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Ask HN: What video games do you play during the day?
28 points by twelvenmonkeys on May 30, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 66 comments
Sometimes I need a quick break like 5 minutes on a game, or a walk outside.

What games do you play to pass the time while waiting for code to compile / graphics rendering?

I'm trying to find nice quick pick-up-and-play games similar to Stardew Valley / Screeps / Factorio.

What does HN play?



Factorio, for 5 minutes? HahahHAHAHAmuhabahHaAha

I’m envious of your discipline ;-)


If a person can play Factorio or Rimworld and put it down after 5 minutes, I envy them. that's basically impossible rofl


If a person can play Factorio or Rimworld and put it down after 5 minutes is not playing.

You need at least 10 minutes just to remember what you was doing (planning, building, defending etc..) :D


I had a friend that used to take mid-day breaks to play CS:GO.

The weird part is that it seemed to work wonders, I guess there's something about getting shot at that really gets your energy levels going


I play some Insurgency: Sandstorm from time to time during the day. It's a descendant of CS:GO in many ways. I usually do it when I need to facilitate a mode change in my mind.


It's essentially the pomodoro break. Concentration and focus followed by a short relief. If that's a coffee, a chat, or a quick game, if it works it works!


25 minutes of gaming then 5 minutes of writing solid code for some relief.


Pretty much this. CS:GO, Halo Infinite, basically any FPS where I can jump in and play N quick rounds where N is determined by how long of a break I need.


Quick minute or two: Wordle (Or a copy of it, that I can play more than one game a day)

On-Going in the background: Old School Runescape - I have 3 monitors, so I keep it on half of one while I work. There are many activities that are a "grind" and are pretty AFK, so it's just a click every few minutes or so.


AFK is out the door on Runscape. The game logs you out if it doesn't take mouse or keyboard movement after a period of time.


Give Rimworld a try. It's easy to get a few things done every break and pausing fits in naturally. You can even almost get away with backgrounding it where you set up a bunch of stuff to be done, and let the pawns do their own thing.


Based on the games you listed, I think you’d enjoy https://shapez.io

It’s essentially minimalist Factorio with a lot of neat ideas of its own. You can play it in your browser or on Steam.

Another classic browser game is TagPro. 3v3 physics-based capture the flag with a surprisingly high skill ceiling. https://tagpro.gg


Mindustry. It's like Factorio + tower defense. There is a basic campaign and sandbox mode with multiplayer as well. It has in-game visual programming (logic) with which you can do crazy things like play Chess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoeS3S9S9Dk, and it also has a JavaScript API for mods.


https://play-cs.com/en/servers

Been quite surprised to find fully functional CS 1.6 in a browser, but that's it. Heard that the latency is worse compared to the game client, haven't checked that myself because I don't want to bother buying or pirating the original version. Main use case: playing at work when you can't install random binaries but can visit websites (this use case isn't mine but I've been asking players there and they responded in this way).


Also see Quake 3 JS! http://www.quakejs.com/

I found no flaws. Just as fun as the original. And as a mac user, being able to play this after all those chip transitions is a blessing.


Yeah, seen that too, very cool. It pleases me to be able to play stuff simply by visiting a website. Solves many Linux-related problems as well. I wish some community-made mods made it to CS 1.6 with sentries and lasers, that really ups the game.


What is the technology behind this? Did they just port over the game using pure JS?


https://github.com/FWGS/xash3d-fwgs

https://github.com/FWGS/cs16-client (but this is closed source now, I don't know exactly how they use it, maybe there is some different fork of `cs16-client`)

These two are what their own references point to when you load the game.


I've got a couple Teenage Engineering Pocket Operators laying around and from time to time I play with them. Also I love simple online games like ISS Docking Sim, 3D Bosconian or ASCIIcker. https://iss-sim.spacex.com/ http://nolannicholson.com/bosco-3d/ http://asciicker.com/y6/


Chess. Any time I have a couple minutes I manage to squeeze in a blitz game.


Seedship us fun and works offline too so good for planes/trains etc. https://johnayliff.itch.io/seedship


Neat!!!


Noita. Brutalist one-shot game with very creative and emergant gameplay. Games can last from 5 seconds to 7 hours, and you can save and exit at any point.


Rocket League. 5 minute matches.


Elastomania. You can spend an arbitrarily small amount of time on it, like a 1 or 2 minutes. It also turns off the brain well.


I like to play something that makes me feel like I did something, so I lean on games like Halo where I can play a match. My favorite games are role playing games, but I reserve those for vacations and breaks because I don't feel like I can get anything meaningfully done in about 10 minutes.


Usually some singleplayer FPS with (practically) zero pauses for cutscenes/story/etc with quicksave+quickload so i can run it, play for 5 minutes, save, exit and pick it up at any time without having to wonder where i am or what is going on with the story. Pretty much always this is games i've already played at the past at least once. Recently it is Unreal 1 or Doom 3.

Also whenever i listen to some podcast (or video with just people talking) i like to boot up such a game (i often play Doom 3 BFG Edition since it supports gamepad and i can relax on my chair instead of hunching over the keyboard and mouse - i also use RBDoom3 sourceport which allows skipping cutscenes, etc and works natively on Linux) with the game's audio volume to barely audible.


I played some Warband: Mount & Blade recently. I think many tasks in this game can be done in-between real-life stuff.

But last weekend I also bought Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos on GOG. And I think if you can control yourself, you can also play short times in-between real-life tasks.

The pixel art looks really good and I like how Westwood added specific graphics and animations to support parts of the story. The music adds a nice atmosphere and voice acting is pretty good to great (Patrick Stewart does part of the voice acting).

A review here: https://retrofreakreviews.com/2020/06/12/lands-of-lore-the-t...


I play a couple of games of bullet chess (1 minute games) on Lichess app. From a locked phone to the start of a game is 11.5 seconds (yeah, timed it). After a game you can start a new one in a few seconds.


What do I play? My guitar.

Yep. WFH. I have a 6 string guitar next to me at all times. I'm not a terribly great player but I enjoy it and it relaxes me and gets some creative juices going. It's wonderful :)


Street Fighter 3: 3rd Strike on Fightcade.

App loads instantly unlike most modern games, and if you're in the US, you can quickly find a match. You can challenge anyone in chat room to a quick first-to-3 or first-to-5 which will take 5-10 minutes. It's a great adrenaline rush that totally takes my mind off coding b/c it's so fast paced and PvP. Then back to work.

Easy to get into for beginners, but the mechanics are incredibly deep and people have been mapping the engine out for 20 years, so there is so much to learn if you choose to.


I tend to avoid video games until I'm on proper vacation time. For diversion between programming boring stuff I tend to do some graphic design stuff or occasionally I'll go on StackOverflow and answer some Perl/JavaScript questions.

During vacation time I'll typically play one of the Fire Emblems or Halo (3, Reach or Infinite).

Last vacation I quite enjoyed Dirt Rally, nothing quite like nailing a stage at speed in Lancia 037. I don't care for driving games usually but these games are fun even just on a gamepad.


Generally either one sector of FTL or a song or two in rocksmith. I tried dwarf fortress but had trouble keeping in a reasonable time bound


I have mame installed and the roms for some SNK games. I have a few saved states (boss battles) and I usually just play those and quit.


Minecraft Creative

More often these days I just go lie down for 20 minutes since im right at home.


I play a game called "where's my lighter" where I've lost my lighter and none of the sleeping pets will get off my lap while I try to escape. Its frustrating but rewarding.


For something really quick and just in the browser I jump into a round on https://krunker.io/


I play Wild Rift (https://wildrift.leagueoflegends.com) or Chess on iPad.


If you have VR, beat sabre.

Sometimes I'll take a stab at Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy or play a few rounds rounds of NES Tetris.

Weather permitting I'll prefer going outside.


I like playing tetris and subway surfers to pass the time


Good ole Tetris. Have you been following the classic Tetris scene by any chance?


I don’t play any “quick” games… I like story heavy RPGs. And I don’t play for less than 40m/1h (so if I don’t have the time I don’t even start).


Hearthstone has been my goto for "I want to play something for 15 minutes with little commitment" for the past 8 years now.


League of Legends / Team fight Tactics.

Love that you can do a short game for 20 min and then quit or do more. Perfect to clear your head.


StarCraft II ladder games as Protoss. It's volatile enough that each game usually over in 5-15 minutes, especially PvP.


I use the chess.com app and solve puzzles. Lichess has free puzzles but I think the ones on chess.com are better.


Hades on Nintendo Switch. Each zone can take 5 minutes to complete making it perfect for a break.


gurk, cute little 8-bit rpg for android

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.larvalabs....


https://squaredle.app


on my windows/linux machines, Overwatch rounds are nice and short.

on my mac? mame, with certain roms and savestates. can't beat the combination of the simplicity of the old classics plus the ability to freeze and duplicate state at any point.


Skater XL on a Steam Deck


These days, I tend to play death-match in Counter Strike 1.6.


Wildrift (League of Legends on mobile) / Fortnite


Deep Rock Galactic!


Steam games with decent replay value, but short rounds of gameplay:

One Finger Death Punch

One Finger Death Punch 2

Downwell

Superflight

Shattered

Race the Sun

Super Crate Box


Splatoon matches are between 3 abs 5 mins.


probably not what you are looking for, but here goes. Usually one of these: xpat2, xgammon, rogue or nethack


Mahjong Soul to play some riichi mahjong


i still like wordle and similar type games (quordle, waffle). i do not like video games though.


Tetris while using Emacs.


Bloons Tower Defence


Into the Breach


Thanks for post


Train Valley 2


Master Duel,


Elden Ring!




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