Friday Fun - May 31 - Dad-Compatible Computer Games
For the busy modern dads in your life
Video games were extraordinarily important for my identity and development growing up. Many of my closest friendships early in life were formed around communal game playing.
These days, I’m busy. And if I have free time I’d rather spend it with my kids, outside, reading, or improving my deeply pathetic home improvement skills (someday I’ll be able to level up beyond the application of scotch tape!). I still occasionally enjoy video games, but they need to be (1) playable in a 15-20 minute period (2) easily picked up and put down (3) entertaining (4) avoid the modern problem of 13 of the 20 minutes I can devote to the game being pure loading screen / low-quality cinematics.
Brotato
Perfection. Utter perfection. Rogue-like action game. The story line is your typical potato man fights purple aliens in a plotless war. You get random level ups and weapons throughout your run, so no two potato fights are exactly alike. The perfect game to slip into your schedule.
Halls of Torment
This game takes on a retro aesthetic of mid to late 1990s RPG computer games - aka the greatest generation of computer gaming. HoT is a member of a new genre of games - one where all the player does is walk, the character autoshoots, an infinite supply of enemies walk towards you, and your goal is to dodge, destroy, and level up. A great game to play for 15 minutes at the end of the day.
Dorfromantik
A calm game where you lay down tiles and make a beautiful little agricultural kingdom with some trains running through.
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
A recent release in the autoshoot-infinite-enemies while walking and leveling up. Early access. Extremely fun.
Rogue Legacy 2
A roguelike side scrolling game where each death leads to a new descendant. My son loved this game and took it over from me for quite awhile. Very easy to pick up and put with with low stakes. Very little story to scroll through - pretty much gets straight to the battling.