Looking for Good Game at Work

cthulhuiscool

cthulhuiscool

2[H]4U
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Mar 15, 2006
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So the nature of my job gives me a decent amount of downtime, but its really inconsistent when and how much time I will have. I've been looking for some games to fiddle around with when I have nothing else to do. I played through pokemon black and ftl and they fit the requirements well, and now am looking for something else. I tried Fire Emblem, but it was far too story driven/wall of text for me to want to sift through. Any ideas would be appreciated.

Here are the requirements I've narrowed down:

Ability to walk away essentially at any time without concern of something happening (pause or savestate is fine)

Doesn't require huge mental investment so that I can be aware of whats going on around me

Doesn't require lots of button mashing so that it isn't totally obvious I'm playing a game

Can be played without sound without missing out on anything (you'd be surprised how many games have audio ques to play)

Can be played windowed and easily swapped between open windows (autopause on clicking another window a plus)

PC or Emulator, able to play on a meh computer (i5 dual core laptop with hd4400 gfx)

SFW, I don't mind a little blood or whatever, but I can't be beheading strippers in any churches
 
What about Bastion? The only thing you'll miss out on is the commentary but I don't think it is integral to the story or anything.
 
Tiny Bang Theory is exactly what you are looking for.. its a bit short but its a fairly fun puzzle game

also if you have a smart phone look at a game called The Room 2 - great game that you can leave and come back to

The Cave is a decent adventure game, which the nature of those is you can leave and come back anytime

and a little more involved but one you might enjoy is the Kings Bounty Series, turn based - Hex rpg game.
 
Plague, Inc. is my go to time killer at work. Easy to pause and any time the game pops up a prompt that needs your attention it auto pauses until you click something. So even walking away without pausing, while it can be detrimental to your game by missing out on DNA points, is probably not going to run long before it pauses itself anyway. Sound adds nothing to the game other than ambiance, so it's easy to mute. It requires frequent mouse clicking, but if you stick on the slowest time setting it shouldn't be obvious that any gaming is happening, and you don't use the keyboard at all.
 
Magic the Gathering 2012-14

or

Magic the Gathering Online
 
If you have a controller: Rogue Legacy. Very easy way to waste bursts of 10-15 minutes playing. Game autosaves once you exit, so you can leave at a moments notice without losing progress.
 
Pringle said:
If you have a controller: Rogue Legacy. Very easy way to waste bursts of 10-15 minutes playing. Game autosaves once you exit, so you can leave at a moments notice without losing progress.
Click to expand...

I'd assume if he wants to avoid button mashers to avoid making his gaming completely obvious, I'd also think that a controller would be out for the exact same reason.

That said, I second the turn-based strategy idea. Civ5 is probably your best bet in that category.
 
My vote's for Dungeon Crawl
http://crawl.develz.org/wordpress/

Best roguelike you'll play; the game is turn based so you can drop it at any moment and offers infinite replayability. Keep in mind this is a 'real' roguelike, not a rogue-like-like. Permadeath, no progressive unlocks, every playthrough is independent from the next (apart from ghosts, which are your previously deceased characters that come back to try and kill you). The only thing you get to keep between runs is your knowledge.
 
If you have a decent upload speed at home:

VPN out of your work and to your home, and stream Divinity: Original Sin using Steam In-Home Streaming. (lol "in-home") All the graphical processing is done at home, and Divinity doesn't require low latency to play. It's turn based and nothing requires reaction speed.

If you don't want to play that, then you can at least stream some other games using Steam in-home streaming.


edit: i just re-read
Doesn't require huge mental investment so that I can be aware of whats going on around me
Click to expand...
but uh... that depends on the player i guess
 
Minecraft - Tekkit is always fun to play and you can walk away at any time just about.
 
Serpent said:
FTL.
Click to expand...
Perfect at-work game. As long as your work isn't terribly stressful. FTL isn't what I would consider a stress-reducing/relaxing game. But if you just need to waste (large amounts of) time in irregular intervals, it's perfect!
 
You lazy son of a...

:D

I'd give Monaco a whirl. I can't play games at work at all, but if I did, this would be well suited for this sort of thing. Just enough brain usage without totally taking over. You don't need sound at all. You can play in bursts. It's got plenty of variety, it's cheap, and isn't demanding at all on the PC.
 
I used to play the ish out of this game at a previous job.

http://us.ikariam.gameforge.com/

Its kinda like Civ but much slower, you build your town expand to other towns other island.
You build an army/navy and show your neighbors who's boss.
You can plunder for material which you then take home and deposit
into your warehouses to make your citizens happy.
Its got quite a learning curve but fun times!
 
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