11mo ago

Have you got a 'forever game'?

As their name suggests, forever (or evergreen) games are games that don’t have a finale or culmination, as in “The End”. These games have a very high replayability factor (meaning we enjoy playing them over and over again).

Forever games are also timeless. We can pick up these games anytime , be it the day they were released, or a few years later, and play them for months or years. We can even stop playing for a while, pick them up again years later, and they’d still be fun and relevant.

Source for quote

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Factorio, hands down.
- Yup. Can be away from it for months but it is always in the back of my mind. If I just had more time.

Minecraft, of course. Been playing it for what, almost 15 years now? Which is insane to me. Still pick it up once a year or so and spin up a server with my brothers.
- Same for me. The wild part is that the majority of my interest in the game comes from the modding community, which has continually output interesting content pretty much this whole time. If all we got was vanilla updates, I doubt I'd have stayed engaged nearly as long.

The binding of isaac

I suppose Dwarf Fortress would qualify, but I tend to get tired of everything sooner or later.
Minesweeper and circloO was good to play on my phone for a few weeks when away from my PC.
Oh and almost forgot about Caves (the traditional rogue-like on Android). I occasionally come back to that one, but get frustrated pretty quick now.

Solitaire

Shattered Pixel Dungeon
- I was thrilled to install this after playing a few years ago and finding that not only has it continued to be updated, but a new class was added.
  This is probably in my top 5 games. Hard enough that you can pretty easily get blown up but also balanced enough that every game seed has the ability to be beaten.
  I love a good ring of wealth run. I finally did a necro run which was also a blast.
- This is just the most perfect phone game there ever was.
  You can pick it up and drop it at a moments notice, the controls and gameplay give themselves perfectly to touch screens, and it can be fairly simple to play, but you can go really in depth if you learn its secrets.
  I've been playing pixel dungeon and its variants for the last decade. Shattered really pulled so far ahead of the original.
  I love this game

Slay the spire. Any roguelikes really

Really love games like Enter the Gungeon and Brotato. Just stupid casual fun with (for me) quite a high skill ceiling. Terraria also kinda fits that bill I think
And yeah, I know EtG and Terraria technically have endings, but I doubt I'm ever going to reach it, so for me they're forever games :p

Smash Bros. Ultimate.
I don't game much these days but Smash always calls me back.

I think mine is probably Rocket League. I've been playing it since day one back in 2014. Multiple console generations and platforms, thousands of hours playing solo and with my brothers. It's been nearly ten years and I'm still putting in 3-4 hours a week, every week.
- Yeah it has to be RL. I too have been playing for 10 years and still trash.
- Rocket League has burrowed its way so deep into my mind that I unconsciously perceive the aesthetics of football to be a rip off of Rocket League but with tiny balls and no rocket cars.
- @Oneeightnine
  Probably Civilization or Crusader Kings at this point.

Civilization V is it for me I think. Very cozy, very comfortable. Not playing on the highest difficulty, just playing fun civs with half the brain turned off. Like solitaire.
I also have a save file of Football Manager 2017 that I still come back to now and then. That save got me through some rough times back in 2017 and I played it super intensely then. Formed some strong emotional attachment to some of those pixels.
These days I don't really play it but I have a hard time letting it go. Sometimes I fire it up and just browse through the menus a bit and then quit. Like checking in with some old friends. It's really a testament to how unhealthily obsessed I was for a while there, I guess.
- If you'd have asked me this question when I was a teenager I'd have absolutely said the FM series as a whole. From 12-18 it was basically the only game (series)I played. On my school holidays me and my brothers would spend 8-9 hours a day just.... playing our individual games. We'd walk into each others rooms with questions about transfers or formations, or if we had a vital game we'd all crowd around the others screen to experience what was going on. Absolutely amazing memories that'll both never be forgotten, but also never reproduced.

XCOM War of the Chosen
- Just came to suggest this. The tactical puzzles are so addicting.
  
  The way they did the maps is great, they're all random but they come together so well. You never look at a map and immediately think "this is obviously a random map".

Tetris

Counterstrike 1.6/Source/GO/2
Started playing around 2005. Playtime has waxed and waned over the years in my friend group, but we've generally played it fairly regularly for nearly 20 years now.

Surviving Mars, I really love it.
- I haven't seen anyone talk about this one in quite a while. Gorgeous soundtrack.

Survival mode of the Long Dark, I start a new sanbox every winter with no exceptions. Mods make it even better imo.

I've played CounterStrike on and off since the first demo. Played a hacked LAN version of 1.6 back in the day. Still play CS2 a few times/week.

Dwarf Fortress.

Spelunky 2 would be closest for me, I think.

Crusader Kings. Check out https://youtube.com/@imperor
Buddy of mine feels the same and I will relentlessly shill for him. He's been making videos explaining what he does and why while playing for both CK 2 and CK3 for years and got me into it. Once they click, there is nothing like it.
He also recently started streaming a few months ago.
https://twitch.tv/imperorthefirst

One Chance

Rain World! It has "endings" but the fact that it's sort of got a strange nature simulator / documentary vibe can kind of make it like a very difficult terrarium (that you're also living in) at times. The endings are also very much not required and can be totally ignored lmao.
I love exploring and befriending critters and just the movement system is like nothing else. Creatures living their lives totally independent from me is such a cool aspect I haven't seen done anywhere else quite on the same level. Just the emotions system of the scavs alone is so interesting to learn about! I love how it looks! I love how it taught me that failure doesn't matter and enjoying the journey can be beautiful. I love how you are at your most powerful when you are "most weak" (losing all of your, we'll call it "health" means death is completely consequence-free, and you can just experiment and scout freely and it's so fun to me.) You sort of make your own stories as you go along and I think it's neat.
Also I love bugs and insects. It's got a lot of 'em.

I actually tend to avoid these, I really like it when games have an ending or a final goal to work towards. I do still play River Raid on Atari and go for a higher score each time.

ADOM, an old, very extensive, rogue like that ive played since it was in alpha. And the 2018 Battletech game.

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