I’ve played a couple video games this year. I thought it’d be interesting to list out the games I’ve played more than 10 hours of this year that I remember. Do note that a few of these games aren’t new to me, just getting some revisits.

100 hours or more spent

Satisfactory

A friend and I built up a new factory to the point of being able to finish the final space elevator delivery. I’m a couple hundred hours into this game over the past year or two and I think it absolutely brilliant and chill factory builder.

Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

I bought all the DLC and installed some mods. I turned down all the weather effects and I had a blast again! So easy to lose hours and hours with just one more turn. Civ6 has definitely had less game time than I put in 3, 4, and 5 but it might catch up to Civ5 in another year.

25 to 100 hours spent

Hades

I bought this game three times. That alone is a testament. I first bought it on Nintendo Switch played it through. Then I didn’t have the Nintendo Switch for a while after having swapped the Switch for other systems (family and I have a video game swap system). So I bought Hades on Xbox and played it through there again. Then I bought Hades on PC and then swapped my steam deck also so that one hasn’t seen time yet. This is above 60 hours on the Xbox alone and might be above 100 hours but I’m really not sure without all the game systems here to check. Even after I beat the story, I kept on running levels while listening to audiobooks. This game is challenging and delightful.

Timberborn

Timberborn is such a weird game for me. Once I get the farms and water and timber resources sorted out, the colony becomes self-sustaining and I can set the speed to fast-forward constantly. I don’t fail, I just build bigger and bigger monuments. This game is perhaps the most easily “command your forces and then walk away from the computer” game on this list. I only play this game if I only have half my attention to spare. It’s probably the dynamic water that I keep coming back to.

Factorio

Factorio is the latest game on this list. The only reason that it hasn’t broken more hours is that it hasn’t had the chance to. I’ve barely gotten into train networks and flame thrower defenses and logistic robots and builder robots. Being able to copy paste entire factory sections only makes it easier to copy-paste mistakes. This game is great and a technical marvel. I expect to spend a lot more time here.

Vampire Survivors

I’m somewhere above 90 achievements out of 140 on this game. I don’t really hunt achievements, it just happened. The soundtrack here is absolutely great. I have a lot of fun running around on this game. I got my money’s worth for sure. Easy to just pick up and revisit.

Sweet Transit

I like trains. Making train tracks and stations and routing a logistical puzzle is fun. Add in a great soundtrack and it was easy to spend time here until the late game when the logistics network’s frailty was always on the edge of collapse. This game was just released and I know there’s been patches since so I’ll revisit it sometime.

25 hours or less spent

Diablo 3

My friends and I put hundreds of hours into Diablo 3 together back in its early days. On a whim, I revisited the latest season and got a character pushing Greater Rift 100 easily. It was fun, but without friends I just didn’t keep at it.

Mass Effect

First time playing this first Mass Effect. I thought it great fun and expect to play the second one.

Mini Motorways

Until Vampire Survivor’s supplanted the role, Mini Motorways was my easiest game to just pick up and play a round or two before logging back off. I still like it, but I’ve seen all there is to see.

Stellaris

Paradox games have this one fatal flaw for me. Anytime I come to a part of any game where a button is disabled with “buy this DLC” for this gameplay I lose immersion. Paradox games DLC is generally too numerous to just easily go get it all and so I put in some time here and then just got annoyed and never returned. If I actually watched sales I could probably find a bundle but I don’t really.