ADHD

Any Paradox game. Oxygen Not Included. Factorio. Civilization. Rimworld. Dwarf Fortress. The list goes on.

For me I think it's about having non-stop and parallel mini problems/puzzles/goals. By the time one task is finished. There's two more to take its place.

Factory games. Resource management... I get all caught up rebalancing inputs and outputs... This building needs an expansion to fit the new gears project... Over here we need more room for screws... Plates!?!? Why are all the plates gone!!!!! 🤬

Factorio. At one point I binged so much that I started seeing conveyor belts in my sleep.

factorio has stolen months from me

No one for rougelikes?

I dont even like them that much is just the only things I can play sometimes.

I’m surprised that no one have mention Tetris.

For me it’s ARPGs, but specifically its Path of Exile. The visual stimulation combined with the dopamine hit when something good drops, plus a long term goal to make your character better. They release a new league every 3-4 months and I always pray it doesn’t consume my life for more than 2 weeks

Honestly, it's depressing, but nothing solo anymore. Games were such a big part of my life, but now I can only focus and enjoy them with a friend. It can be the most basic game, but as long as I have a friend I'm locked in. Anytime I try playing a game just for me, it's like the dopamine just isn't generated 😭

For me, it's Fallout, Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy, Hearthstone and Stardew Valley.

But pretty much anything like those will do it if I'm enjoying myself.

Comment as to why I think PDS grand strategy games have this effect on me. PDS games are 'real time with pause' and they have overlapping systems that work on different timelines. It means that there's rarely a point to 'offramp' oneself, when you complete one task, you're simultaneously 70% through another task, and it's so easy just to chain 'well, I'll wait for this to finish' endlessly.

Competitive multiplayer matches like Dota however, with discrete matches where everything resets, gives me a (healthy) chance to 'disengage'. I couldn't ever imagine getting hyper-focused on them but I know that a lot of people are, which intrigues me.

Euro Truck Simulator
Kerbal Space Program

Vampire Survivor.

It's very much like a Dragon Ball super fusion. For the next 20-30 minutes... I am fused with the game.

Quick and twitchy FPS games. Reason I was so upset when roblox ditched wine support is because it deprived me of my daily dose of randomizer and bad business.

Management games where I can play really slowly and focus on small details, normally on very hard mode too so a lot of the easy ones don't make the cut.

Football Manager and Software Inc are probably the ones I go back to most often.

Also 99% of the games I play I never complete...

As a general rule, I tend to focus on a title or a series of {books,tv,movies,games,musician,etc}, consume it to death over the course of a handful of weeks/months, then lose interest and never touch it ever again.

I had a big Soulslike phase in the middle of the pandemic. Before that it was Rocket League. I’ve gamed very little these last months in between a million consecutive life events, but the little time I had to play was almost exclusively on Monster Hunter (I just reached Iceborne in MHW).

The one game I had a legitimately problematic relationship with was Counter Strike, as a teen and young adult. Nowadays, I still have the general game sense but the reflexes and skills are long gone, and I don’t have the time to dedicate to getting to a level I’d feel good at.

I am not sure what to call the genera but there is something so very consuming and soothing about Papers Please. It’s hard to describe how that game pokes just the right parts of my brain meat but it does. A major part of the game is learning patterns and picking out the pieces that are out of place and my goodness does my brain get a kick out of finding typos, inconsistent city locations, and mis-matching information between documents. I need to process an avalanche of information quickly but it doesn’t feel overwhelming, instead it is oddly soothing. The game is also short enough that I can binge and get to the end without ruining my life unlike something more open ended like Oxygen not Included.

Yeah, anything competitive is too stressful for me to be able to just play for hours on end. I'm playing Deadlock at the moment and I'm typically taking a break after every one or two games just to control my mood.

Football Manager was the worst for me I'd say. Consumed months at a time. Civilization can eat a day easily if you're not careful. Really, anything I can control the pace of that I get interested in and that doesn't have a story. I enjoy narrative games, but they require a different type of focus and concentration that takes a lot more energy. I can't play those for days on end, even hours on end. I can get obsessed by them, and I can play tons of hours over the course of a week, but I don't hyperfocus on them the same way.

Anything management or strategy however, where you're working for incremental progress and "just one more turn"? That's dangerous. Last little obsession I had was Esports Godfather, a MOBA themed deckbuilder/autobattler/management game that has probably been my surprise hit of the year and which was gloriously addicting.

Furthermore, I don't often feel like I'm 'enjoying' it. I'm just consumed by it.

Recognise this feeling very well, from a lot of things when I hyperfocus on it. It's almost a sensation like nausea, that palpable feeling of not being in control, for me at least. Especially bad when I briefly snap into self-awareness - but not enough to break out of the hyperfocus.

Satisfactory minecraft and monster hunter

Power wash sim has stolen 100 hours from me in about a month of ownership.

League of Legends. It's a cancer game. Don't play it.

Transport Fever 2

Minecraft, if I've got a project to do.

I run a local server so that I can play with my kid, but I'm the one who has to actually get things done. Simple things like looking for diamonds is enough to keep me playing for hours. I'll find a vein, and I think that's not enough, I need to find more, so I'll find half a dozen more veins, but then my brain switches to the 'I may as well carry on' mindset.

I mined a mountain down to ground level recently because the top was spoiling the view from our village, and once I started, it was quite soothing.

Anything that gives me an adrenaline rush. Which usually only happens against real human players, but the first time through a good difficult game like a souls like works too.

I got absolutely consumed by Dead cells. I put more hours into it in a few months than I did a game I've been playing with a friend for 5 years at the time. There's another game in the same Genre that I can't rember the name of, but the high skill, PVE games like those if they catch my eye, oof, I go HARD.

Rhythm games. Diablo clones. ATS, ETS, and BeamNG.drive.

Basebuilders, 4Xs, Incrementals, and Survival Crafters

Once I burn out I try to stay away as long as possible for the sake of getting other things done and having a sane sleep schedule.

Compare with RPGs, farm sims, platformers, action adventure games, and roguelikes, which I can pick up and put down much more easily without disrupting other aspects of my life.

Anything that has set turns or levels with natural points to pause. The short time commitment make it easier to "one more turn" my way into playing for hours.

XCOM 2 is phenomenal for this.

I can barely put down Ace Attorney style games. I love experiences where I get to unravel a mystery.

It's also really easy to spend a long time grinding in old school Maple. Just monotonous enough to be soothing, just active enough to keep my attention on it.