Suggestions for good mindless games?
I'm looking something to take up the time I'd normally spend scrolling reddit.
Something that's reasonable to play for 2-5 minutes or for over an hour.
My current go-to is Alto's adventure or doing laps in Assetto Corsa Competizione.
dawg i was literally going to take that username but u beat me by like a few minutes that's crazy
If I've understood Lemmy/Fediverse correctly, you could register the same username in a different instance.
Vampire Survivor and Brotato.
The Binding of Isaac.
Pixross.
Tetris Effect.
Gunfire Reborn.
Spin Rhythm XD.
Bloons TD 6.
+1 Vampire Survivors
I second Brotato.
Brotato and Vampire Survivor are the best time wasters.
I have been playing way too much of Isaac since getting the Deck. A perfect game, my brain is rotting and I want all the unlocks. Please help
Instead of Tetris, I've gotten into PolyCube. Definitely my go-to "mindless" game.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/798790/PolyCube/
Slay the Spire
https://store.steampowered.com/app/646570/Slay_the_Spire/
Also on android and those I phones
2-5 seems super short for anything haha so I am guessing you want to play something where you don't have to think too much. Very chill games where it is easy to just pause and then get back fast to where you left off.
Here are my go tos if I want to just let my mind wander and not think about what i do:
bullet hells
emulated:
RPG:
Are you sure about dark souls 1 remastered? I am sure that I played that one (or tried) on Xbox and there it was not really like that ;) or is this on steam/PC only?
Also: this is my first post in the fediverse and I think I am here to stay.
Dark souls saves very often. you can't really save scum. if you die, you die. if you fall from a cliff and you quit out before the "you died" shows, you are on the last stable ground and alive. if you quit out during a boss battle you will load in before the boss fog but if you used estus or items they will not be restored. enemies will reset their position if you load in but stay dead if you already killed them. this is true for every platform and every soulslike game made by from soft . if your game crashes you will load in a few seconds before the crash.
but you also cannot really pause the game. your only reliable glitchless way of "pausing" is quitting out
Wow, today I learned. Thank you!
You can save whenever in DSR, but you can't e.g. reload a save before you died because you autosave when you die and you only have one save slot per run.
Also, though I love DSR, I've got to say it's kind of tedious to jump into for a few minutes as it's a bit slow to get into with the loading, dialogs and stuff on startup
Brotato is life.
pokemon yes!
Did you have better performance using yuzu for BOTW? I've been using Cemu and it's great, but I've always been curious.
I've tried both. CEMU works better for me out of the box, but I did absolutely no tweaking. I also run my SteamDeck 100% stock, so I can't speak to anything than a literal "out of the box" experience for both. I'll say, terrible battery life with CEMU and Breath of the Wild. 2-2.5 hours from 100% to dead.
with the latest updates and after an initial shader caching the game runs smooth as butter(capped it to 40fps for battery reasons)
Nice list!
Actually i'm playing hades on my idle time it's a rogue lite
i thought about adding hades to my personal list in this thread but the story is so good, that I cannot play it and let my mind wander at the same time
Yeah the story is really good, so sometimes i play for longer sessions But when i have a small time frame, just clear some rooms in a run is good enough for me ^^
Hades and Dead Cells are my go to for that. Get more consistent Steam deck time than anything else.
Honestly the beauty of the stream deck imo is that a lot of games become great for short play sessions when you have a convenient sleep function.
I love the goddamn sleep function I wish PCs had it by default
Any "survivors" type game - Brotato, Vampire/Soulstone Survivors, Nordic Ashes, etc.
Roguelikes (I like Noita these days).
Card based games - Slay the Spire, Monster Train, Guild of Dungeoneering, ...
Darkest Dungeon.
I've played noita for probably 6 hours and still have no clue what's happening. Cool game though
Old School RuneScape
It's a bit annoying oh the deck tbh...
Does this play well with the controls or is it mainly a trackpad+ trigger game? I suppose that would work either way though!
It used to be a browser game, so just keyboard and mouse. They do have an android version, but that doesn't work on PC.
It's a bit of a hassle to set it all up, but it's not impossible.
GBA Emulator and the world of retro games is yours
Dead Cells, Vampire Survivor, Loop Hero, Devil Daggers/Hyper Demon (more m+k games though), FTL, Into the Breach, Shovel Knight, VA11HAllA (or whatever, the cyberpunk bartender one), really any rogue like...
I've been enjoying Peglin for when I only have 5-10 minutes between work meetings. If you have any fond memories of playing Peggle on XBLA then definitely check it out!
@Dj_brown_sugar I'm a big fan of Vampire Survivors. Halls of Torment is also a good game.
I definitely recommend Dave the Diver, easy to pick up and play for 5 minutes or for hours.
+1 on dave the diver. This game has a comfortable vibe, and great characters. You can either take things easy by diving only in the shallows or go really deep into the dark depths of the ocean, and then to top it off there's a "sushi cooking" game to cook up what you found. It's a fantastic game, and great for steam deck since one "level" is 10-20 minutes.
I like playing 2048 if I need to kill time, though I'm not sure if it's what you're looking for.
Spider-Man Remastered and Death Stranding are my top ones. Vampire Survivors is an obvious suggestion though.
But Spider-Man and DS hit super different in handheld. I love jumping on Spider-Man swinging around and stopping crime. It's a perfect mindless game imo once you have nothing left to learn. So I just boot up and chill every now and again.
Death Stranding is super unique to me, I have 50 hours in the starting area alone. If you bum rush the story idk if it'd be chill, but when you're in the open world I don't know of another game that's able to just let you feel like running from point to point is engaging. I really enjoy playing this on the SteamDeck while watching TV or a movie. It's like mindless enough but still can be entertaining. And everynow and again you have a BT event that makes you focus up. But it's fun to just do side missions and they are technically never ending in that as soon as you clear out a batch of deliveries you'll get more. I love it.
I have a PS5 and both games on there and I am so much more likely to put a show/movie I want to watch on the tv and boot up either one of those games.
Factorio. Once you get a hand of it you can work in small chunks here and there, or pour in hours and hours of time.
I love Factorio so much. I find it's pretty mindless with a few settings changed, like biters not being aggressive. But nuclear energy always makes my head hurt so I avoid it for as long as I can
Katamari Damacy and it's sequel We Love Katamari have pretty good remasters on Steam. I wholeheartedly recommend those. Chill vibes, good tunes and tons of dopamine from rolling everything up.
Backpack hero and Peglin are ones I do for any amounts of time!
Honestly solitaire https://github.com/TobiasBielefeld/Simple-Solitaire
Or frozen bubble's https://github.com/videogameboy76/frozenbubbleandroid
Both of these have been my jam for months now.
If you want lazy action, I highly recommend a largely ignored gem. Orcs must die 3.
It's nice looking, satisfying as hell, and you can pay as much or as little attention to it as you want.
Chronicon is good but being an ARPG you'll have sit down from time to time to update your build.
It's basically vampire surivors with long-term progression, except more active. My endgame was binding all skills to one button and bumrushing every area at like 6x speed, addictive enough I grinded for 100%
Rocket league
Snow Runner!
Truck through mud and deliver crazy shit
And get stuck. So you rescue the first truck. But the second truck ran out of fuel so you grab another...
It's so good
My current strategy is to tether two trucks together and then pull something so that I’ve got two motors pulling things through the mud 😎
Cult of the Lamb can kinda fill this, although you would have to pause mid level. And the base building is more indepth and takes thought.
I've been enjoying "Everything" for very mindless playing. It even has an "autoplay" feature - let the controls go and it will continue to play for you while you scroll the Fediverse! Not to mention all the amazing Alan Watts quotes that occasionally pop in.
Any boomer shooter should do the trick, like all of the doom games, dusk, turbo overkill, ultrakill, etc. Their difficulty is flexible too so you can have a challenge or just a vibe with killing whatever is in front of you. Most of these games have an endless mode that works perfectly for small sessions. There's TF2 if you're in a mood for quick online games.
I solve sudokus while commuting to work. It's a great feeling after 100 puzzles when you can solve a hard one you couldn't for a long time.
Hot Wheels unleashed for driving.
I like problem solving games. Stray was amazing. I really loved Figment and enjoying Inside right now
Since you like driving games, Beam NG is great fun for 2-5 minutes of random crashing, or over an hour of fiddling with things to do 2-5 minutes of random crashing.
Should also check out Art of Rally for a smaller scale driving game
Luck Be a Landlord and Peglin are both neat roguelite games that are easy to pick up and put down, but are still interesting enough to play for long periods, too.
Peglin looks fun but I've been waiting on a good sale now for months.
I managed to snag it for 20% off in February. Normally I don't go in on games until they're out of early access, but it's been fun seeing lots of new relics, orbs, and random events get added each patch.
Gameboy games on an emulator
Mini Metro / Mini Motorway
I imagine Townscraper would be fun.
My go-to is Vampire Survivors! Default runs are 30 minutes long but you can make them as short as 15 iirc all the way to endless. Mindless enough that you can zone out but you can get more involved if you want.
Haha, I just came to post this! :)
Super Hexagon
shapez !
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1318690/shapez
Have you tried Vampire Survivors or Brotato?