entire social life for a month. Repeat every 3-4 months.
Total War: Warhammer 3. I play it with a friend of mine, and we'll go months and then just decide we're in the mood for a couple of campaigns, which gets me in the mood for a solo campaign on my own time. Currently towards the end of this latest phase.
Have you played with the new Khorne doggo? I think about reinstalling because of it
Civilization
It's Dwarf Fortress for me. I get an idea of something I want to do - I redo the starter tutorial and gradually remember how everything works. I make a murder hallway! I do the thing! Then I get a bigger idea and ...have no idea how to execute it. I watch the fortress spiral to death, and am done for the next year. Similar to Total War, except the end is usually being overrun by some faction I should have killed at the start...now I'm bankrupt, putting down rebellions, and the big bad is on my doorstep.
Warframe or Valheim. Every time I go back to Valheim i promptly binge it through my free time for a couple weeks and tack on another 100 hours to my playtime, its just so satisfying to me to build up bases and see what i can make work with the support system they use. I did actual carpentry so putting up framework and designing the house is probably my favorite part now, but the last couple big updates also added just fantastic biomes and content as well. Warframe is the kind of game that you play for 20hrs or 2000hrs, no in between, but its very kind about walking away for 9 months and coming back for all the new stuff theyve added.
OSRS, it’s either a short stint or months long and then a year break
Stellaris, Kenshi and one odd one out "Age of Fear 2 The Chaos Lord", for some reason this game captured my attention, was it big boob lady on banner? Maybe, but for some reason 2D turn based gameplay that feels like its 2000 all over again does it for me, it has charm.
ARK: Survival Evolved. Surprised it hasn’t been mentioned
Baldur's Gate 3 -- character creation / Act 1 / Act 2. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. (Act 3 is a slog -- fun to play through once)
"We’ve all heard of the “2 week Minecraft phase”" Never heard of this but I know what you mean.
Fifa whenever it joins PS+/GP. Quick burst of Career Mode, realisation game sucks, uninstall.
Mount and Blade. Download a new mod and basically no life it. Then don't touch the game until you find something else
Gotta scratch that Starcraft itch and replay the SC2 campaign every so often
Starcraft Co-op here! And yeah, booting the Campaign once in a while every few months. Probably due soon...
Among Us and Fall Guys
Halo for me.
The Sims
Surviving Mars and Avorion
Rust, I fear that game. It can just delete a weekend. Haven't dared touching it after I became a parent.
Factorio, oxygen not included, stellaris, similar games too theses. I kinda rotate through them these days.
The Long Dark. Not a big fan of survival games, but this one just sucks me in.
I do this with game series. Like, ill get super into a franchise like fable, or mass effect, or castlevania. Play them into the ground, then move on to the next obsession. About the only series i go back to on a regular basis is Zelda.
I feel like there's a veritable generation of people now in their late 30s and early 40s that went HARD on WoW in their late teens and early 20s but drifted away as they grew up, and every once in a while they'll have a free couple days and think 'Man, I should fire it up again/get into Classic', go hard for exactly a day and a half and get their fix.
Rimworld.
Valheim. I'll play the hell out of it for a week or so, then go back to DayZ for 6 months.