[empath75]

I’m sort of ambivalent about the game and it’s largely because I have two young kids at home and have maybe an hour at a time to play and the amount of what I would call ‘empty’ time in the game really stands out.

There have been times where I’ve done all the work I need to do to get some unbroken alone time, spent 40 minutes playing and gotten absolute nothing accomplished which really sucks given that it might be the only time I could play that week.

I get that it’s atmospheric but as a dad game it just sucks.

I’d like to be able to load the game and play through a couple of missions quickly without all the faffing about brushing my horse and crafting and hunting and what not.

Basically my life is full of enough chores that I don’t need games that simulate doing more chores.

[dweekly]

Request for service: Dad Game Reviews. Games that are fun to play and more engaging than the mindless idlers and puzzles that are out there today but support meaningful episodes of 30-40 minutes.

[Sylos]

The entire genre of roguelikes might fit that.

Because they generally have this permadeath mechanic, every step in the game is meaningful to not losing, and the game developers are also kind of forced to make every part of the game fun and not too tedious or superfluous, as you'll generally replay them many times.

I currently quite enjoy Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, which you will need a free afternoon to get into, but after that, you can even have meaningful episodes of 5 minutes. You're not gonna complete a run in 5 minutes, that's rather gonna take 8 hours (though the world record is at less than 30 minutes), but you can load up the game, play a few hundred turns and then save and quit easily in that time.

http://crawl.develz.org/

[culot]

Site name idea: Dadgum Gaming

[sosborn]

I think Wired used to have a column like that.

[dweekly]

Called what?

[sosborn]

Geek Dad.

[brazzledazzle]

There are certain games I have to play either very late or very early to give them the unbroken lengths of time they deserve. Not possible for everyone but if you can squeeze a long session once a month or every couple weeks it can dramatically change the experience of some games for the better.

[giobox]

This is definitely an issue I encountered as a new dad playing RDR 2. That said, this game is such a landmark achievement, the scale and ambition is largely without precedent, it was still worthwhile persevering for me in small chunks.

[woolvalley]

I like dead cells for that kind of interval. It has a good balance and walking away from the game is fine. MOBAs and Battle Royales like dota and fortnite also give that '1 hour play session' balance typically.

[atom-morgan]

I'm not even a dad and this game sucks for the reasons you mentioned.