A Short Hike, Monster Train, Rocket League and others.
No matter how much we are fond of games, sometimes physically there is not enough free time for them. Especially now, when the AAA industry loves to artificially inflate the volume of content and the duration of the passage, because large numbers look good on the windows of online stores. And no one is particularly worried about the fact that the audience of such games is adults, who often simply do not have mental strength for fifty hours of gameplay.
Well, let’s correct this misunderstanding with a short text about short – but wonderful – games in which you can get stuck even for fifteen minutes, even for a couple of hours: you will enjoy it anyway.
Into the Breach
Since release Into the Breach three years have passed, but it still seems as if it has just appeared – studio project Subset Games (authors FTL: Faster Than Light) is still one of the best turn-based tactics games. In terms of the depth of the mechanic and the intensity of emotions, Into the Breach will easily give odds to many “big” strategies, although you can complete it in just thirty minutes, five of which you will brew tea. And you are unlikely to stop, fighting off the invasion of alien bugs just once: the authors have packed an obscene amount of thoughtful gameplay into such a compact form. I want to click one batch after another, like seeds. Change robots in the squad, go through the island levels in a different order, knock out achievements. Into the Breach does not have time to get bored, and you are unlikely to have time to get tired of it: the very thing is when there is no time or mood for heavier tactics.
Monster train
If you like games with CCG elements, and Slay the spire a little boring in a few hundred hours, how about a decent alternative? Monster train quite cleverly combines deck building mechanics with tower defense. Commanding the remains of an army of demons, the player needs to defend the locomotive with the last fragment of hellfire from the onslaught of angels in order to bring the embers to the final stop. Opponents attack in waves, and the carriage has several floors, so you need to think not only about which cards to play, but also where to play them – the defense must be calculated several moves ahead. And different clans of demons, with their own characteristics, heroes and improvements, cope with this task in their own way, so you can optimize the deck for a long time. In short, Monster Train has no problems with replayability and depth. In addition, there is an unusual online multiplayer for fans of high-speed chess, where trains of two players race to the finish line.
Rocket league
Rocket league passed the way from the trinket, which was given to Playstation plus for nothing, to the e-sports discipline, which is very popular even six years after its release. Jet football is an incredibly exciting thing to do, and it doesn’t matter how serious you are. In Rocket League, you can fool around with friends in the evenings, or you can master the subtleties of aerial acrobatics and ball control for hundreds of hours on end: with a low threshold for entry, the game has an almost endless skill ceiling. However, it is great for discharging after a day of work. Matches last five to seven minutes on average, there is no shortage of players, there are no game modes. Pair versus pair, four versus four, hardcore ranked matches, a buffoonery a la Mario kart with “guns”, football, basketball and even hockey with a giant puck: everyone will find something to their liking.
Geoguessr
Browser Geoguessr created for those who spend a lot of time exploring the “rabbit holes” on Wikipedia, moving from one article to another, only here instead of an encyclopedia – Google Street View maps. The bottom line is simple: starting a round, you get to a random point on the globe. You can move the camera, look around, adjust the zoom – you just need to correctly indicate on the atlas which country you are in. Sometimes you can answer in a couple of seconds, but sometimes Geoguessr throws you into an incredible wilderness, where you have to navigate by road signs, landscapes, architecture or, for example, advertisements at bus stops – then the fun begins. It seems nothing special, but chaotic “travel” to different parts of the world is very addictive, especially in multiplayer: there you need to guess the countries faster than other players, to take off. Yes, now the “royal battle” has even been built into Google Maps – and it works quite well for itself.
A short hike
A short hike slightly stands out from the previous recommendations – this is a full-fledged, created by one person (solo-developer adamgryu) a story-driven open-world game … which can be walked leisurely in forty minutes. Okay, in an hour and a half. And during this time, the story of a bird, which desperately needs to conquer the highest mountain in the reserve, manages to do everything that expensive “sandboxes” take hundreds of times more energy to do. A Short Hike gives that feeling of freedom and the joy of discovery with which Breath of the wild, without wasting a second in vain – there is simply no time to be bored. The tiny, cozy reserve feels immense and full of secrets. In forty minutes you will have time to chat with many charming characters, play volleyball, find the most beautiful seashells on the beach, ride a motorboat, go fishing, dig up treasures, learn to fly on your own wings and, of course, call your mother. So if for some reason you haven’t played A Short Hike yet, do yourself a favor – it’s impossible not to fall in love with it.
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