Many of you won’t remember this, but there was a time when you had to leave the home and head to an arcade if you wanted to play video games. There were some very basic and rudimentary table-top games some people might have had if they were lucky, like pong or eventually an Atari.
Then, console and PC gaming started to really take off and gaming in the household become a common part of childhood, and those younger gamers kept playing into adulthood.
Nowadays, you don’t even have to leave the home to play exciting games of all varieties. In fact, if you’re holding a cellphone, you don’t even have to get up from wherever you’re sitting to start gaming. Your pocket is filled with games that are infinitely more advanced and powerful than every single game in an old arcade, combined.
Even with countless options, it’s not always easy to find something to play. instead of listing a few popular games here, I want to go over some different types of games that I’ve enjoyed over the decades. My goal is to offer up some ideas that you won’t find on every other list, in order to keep things exciting. We’ll be looking at games from the past, current games, and cutting-edge gaming experiences you can have at home.
1. MUDS
MUDS are a super old-school style of text-based game. The name stands for multi-user dungeon. These games were played in what were basically chatrooms. They’d have elements of role playing games, adventure games, hack-and-slash dungeon crawlers with combat, and more.
It was really about the social experience, since the graphics were just text and your imagination. In some cases, there might be visuals on the screen, drawn with letters and characters, but it was all writing at the end of the day.
You would use a keyboard to input commands, like telling your character to walk forward, to the left, to the right, to open a door, and so on and so forth.
Admittedly, I only played a few of these, so I’m far from being an expert, but here’s a great write-up if you’re curious to learn more.
2. Idle/Incremental Games
These typically aren’t multiplayer, but you can play them online. They’re usually fairly simple in terms of graphics, so they work well on phones, browsers, and so on.
To summarize this entire genre, it’s basically a matter of “make number go up”. There are tons of unique variations, but in general the game play loop goes something like this…
- You start by clicking, where each click increases your score/resources by 1.
- After a period of time, you can use these collected resources to increase the value of each click so that you might earn 2, 10, 50… points per click, with the cost to upgrade increasing each time.
- You might also be able to unlock workers, who will automatically increase your score/resources over time without having to click.
A well-balanced, high quality game in this genre will give you a constant sense of progression without ever having to grind too much. You’ll be able to play it actively, or step away for hours or days at a time while still gaining some sort of progress.
3. VR Games
Virtual reality is still not fully here. I remember playing an early virtual reality game at Universal Studios about 25 years ago. It looked a lot different than today’s VR headsets and games, but this technology still has a ways to go until it’s really perfected.
Some of the issues include fatigue if you play for more than an hour at a time, batteries that require frequent charging, eye-stress from looking at the screens right in front of your face, and more…
Having said that, the experience of VR today is still miles ahead of where it was, and VR headsets are getting more and more affordable.
4. Table and Card Games
Adults can try their luck with real money games that can be played at home. Like any type of gaming, make sure you’re being responsible about it, not spending too much time or money on it, and that it’s used as a form of entertainment.
You can also try free versions of popular card tables, table games, and other games of chance, if that’s more your speed. These are games that have been around for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years – obviously not in an electronic form, though. Now, they can be played from your living room, your backyard, or anywhere else that you can access your phone, a laptop, a tablet, etc.
They never require much in terms of computing power, so they’ll work on most devices. Or, if you’re feeling nostalgic, grab a deck of cards and some friends and put together a game of your own.
5. Indie Games
There been many huge indie games over the years, so this isn’t really an obscure genre anymore, but there are plenty of unearthed, hidden games, or games you may have just missed.
In many cases, indie games have a more casual feeling. They’re easy to pick up and play, they’re unique and creative, and they’ll take risks and chances that you simply won’t find in most big studio games.
Here’s a top-notch list of indie games in the Steam store for your perusal.
