Great Games That Practically Play Themselves

Most gamers garnered their love for video games when they were young and free from the responsibilities of being an adult. Those grown-ups with full-time jobs to occupy, kids to raise, taxes to file, or an endless amount of content to scroll through may find that they just don't have enough time (or, at the end of a long day at work, brainpower) for the wondrous hobby that once enamored them in childhood. And others may have the time but lack the physical dexterity required to navigate those virtual worlds.

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Luckily, there is now a plethora of games that remove those time-consuming inputs and decision-making moments usually required for the experience by simply playing themselves. Whether they only need the occasional nudge once in a while or play out totally independently of the player, gamers without the time or wherewithal to get through even a game a year can experience something resembling the medium without taking their hands off the wheel.

7 Progress Quest

The Satire That Started It All

• Began life as a meme game and became influential enough to birth a genre.
• Truly plays itself after the initial character creation menu.

Some of the more cynical gamers will outright dismiss some RPGs and MMOs as being jobs in themselves that often require spreadsheets to play effectively. However, Progress Quest takes away all the work of grinding (and, indeed, playing the game altogether) by taking away all actions and choices as soon as the player is done with character creation. After this, it locks them into a staring competition with what may as well be accounting software.

The player is simply treated to a series of progress bars with which they can monitor their avatar's journey through the game and the number of monsters they killed out in the wild (where monsters inevitably wander around for adventures to dispatch for experience points). The game is clearly a parody of MMORPG cliches, but it managed to capture an audience for the genre all the same.

6 Mountain

A Huge Heap Of "Something"

• A "minimalist" gaming experience.
• Either grants players a sense of mindfulness or confusion.

Mountain is a game about a mountain that floats in a great void. That's about it. Players have nothing to really do with it besides rotate it to get a better look, but otherwise, they play the role of an indirect observer. As time passes, things might change on the floating landmass. The weather might alter, life might spontaneously emerge (or not), and trinkets might drop onto the surface.

The only skill required to play Mountain is patience. Perhaps another would be imagination. It is perhaps an artistic meditation on the nature of the universe, or perhaps it provides the most accurate representation of passive divinity, which observes and never interrupts the natural course of the cosmos. Either way, it probably wouldn't make good material for a Twitch stream Let's Play.

5 Final Fantasy 12

A Refined Take On The Conventional Final Fantasy Battle Dynamic

• An interesting fork in the evolution of the Final Fantasy battle system.
• Requires significant setup and micromanagement during boss fights.

There is significantly more of an input requirement from players for this game, but in terms of grinding enemies, Final Fantasy 12 only really asks the player to move the directional stick in the direction of enemies and their drops. Figuring out which tactics work for each area, exploring, setting up equipment, and buying skills and spells all require a little brainpower.

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It's an interesting take on the classic Final Fantasy battle encounter, even if it's not a fan favorite. Once the player sets up their moves and AI with the gambit system, the party will be able to pretty much take care of themselves, except for boss fights, which can require a little micromanagement to beat.

4 Dwarf Fortress

A Library's Worth Of Emergent Fantasy Novel Lore

• Includes "Legends Mode," which allows players to pour over a novel's worth of virtual world history.
• Incredibly detailed AI that allows players to sit back and watch prosperity or ruin play out.

The beauty of this game (besides its newfangled graphics) is that it can be played in a number of ways: story generator, construction and management simulator, colony management, and RPG. In most cases, however, the player is free to release their fingers from the keyboard and mouse and just let the world play out without them. Since everything is simulated, from emotions to the cleanliness of the floor and grand political movements, there is always something interesting to be seen.

In fact, one way that some Dwarf Fortress fans play the game is by opening up Legends Mode, letting it generate a fictional story with AI and a little RNG for good measure, and then simply reading about it in a long lore text log. There's so much detail and fascinating twists and turns that a whole evening can go by from just taking in an overview of the various wars, marriages, and cultural events from the dwarves' rise to their ruin throughout the world's history.

3 Despot's Game: The Dystopian Army Builder

A Relaxed Auto-Battler With Some Decisive Elements

• Decisions before and after the battle must be made by the player but are otherwise automated.
• Randomized runs create a lot of replayability.

Some hapless survivors wake up in a nightmare with only primitive weapons to defend themselves against mean old monsters. As the player indirectly helps them progress throughout Despot's Game, they'll earn upgrades and choose from a range of fantasy classes to improve their survival odds.

Despot's Game strikes a nice balance between a traditional auto-battler and a strategy roguelike, all the while presenting the player with pretty pixels and animations. While fights are basically decided by the roll of the dice and the stats of the RNG equipment gained throughout the run, there are a few choices to be made between encounters regarding obtaining supplies and weapons.

2 Cookie Clicker

Slowly Chocolate-Chipping Away At Its Players' Life Forces

• Began life as a joke but became a huge influence on the idle game genre.
• Becomes surprisingly complex as the game progresses.

Although there are plenty of cookie-cutter idle games (in which the player initially performs a single action to "make line go up" before automating the process after so long), Cookie Clicker might have been the one to click the whole thing off, becoming the most famous and perhaps most popular incremental game around.

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The player starts out making cookies by clicking the big one in the middle of the screen. Before they know it, thousands of hours have passed, and the game now involves managing a whole nation's worth of factories, banks, farms, mines, and, of course, grandmas. While they manage their chocolate chip empire, players can also bop out to the tunes between clicks.

1 The Sims Series

A Cozy Life Simulator With A Life Of Its Own

For the most part, The Sims series was designed for players to be able to watch and occasionally intervene when they saw fit to make a change. Each sim's AI would take care of their needs just enough to survive, assuming the correct facilities were around to provide for them.

Without the player's input, sims will rarely progress independently and simply live out their lives in a hazy state. As they go through the motions and do the bare minimum to get by, they will miss out on seeing what the world can really offer and fail to achieve any of their dreams. That said, watching a sim interact with the world on their own is enjoyable in itself.

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