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.