Most of the games I play have a defined end point. They are typically more or less story-driven, or otherwise signal you very clearly that you have reached their intended conclusion. And while a lot of them offer value beyond that point by offering post-game content or incentivising additional playthroughs, they have limited staying power beyond that cutoff. Contained experiences that start and end on their own terms.
Various kinds of games defy such constraints. They don’t necessarily have much of a story, if one exists at all, and for some of them reaching their ‘end’ is more akin to you having mastered their tutorial, with them opening up vastly afterwards. Roguelites are the epitome of games that keep on giving. They are meant to be played over and over and over again, with each failed attempt being a step towards the eventual succesful one, and your first successful attempt only serving as a springboard to many more. But beyond that, games like sims, fighting games, sports games, racing games, party games, all offer the same proposition: A game you can keep playing for dozens, if not hundreds of hours until you eventually couldn’t possibly have another bite of them. But the truly special ones, the ones that stay with you, will have you revisit them whenever that itch gets going again.
Today, I want to highlight some of the endless games I found joy in over the years. All of them have been in my rotation for multiple months, some of them for multiple years. And even though not all of them have seen much game time recently, they still continue to occupy a space in my mind. This is by no means meant to be an extensive list, but rather a selection of those that stuck with me the most. It isn’t meant to be a ranking either, so I’ll dive into them in no particular order – feel free to jump between them as you see fit.
Table of Contents:
- No Man’s Sky
- Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
- Dead Cells
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Hades
- Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Diablo Series
No Man’s Sky
I’ve been playing No Man’s Sky on and off ever since it first released on PS4. It famously didn’t exactly live up to its promises in the early days, but the prospect of exploring a virtually limitless universe was interesting to me both from a technological perspective, as well as from a game design one.
I’m not gonna lie. Vanilla No Man’s Sky got very boring, very fast. There simply wasn’t that much to engage with, and even just relaxing to it wasn’t particularly great. Especially because some bugs just straight up broke your game. And there were more bugs than you could shake a stick at! So, after the initial excitement wore off, I dropped the game for the time being. And like many others, I was rather disappointed with the state the game released in, even though I liked the core of what was there in concept. It just wasn’t enough.
But that was vanilla No Man’s Sky. After they managed to get the game in a stable enough state, the devs started to work on expanding the game’s scope to better live up to the initial vision they had previously fallen short of delivering. And over the years, they really managed an incredible turnaround. The game just kept getting better with every big content update, and they’ve long since passed the point of making up for the state of the initial release, to the point I’m in awe that they are still providing all of these updates free of charge. Perhaps my favourite addition came as part of the 4.0 update in October 2022: Relaxed Mode. Suddenly, you were able to control how much impact you wanted the survival elements to have, how limited you wanted your resources to be. It essentially introduced a built-in cheat mode that allows you to custom-tailor the game to suit your needs, which did wonders for its accessibility. Ever since, No Man’s Sky has been a fantastic game for me to just chill in. Want to explore a bit without the hassle of managing the survival mechanics? Absolutely! Want to get creative and build a base without the need to amass the required resources first? Don’t mind if I do! I’ve put dozens and dozens of hours into the PS4 version alone.
But update 4.0 wasn’t the only thing that Hello Games graced us with in October 2022. The game got a Switch port, too! I was weary of it for the longest time, knowing the game didn’t exactly run all that well on PS4 to begin with, so I wasn’t exactly optimistic about how well it could feasibly run on a system that is essentially a tablet with controllers bolted to its sides. And while impressions at the time seemed like the game ran reasonably well, visuals were fairly muddy. About a year after it first released on Switch, the game got an update that vastly improved visual clarity and finally had me take the dive to buy the Switch version on sale. Turns out portable No Man’s Sky was not only serviceable considering the hardware it ran on, it was every bit as fun as I had hoped it would be. But my big save file with those dozens and dozens of hours of progression, all the cool space ships and freighters I had amassed, not to mention all the resources I had mined or, ahem, otherwise obtained – all that was still stuck on PS4. So I didn’t play the Switch version quite as much. Fast forward to a few months back save when cross save finally made its appearance and allowed me to carry my PS4 save over to Switch, which was a huge deal for me and further ensured the longevity of the game.
Simply put, No Man’s Sky is an incredibly relaxing and soothing experience for me. It’s nice to just zone out for a while and explore, find some colourful planet with nice looking flora and weird looking fauna, and forget the world around you for a while. Maybe set up an outpost before you take off for new pastures. Rinse and repeat. An endless adventure I love to periodically return to – perhaps even to a Switch 2 version in the not too distant future? We shall see…
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
You better believe I’m excited for a brand new Mario Kart in a few short weeks after years and years of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe. Which is not to say I didn’t enjoy that game! As someone who never owned a Wii U, 8DX was a fresh experience for me. I maintain that even today, after having seen what Mario Kart World looks like, 8DX is still a pretty damn good looking game. And more importantly, it’s a damn fun one, and perhaps the most complete Mario Kart experience you can get. The track selection is a grat mix of new courses and returning classics, the character selection is pretty damn solid in my book, and while the novelty of building your own kart wears off rather quickly, it’s still a fun little quirk to add some extra flavour to your kart – unless you are boring and just go with whatever is fastest. If you’re not racing in style, why bother?
The Booster Course Expansion pass only… well, expanded on what was already a pretty damn complete package, introducing tracks and characters from Mario Kart Tour. And while they don’t quite match the visual quality of the base game tracks, they are still every bit as fun.
The one thing I regret is that I did not have much opportunity to play this game with friends, outside of a select few occasions. Back when it launched I didn’t really have anyone to play it with (my irl friends were boring like that and my online friends were yet to be made). So I pretty much exclusively played this game solo, chipping away at the cups and time trials. On extremely rare occasions I’d get to play some Battle Mode with my brother. But for the most part, this was a solo experience through and through for me. And perhaps with Mario Kart World being the launch title of a new console and a fresh experience for everyone, that will change. In any event, I’m looking forward to playing dozens upon dozens of hours of Mario Kart all over again!
Dead Cells
Hoo boy. Back when Dead Cells first released on Nintendo Switch I was outright addicted to it for a few months. This is the first roguelite I ever managed to really get into, and I think the main reason this one clicked for me is that combat and movement feel great in this one. Everything is snappy and precise. And it managed to tickle my deranged Souls-pilled brain in some way I can’t quite put into words. Despite being procedurally generated, exploration is actually worth it in this game and still feels satisfying even on your hundredth run through the same biome with a different layout. Perhaps you’ll find a stronger weapon or one that is more suitable to the build you’re going for, to help you out on your run. Or perhaps you’ll head straight into your own demise stumbling upon a rather dreadfully placed set of enemies that inadvertently end your run. I mention this rather often, but I am a big fan of risk-reward mechanics in general, and this entire game feels like one massive pile of a risk-reward mess in the best way possible. This starts with little things like the route you take through the biomes – fancy going to a rather difficult one early on because you might find some good loot in there – and extends to facing or avoiding that elite over there – it might drop some good loot, after all – as well as deciding what to do with your cells. Do you invest them now or save them for later, risking losing them all?
I played this game so much. I wasn’t even particularly good at it. It took me ages to get my first successful run, and if memory serves I only managed to do it after they rebalanced the game to make the first few difficulty levels easier. But I loved playing it. I kept returning to it for every expansion until I eventually had my fill and fell off. I haven’t really played the The Queen and the Sea or the Return to Castlevania expansions. I still mean to get back to the game one day, especially for the latter. But I went so hard on the game for a while there that the itch to do so has yet to set in. Still, this one is special to me for having successfully shown me that roguelites can, in fact, be fun for me if everything hits just right.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
This one is a bit of an odd one for me. I was one of those weirdos who had never played an Animal Crossing game before, and probably would never have tried this one either. But then a worldwide epidemic hit and everything changed. Suddenly you couldn’t just go out and socialise anymore. Hell, you were rather limited in just going out, period. And so, like so many others, I sought refuge in the digital world and somehow ended up playing Animal Crossing.
On paper, I had never been interested in the concept of these games. It all seemed a bit pointless to me. Circumstances matter, though. Suddenly having a chill, zero stakes game you can just vibe in and forget reality for a while didn’t seem so bad. And after the initial period it took me to warm up to that new experience, it quickly turned out to be a lot of fun. Shaping my island to my heart’s content, including chosing which villagers I wanted along for the ride, and checking in daily to do all the stuff you do and make a little bit of progress was a soothing experience. I would return to it daily for months. I would just chill in that game not doing much for hours at times. And though, much like with Mario Kart, I didn’t really have anyone to hang out with on my island at that time and it didn’t really serve as a means of socialising for me, it still offered me some escape when I needed it most.
I didn’t really stick with the game for too long after pandemic restrictions had been loosened, to be honest. After a while, I felt like I had achieved everything I had set out to on my island, and didn’t really feel like returning to it after that. Now I’m afraid to even boot it up again to find that my villagers have yeeted me off the island in my absence with nothing but a volleyball to keep me company. But for as long as I actively played the game, I had a lot of fun with it, and I still remember it fondly to this day.
Hades
After Dead Cells, this was the second roguelite that really clicked for me. Much like Dead Cells, it mostly did because combat feels really good in this one, too. But the reason I stuck with it was the cast of characters, the story that keeps unravelling the further you progress, the cast of characters, the amazing soundtrack, and the beautiful artstyle. And also, the cast of characters is really good, I should probably mention that.
Much like Dead Cells, I’m not particularly good at this game either, and eventually I just decided to admit that much to myself and activated God Mode. Yet another reminder that more developers should include accessibility options in their games, because I don’t think I would have had nearly as much fun with it, or even have necessarily stuck with it had that not been a thing. It took me a good while to finally pull off a successful run in this game as well, and the story doesn’t stop unfolding there. You need to beat it a number of times to see the true ending, and if I recall correctly even beyond that there is still incentive to keep playing to max out affinity with the characters (have I mentioned that they are really good yet) and unlock some more side story content.
I haven’t returned to it in a long time, becase much like with Dead Cells, I had my fill of it after having played it obsessively for a few months, and shortly after I had reached the true ending I decided to put a pin in it. I absolutely adore this game, however, and I couldn’t be more excited to play Hades II later this year.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
I’ll just get it out of the way first: no, I haven’t really played this game with friends either, much for the same reason I haven’t really played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe with friends. But that didn’t stop me from sinking an ungodly 500+ hours into this game.
World of Light only contributed to that in part. Of course I finished that mode, and yeah, some of the missions made me curse everything in my vincinity. But what was far more time consuming than that was unlocking all the spirits. And some of those spirit battles had me curse everything in my vincinity even harder. I still unlocked them all. And when they started adding new spirits with events, I’d get those too. And when they started adding new spirits with DLC fighters, I’d get those as well. But what really kept pulling me back in was that neverending itch to try some new characters every once in a while. I’ve played so many characters for prolonged periods of time that I don’t think I even have one definitive main in this game, which is rather unusual as I tend to stick with whoever initially feels right to me and rarely ever switch it up. But something made me want to keep trying new characters in this game. Until Sephiroth came out and I didn’t really play anyone else anymore.
I’d keep returning to this game whenever I had spare time and didn’t really know what else to play. Why not boot up SSBU and use one of the eleveteen hundred characters as a punching bag for a while? In fact, why don’t I do that right now, hang on for just a sec–
Diablo Series
Let’s face it, nobody plays these games for their story. The one in D2 is alright, the one in D3 is whatever for the most part and offensively bad in certain spots; the one in D4 is so utterly and completely forgettable that I don’t really have anything to say about it. No, you play these games for the grind. To try some now builds. Just for the heck of it. And unlike all the other games listed here so far that probabl< would have been even more fun in multiplayer, I actually did play some Diablo with friends. Quite extensively, even! And not just Diablo IV, but Diablo III, and Diablo II: Resurrected, too! And it was, and still is, a hoot every single time.
But even then, I play these games solo a lot as well. D4 and D2R not so much. The former I never really quite managed to warm up to, even though the changes they made to the game structure since release are a welcome step in the right direction. The latter I simply prefer to play with friends. But Diablo 3? Diablo 3 is crack. I already played this game very frequently on PS4, but when it got ported to Nintendo Switch it was game over. Diablo 3 on the go. Diablo 3 in bed. Diablo 3 in the garden. Diablo 3 wherever the hell. This is the kind of game that feels perfect on a handheld, especially when you just want to grind some rifts so that one damned set piece you’re after will finally drop with some decent rolls on it or else. I have a special fondness of Diablo 3 specifically because it’s a more arcadey experience. While it relies too much on sets for when you want to build characters powerful enough to endure on the higher difficulty levels, they also allow you to build ridiculously over the top glass cannon characters that put out billions of damage per hit in the upper tiers of Torment, allowing you to pretty much one- or two-shot enemies. Which you’ll need to be able to do since your survivability is going to be poop! And as much as I hate numbers and am legally obligated to say so, there is something about seeing these ludicrously high damage numbers pop up that tickles my brain in just the right way. Sure, it’s ridiculous, but it stands by and doubles down on that at every turn.
I could go on, but I will shut up for now. Thanks for staying a while and listening!
quiche.cafe 
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