Recommendations for games to listen to audiobooks to?

jwiggler@sh.itjust.works to Steam Deck@sopuli.xyz – 30 points –

I recently got a Steamdeck and was wondering if anyone had any recommendations of games that take almost 0 brainpower to play so that I can focus on listening to audiobooks.

For me that means no dialogue and no text to read. Games that have worked for me so far are:

  • Rocket League (difficult to play on Steamdeck)
  • Vampire Survivors (once I learned what each item does)
  • Peggle

Games that I've had trouble with include

  • Sifu
  • Brotato (gotta read to learn the items)
  • Factorio
  • Baba is You

Games I have yet to really try:

  • Elite Dangerous
  • Elden Ring
  • Dorf Romantik (this is promising)
  • Powerwash Simulator (also promising)
  • RollerDrome
  • Halo: MCC online (is Halo 3 online viable on steamdeck?)
  • Risk of Rain 2
  • Hades

Anyone have any suggestions? I'm running out of ideas and may end up just forgoing this hole idea in favor of keeping gaming and books separate

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Elite Dangerous is an excellent choice for any audiobook or show, especially if you're exploring the black or doing trade loops.

I completed a few anime shows on my way to the galactic center.

maybe one of the Truck Simulators?

Seconded. Between American Truck Simulator and Snowrunner I went through… I think Star Trek Voyager, Charmed and unavoidably something else too. Both games run well on the Deck (ATS has a Linux version: pick the Windows one, it’s far more optimized)

Edit: and Forza Horizon! Can’t forget that.

Minecraft or any number of the farming/life sim games out there. I've dug countless tunnels in Minecraft while listening to various things.

Satisfactory with animal aggro turned off.

Viscera Cleanup Detail

Exo one
POOLS

Basically anything that's just exploration and atmospheric will do.

Hell yeah. Exo one was kinda what I had in mind, something with stupidly simple mechanics. But I am definitely intrigued by POOLS. Looks spooky. Thanks!

I'm kind of mindlessly grinding levels in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters right now.

Admittedly, some of the games I'm about to mention take time to get good enough at to turn your brain off, but here's some of my favorites for listening to audiobooks.

Bloons TD6

Any roguelite - currently I'm loving balatro and spelunky 2

Backpack battles

Tetris Effect

Mario sports games

Mini Metro

Kingdom

In general, I find it helpful to tell yourself that it's totally okay to "lose." When you are listening to an audiobook, you should be spending most of your attention on that. You don't need to take the game seriously.

For me it's definitely Viscera Cleanup Detail. Super chill and satisfying cleaning game that I often boot up when I just want to shoot the shit with someone. There's also quite a few custom maps after you get through the official ones.

Also Cities Skylines (the first one). Sometimes I just spend a couple hours watching my trains go around with a first person vehicle mod while I watch videos.

Suzy Cube - it's a 3d platformer, to me kinda has Super Mario 3d Land/World vibes

Voices of the void

a lone scientist in a satelite array scanning for signals, processing them, repairing the servers, sending codes, trying to maintain a sleep schedule. Scientist things.

I’m very bad at multitasking but thanks for the recommendations! I wish we had Peggle 2 on Steam, that actually sounds great to play listening to something.

PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate, while I love the games music, it’s not necessary since it’s a tower defence game.

Games that I actually played while listening to an audiobook:

Farming Simulator, Hardspace: Shipbreaker, Minecraft

Games that I wouldn't recommend based on my experience:

Civilisation, Portal and any game that you're not familiar with

I do this with massive open Ubisoft worlds like Ghost Recon and Far Cry. In-between missions and story stuff is far too much crap to clear out and do, if you like covering every square inch.

I'm doing this with TOTK at the moment but it does mean I'm kind of ignoring the story aspects.