Casual game recommendations?

YourHeroes4Ghosts@beehaw.org to Gaming@beehaw.org – 104 points –

I'm looking for PC games that I can play while listening to podcasts- games that don't have engaging cut scenes or important dialogue, games that honestly don't require a lot of skill or thought.

I used to be really into things like Farm Frenzy, Rescue Team, hidden object games, that kind of thing. I got heavily into MMOs and stopped downloading casual games for a decade or so.

Now it almost feels like this sort of game isn't made anymore? Were they completely nuked by the existence of Gacha games, P2W, and anything that earns the dev a constant income stream? I'm happy to pay for a game once, but I can't be constantly buying booster packs.

I also don't want to play on mobile or on a console, PC Master Race here, haha.

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It's not clear to me that I could ever listen to podcasts while playing most of my library, but I'll do my best to list some with which I might try:

  • Euro Truck Simulator 2 (and, by corollary, American Truck Simulator). If you can listen to podcasts in your car, this is basically a similar experience :)
  • Super Hexagon. This is not a game about making conscious decisions, it's too fast for that. You'd have to turn off the music, and determine whether you can retain stuff you're listening to at the same time.
  • Race The Sun. This is somewhere in the middle of the above two.
  • Solace Crafting. This is a relatively bare-bones sandbox RPG with harvesting, crafting, and building elements, that doesn't require all that much decision making, and can be played at any pace.
  • Minecraft (the Java edition). You've probably heard of it! I recommend the Java edition due to the rich modding ecosystem; you can usually find a flavor of content that suits any purpose.
  • Cities: Skylines (and, by corollary, SimCity 4). These are both world-class genre-defining city builders, which can be played at your own pace, don't require a whole lot of active involvement, and pair well with background listening of your choice.

Path of Exile

Just pull up a build guide and zone out :)

This season's mechanic is neat! For those not in the know, it basically gives weapons a passive skill tree that's randomly generated per item, that you get experience by charging up and then activating pillars that spawn monsters.

The season mechanics can be pretty hit or miss but as long as they spawn a bunch of monsters people tend to be happy enough with them lol

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