After Work Gaming: What games do you enjoy mostly after a day of work?
I am not a regular gamer, but once or twice in the week I am indulging in some after work gaming. Mostly I enjoy games that are either story rich to put different thoughts in my mind or games with a simple, but enjoyable gameplay (not too much micromanagement).
Here are my favorites for an after work gaming spree:
+1 for mini motorways. it’s such a good casual game you can pick up and pause whenever and a big improvement over mini metro in terms of options and strategy. I’ve been looking for a certain type of city builder game that scratched an itch I couldn’t quite place and this is doing it for me lately.
I'd recommend Pocket City 2 for mobile. Probably the best casual city sim game I've ever played. It's like $5 maybe less and has no monetization stuff after that.
And the game has like the ability to walk around, drive cars and do activities as your avatar inside the city. It's new so the dev is still adding stuff. But it's wild to spend an hour setting up a nice district than race through it with an F1 car for money later.
For me the biggest one is my current "filler MMORPG" of choice, which has been Final Fantasy XIV for the past few years.
The reason this works so well for me is:
By and large these games allow you to invest however much (hardcore raids) or little (dailies/weeklies) brain and attention into their gameplay as you desire, which is important after work when my brain is all mush from coding.
Light social interaction helps not completely feel like I've "shut down for the night" yet.
If I want to I can chat about daily things with my friends/guild.
It's the right combination of ultralight gameplay and light social interaction to allow me to come down from work mode. 😁
When I saw articles about Team Fortress 2 breaking concurrent player counts, I jumped back into that. I still suck, bad. But I have played it several nights after work just to have some mindless gameplay.
That’s one game I really wanted to finish but couldn’t for this very reason. After my brain is fried from programming all day, the last thing I want to do is a lot of reading.
I play God of War 2018 to chill out, the scenery is great and you can just vibe around.
Cannot find an artefact or realm tear in Midgard at the moment so the wandering is actually putting me off but I would highly recommend this game for a chill out session.
I’ve spent the past few days building a thermal propulsion rocket factory. I’ve never built one like it before. It’s absolutely enormous so far, I lost track after it hit 40x50. Inside, it’s split up into rooms with one or two simple outputs each. The outputs are carried to other rooms on conveyors or in pipes on the second floor, completely hidden from view. Need to perfect the lighting and interior navigation, but I generally don’t care what the upstairs hallways look like.
I think doing something twice a week makes you a regular anything. Either way, my current games after work are Warframe and The Outer Wilds. Loving both.
Wow.. did not expect that many responses! I have strolled through all of them. There are a lot of really nice suggestions of games.
I have bookmarked some of them.
Love the Lemmy energy, except those 1-2 hardcore 'redditiers' commenting here in their usual way : ).
Honestly, right now it’s Overwatch 2. Probably Stockholm syndrome at this point, but the game can still be fun to just jump into for 30 minutes for me.
Lately ive been bouncing between my usual dailies on final fantasy 14 or a few round of battlebit remastered.
Battle bit has been really great at capturing that battlefield feel
Every day after work I play Beat Saber. Usually for about half an hour--as a warmup--then I'll play again after dinner for 45 minutes to an hour or so. I've been doing this for a little over a year now and I'm still completely addicted to this game, LOL!
As much as I hate Meta Beat Saber on a Quest 2 is fantastic (if you get it modded). One of the mods (BeatLeader) uploads every successful replay (where you beat the map or your previous best score) and you can watch them on the web! It's the coolest thing! Here's an entertaining example of me playing a silly Hatsune Miku song with the Faster Song modifier enabled:
Since I started playing this game I've lost 15 pounds and gained a ton of stamina (and some muscle tone). Way more in shape than I used to be. Many days I'll burn 1200-1500 calories playing!
The benefits of this game regarding fitness are undeniable but there is no way to burn that much in two hours playing it. You're more realistically looking at 500 extra calories. 800 if you're going crazy hard.
Well, the 1200 calorie days are usually two hours. Normally I get 425-450 calories burned in 30 minutes which is about 15 calories/minute. Doing the math, 90 minutes of that is about 1350 calories so 1200 makes sense.
My heart rate is definitely pumping hard when I'm playing and I have to wipe the sweat off the floor after every session. I don't take breaks between maps at all, really except to hydrate.
I didn't even play that much last night but I burned ~800 calories (if my memory is accurate, haha). It was 16 maps total and if you look at the maps I played and my usual intensity I think you'll understand. Here's an example of a a typical play of mine:
My jam is an indie game called Warsim! It's got a delightful arena battle minigame that you can bet on, complete with audience interference, a spike pit, and goblin streakers. After that, you can have a pint of various drinks in one of dozens of unique taverns, and round out the evening by presiding over the royal court and issuing decrees, proclamations, and dropping unruly petitioners through my personal trapdoor.
It's been a few months since I played it, and I remember I really enjoyed it at the time but ended up feeling a bit limited in what I could do: after the truly magical first few hours, everything seemed to devolve into a game all about numbers and lacking actual depth. Has there been interesting updates since?
Oh, most definitely! They added a ton of random encounters, throne room encounters, and a crap-ton of other content. It's got waaay more stuff, including QoL stuff like the ability to invade more than once. Highly recommend another look!
I've mostly been wanting to play Rocket League, but I've been super stressed and for whatever reason playing against real people stresses me more. I think it's because I can't just pause the game whenever I feel like it.
So I've been mostly playing against ML bots with RLBotGui. As a gold/plat level player, it's actually a great way to practice.
I've also been playing through all of the Adventures of Lolo games(1-3 US and Japan, GB Lolo, eggerland series, plus all of the many rom hacks) on my Anbernic handheld. It's my favorite puzzle game of all time.
I was just playing Lolo 3 and I'm so surprised to see it pop up here! I've never played it before and went directly to the 3rd installment - is that a bad idea?
I'm also playing on an anbernic (rg351v). I wish I could play "baba is you" on it, it would be perfect.
You can play them in any order, but I'd recommend playing the English games before the Japanese market games because the Japan games have more difficult levels.
Counterstrike: counterintuitive but dealing with the toxicity and probably getting massacred by smurfing players (or cheaters) still is a good outlet for the day's stress.
I’ve recently gotten back into the OG Guild Wars and forgot how much of a chill MMO it was when it comes to grinding and questing. The quests (at least, so far) are a bit more varied than the “get 20 of this loot” and “kill 50 creatures” borefests that most MMOs have (the game still has them, but not as much as later MMOs), but also not super stressful. It also helps that it’s pretty easy to get geared for end-game stuff, so the actual end-game grind is for fashion and cosmetics.
I usually play Terraria as it's one of my favorite games. I've beaten the game on three platforms. Going to play it again on a harder difficulty next time.
I find it fun since it's not a shooter so no intense rage moments that make you want to quit the game.
I just downloaded Deaths Door on gamepass as I'm about to go away for a few weeks and didn't want to start anything story heavy. It's pretty straightforward and the art style is great. It's basically Tunic without needing to think about anything.
For a few years I played a lot of skyrim. I've done many builds and challenges to make the game harder without going to high in difficulty but I burned myself out and can't get myself to play it long term.
I generally just play whatever game I'm working through at the time. I recently replayed GTA:SA, and now am trying a new character in D:OS2 to get me by until BG3 releases from EA.
Love some "turn your brain off" kinda games. BOTW AND TOTK (altho that one is a bit more involved) are perfect for this. Also love an after work session of some Warriors (not nba) game.
Nhl offline. No idea why. I win almost every game. Sometimes it's a close one. But it's not easy on superstar. I just enjoy finding the angles. Good podcast game. But I am down on myself for ignoring the massive backlog.
Finally though, I snapped out of it and tried Hades for the second time and this time it stuck. Chasing those Heat skulls now.
Lately it's been Persona 4 Golden on the Vita and Zelda ToTK.
Zelda because you can change your play style easily, sometimes I just want to build stuff, other times I want to explore the map, fight monsters, or do side quests. Sometimes I'll sit there and spend a bunch of time preparing meals for a future play sessions.
Persona 4 I keep coming back to for the story and overall experience - music, voice acting, and even just navigating menus is so stylistic and top notch. I started my playthrough in 2019 though and am barely picking it back up.
On days I have more energy I've been playing Freedom Planet 2 for some action platforming as well.
For me, it feels great to do a few laps in a racing sim like Assetto Corsa Competizione after a long day. Even something more arcade-y like Forza feels good to me.
If I don't feel like like driving at the end of my day though I'd probably hop on Monster Hunter or a story-based single player game.
Forza Horizon 5, have been playing racing games for a lot of years and the Forza games are easy to pick up for a few races. You can also just cruise around the open world map.
Usually play some Doom 1 or 2, a level or an episode, or Minecraft if I have more time, but I'm in a boring replay/comfort phase because work is kicking my ass atm
Started playin monster train. It scratches the itch of finishing something in 1-2 hours and while they're very similar I feel like it's a bit more forgiving than "slay the spire".
Deep Rock Galactic is a good choice for me after a long day at work, it's a PvE co-op game. Even at the highest difficulty you can have a smooth time with a good team, and otherwise you can turn down the hazard level a notch or two - it's fun and not too mentally taxing to mow down bugs en masse.
Bonus, drinking a beer in game while having a beer in real life is peak immersion.
Recently I finished it takes two with my daughter, looking for new couch coops to play with her. For my own gaming time, getting bored of Diablo IV, Dave the diver was fun for a while but I'm ready for something else, maybe will get back into valheim.
Awesome, thanks for the suggestions! Unravel (2) was one of the first games we played together, it was the the perfect game to introduce her to because asymmetrical skill doesn't hurt the game at all, actually it even helps.
I agree with you on the limited local co-op games out there. I feel like I've played them all. Online co-op will be an option when I fix my PC, but the couch experience is hard to beat.
I have a group of friends that I have been playing CSGO with every night for years. We now all have over several thousand hours and don't really play seriously on low rank and just have fun together. I couldn't not play the game tryhard after a day at work...but then with so much experience it's not a problem anymore.
This is something that I lost when I moved abroad. Suddenly, all my gaming mates were mid-workday when I got home from the office, and I was dead asleep by the time they were gaming. Not to mention the latency makes it tough depending on the game.
Like most here I have a couple of games which I play for a few weeks before moving on to the next. The cycle (as of now) includes:
Terraria
Warframe
Elden Ring (Sometimes Bloodborne, DS1 or DS3)
Factorio (because fuck sleeping)
SYNTHETIK
Resident Evil 2 or 4 Remakes
These are the usual suspects I play over and over again. Sometimes I squeeze in a new game. Some of the last games were Outer Wilds, Dead Space Remake, Katamari Damacy REROLL, God of War Ragnarök and Boltgun. Right now I am farming the shit out of Warframe again, but I think I might give Starsector a shot. Looks like a lot of fun to me.
Games that have been a part of the cycle were: Destiny 1, Destiny 2 and Guild Wars 2, Fallout 4, Skyrim. I lost interest in these games after a couple of hundred thousand hours.
For me it needs to be something that my two daughters can watch me play. If I want something quick I'll normally go for some Fortnite. I'm trying to decide if Remnant 2 is alright my kids to watch me play, if I decide it is that'll be my other one.
Oh, same here. Our eldest daughter sat through playthroughs of Horizon: Zero Dawn, Skyrim, Fallout, Portal 2 etc... Now she's old enough to start her own Skyrim playthrough. The youngest is still so small she thinks she is playing the game if you give her a dead controller/keyboard, so looking forward to many more hours of family gaming.
They (6 and 8) watched me play about half an hour of Remnant 2 the other day and they said it wasn't scary. My first area is the creepy Victorian city as well.
It's really whatever is new or whatever game I'm interested in for the month. The only staples I cine back to would be battlefield and FFXIV. Although the latest iteration of BF wasn't that good
For the last few weeks it was Sons Of The Forest. But now that my wife and I finished the story and are waiting to lose ourselves for months in Baldurs Gate 3, we've been filling the time with Green Hell, another survival game in a similar vein to SotF. So far the constant struggle to stay on top of food, water, and injuries has been kinda frustrating, but hopefully that headache will go away once the systems start to make more sense.
I don't have any specific games to play after work. I just play whatever I'm enjoying most. Currently, that game is baldurs gate 3. I haven't played anything else since Thursday. Before that, it was Spiritfall. It's a roguelite with brawlhalla/smashbros type combat fused with hades' blessings power ups. It's still in early access but it's pretty polished, and a lot of fun. I was also playing risk of rain 2 from time to time but boy does it take a while to get good at that game..
Any game really. Currently going through ratchet and clank rift in time since it just came out on pc. Other is legacy of the duelist and ace Attorney trilogy
Generally things that are easy to pick up and get going again. If I have to try and find a notebook to get back on track I'll leave it for when I have proper time off. Often I put it down to pick it back up months down the line. Games such as the below are usually on my rotation.
Guild Wars 2
Some ARPG: Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, Diablo
PvE multplayer loot shooter: Deep Rock Galactic, Warframe