This is likely an ADHD-related trait for me personally, but I often find myself feeling like playing a game, but I can’t settle on what to play. My backlog is enormous, there’s a ton that I WANT to play, but I constantly jump between things and nothing grabs me.
What do you play when you don’t know what to play?
Alternatively, how do you avoid bouncing off games you’re enjoying but aren’t OBSESSED with?
I have this happen a lot. I tend to have a few simple multiplayer games I can jump in and out of quite easily. Currently that’s just playing deathmatch or arms race in Counter-Strike 2.
Is it satisfying? I don’t know.
Does it replace being actually engaged with a game? I don’t know.
Do I need to be playing anything, and could I just pick up a book if the ADHD is telling me it doesn’t want to game?
I don’t know.
Often enough I fall back to games I know, but sometimes its just that stupid hole then and I go to sleep instead (definitively not going to read the pile of amazing books I purchased instead…)
I think there is also a lot of underlying pressure that keep me from committing, I do not have the open-ended time frames I had once, so getting really into something over several hours I may enjoy after hitting a certain point is usually not an option anymore unless its within a very well known genre or so.
At least I got rid of Netflix which was SO MUCH worse at this due to its terrible algorithm trash and 0 control over the timeline.
This is a problem I’ve struggled with, and I’m still working on it.
One thing I do lately is categorize what I’m actively playing on Steam, I have a category called “Active Games” which helps me remember and focus on what I’m actively trying to play through. It helps but sometimes games will sit in there and remain unplayed for months. Eventually if it’s been long enough I’ll decide I’m just really not vibing with a game right now and remove it, maybe I’ll revisit it some other time in the future. I also sometimes add games to it before I’ve even booted them up for the first time, with the intention of starting on them right away but it doesn’t always happen.
It also doesn’t help that if there’s a game I’m playing that’s not on Steam then that means I forget about it easier. A better system to keep track of this stuff could probably be devised.
I do the steam category too! I have a section at the top called FINISH THESE! And almost all the games in it have been in there for over a year lol.
Minecraft. I’m familiar enough with it that I can hammer away at it with a podcast on without spending much brain power.
I get this really badly. One thing is that I like playing games and having music on, or maybe some sport (or both). So I tend to fall back on three games:-
Football Manager 24
Pro Cycling Manager 25
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup
The first two are self explanatory. DCSS is a roguelike, my favourite. It is free and continually updated, I’ve been playing since version 0.11 and it’s now on 0.34. I’m not particularly good at it and I’m not sure why it’s this particular roguelike that has grabbed me out of all of them, but there it is.
For me, I almost always play some form of Puyo Puyo. It can just be 5 minutes and then switching to something else, but if I am not sure what to play the answer is always more Puyo Puyo and maybe a few quick matches.
Sometimes I just end up organizing my game libraries and having fun with that as a sort of metagame.
Also getting a Linux-based handheld and tweaking it, grabbing a cup of tea, turning everything else off and just focusing on one game has helped me get a little more into the experience around enjoying a game.
I usually just load up a Jewel Match Solitare game or some sort of clicker, or just browse a fetish game site for any interesting projects (obviously not sharing the name of said site for obvious reasons). The first two options are mainly because it tends to get chaotic at my home at times so something I can easily put down is very appreciated, which may be why I’ve started gravitating towards VNs and Super Robot Wars lately.
Good to know that there are other people with the same issue 
Games that I turn to when I can’t get into any other are something like GTA, maybe Batman Arkham City/Knight or an Open World game with repetitive side stuff like Assassin’s Creed or Ghost of Tsushima/Yotei. Usually I would then just run around and do random stuff, clear maps or something else just to keep my hands moving with a podcast or so in the background. It used to be multiplayer games like Fall Guys or Overwatch (which I miss dearly, but Blizzard 
) when I was into that but these easy to drop in/out games kept me from starting other singleplayer games.
It got better over time, it’s easier now for me to stick to a game because I identified a few (maybe also ADHD-related 
) behaviors:
Maybe this helps someone and if any of you have other tips to overcome that I’d be happy to hear them! 
But it’s also cool to see what kind of games you turn to in these moments.
This is great stuff! When my Vyvanse wears off my brain tends to just GO and I have trouble wrangling it. So I’ll spend my precious free evening time doomscrolling or bouncing between things I don’t actually FEEL like doing instead of playing a game or something else that I WANT to be doing. It’s been pretty detrimental for things overall, because I’m not making good use of my relaxation time.
But I’ve internalized what you say about the backlog. Putting too much pressure on myself to finish a game makes the hobby stressful, so I’ve kind of embraced bouncing between different things on a whim. I can’t exactly bounce around different things like that in any other context, so it’s sort of nice to let myself be a bit impulsive with gaming.
I’ve been categorizing my backlogged games by pace, whether something I want to play is a fast action game or something slower like a turn-based RPG or visual novel, and then alternating between those categories for each new game I play. Right now I’m playing GTA Vice City, and I’ll probably play Danganronpa 2 afterwards, and then either Klonoa 2 or Psychonauts after that
Oh I feel this, yes doomscrolling should’ve been mentioned above, too. I don’t want to talk about my daily screen time at the same time I hope you don’t beat yourself up too much for not using your relaxation time in the best possible way. You can’t relax efficiently
Oh I like this concept! Good way to have some variety.
One of my absolute favorites, hope you have fun ^^