I apparently completely forgot to write anything yesterday. To be fair, I was mildly hungover and thus didn't really want to do much other than play Terranigma, which I made some excellent progress on. I think I'm coming towards the end of that game, so I'll have more to write about it over on MoeGamer when that's done and dusted.
As I'm typing this, it's lunchtime, and this makes me think about what games are suitable for lunch break play. Really, you can play anything over your lunch — and indeed I have done in the past — but there are certain types of games that are eminently more suitable than others.
Long RPGs, for example, are probably not optimal for lunch break play — unless they're designed with a sort of "bite-sized" structure. Good examples of this that I've enjoyed in the past include the Neptunia series, which has small dungeons you can delve into, beat up some enemies, get some crafting materials and maybe complete some quests, and be done in less than an hour. The inverse of this is the grid-based dungeon crawler, where you really need to sit down and concentrate on what you're doing, lest you completely lose the thread of your explorations.
I found Splatoon Raiders to be an ideal lunch break game, because each of its stages are no more than about five minutes, tops. That means you can dip in and play a good few levels in just a short space of time, and feel like you've had a worthwhile experience. Recommended.
Driving games can also be good for this — in fact, after I'm done here, I might just boot up Forza Horizon and drive around a bit. Again, the bite-sized nature of most events in driving games make them eminently suitable for short sessions, such as playing over lunch.
Then, of course, there are arcade games, which are the very definition of this sort of thing. Arcade machines were designed for you to pass by, think "ooh, that looks fun, I'll have a quick go" and while away a few minutes. In most cases, the games are challenging enough, or designed with a built-in maximum play time, that you can enjoy one game multiple times during a short break — or you can sample multiple for a varied bit of fun.
This is why handhelds used to be brilliant to take to the office pre-COVID. Back in those Before Times, I had an office job that was about a 15 minute drive away, so in theory I could come back home and play something at home — indeed, on several occasions I even managed to get a full YouTube video recorded over lunch, which I'm not sure how I achieved in retrospect — but it was much more practical to pop the Vita or 3DS in my bag, stick on my headphones and just blot everything out while I sat on the sofa near the coffee machine, eating sandwiches and playing Neptunia.
I kind of miss that! I mean, I don't miss having to go out to work every day, but having a reason for handhelds to exist was fun. These days, of course, it would probably be the Switch 2 and/or the Evercade EXP-R coming out with me, and both of those are amply stocked with plenty of good "lunchtime games".
But now I work from home, I have a lot more choice. That can sometimes be overwhelming, but it's also nice. It means I can enjoy a wide variety of different things over my lunch break, and then easily get back to work at a suitable stopping point.
So that's what I'm going to go and do right now…
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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