In the first term of my first year at university, I didn’t bring much from home to keep me occupied. Some Warhammer models to paint, some books to read, and my Nintendo Switch was all. This led to a significant increase in productivity during the first few months of term, with books constantly open cluttering up my desk, and work regularly getting handed in on time. Looked promising for the rest of my degree, right?
Not on my watch.
As semester two began I returned to my halls with some old friends by my side. I had ditched the paints and pages and replaced them with a box full of PS4 discs, a number of Joy-Con to make even the best Nintendo scalper weep, and a Steam library packed fuller than Chetham’s on World Book Day.
The only problem was that now I couldn’t focus on my work at all. The usual games I would bust out – God of War, Cuphead, Red Dead Redemption – were far too distracting, far too good to be played with my attention split.
This led to a crisis: “Should I really be half-arsing my degree?”, “Shouldn’t I just do the lecture and play games after?”, “But how do people endure those things without forcefully extracting their eyeballs?”
And that’s where I am now. I haven’t found a way to fix my inattentiveness yet; one might think that the prospect of spending 9k a year just to play video games would be enough, but not me. In the meantime, let’s have a look at the games I’ve found best for playing during online lectures while still sort of managing to do work.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
One year (ish) after the release of New Horizons I’m still getting enjoyment out of it. I restarted my island before coming to university and have been slowly rebuilding all my progress from the first lockdown. This has proved immensely satisfying, and though the game is still somewhat hollow when you scratch below the surface, new updates continue to provide fun content. But it is Animal Crossing’s unique pace that makes it perfect for completing in-game chores while Mister Sem Enar prattles away to himself on my laptop.
There is something beautiful about this game, if it’s not the crisp visuals, then it’s the relentlessly relaxing tone.
In contrast to a game like Stardew Valley, where an in-game day consumes 14 minutes and 20 seconds of real-world-time, Animal Crossing’s days are linked to the real-world clock. As a result, New Horizons lacks urgency and is perfect to flick to between note-scribbles. Unless the wrath of the raccoon debt collector mob is enough to keep you awake at night. Then you should just play something else.
Mini Metro
This game is a godsend for spiritless students and bus-riders alike. Not only is it chilled puzzling perfection, but it’s also on mobile, so you could play this during in-person lectures as well!
Perhaps not. But even still, during an online lecture you don’t need EXPLOSIONS and GORE – you need a quiet distraction to fill the moments of breakout room boredom and that is exactly what Mini Metro provides.
Mini Metro is a puzzle game about building an efficient subway system on maps that look like they were ripped straight off the walls of the London Underground. There are over 25 levels and a small host of modes for when your lectures make you want to hit the hay more than you want to academically succeed.
Similar to Animal Crossing, there is very little pressure to finish levels quickly so if your lecturer is overcome with a brief moment of semi-coherence and starts making genuinely noteworthy points, you need not worry about the precious train stations on your phone. You can simply pause and resume later.
Candy Box 2
You have zero candies. But wait a second. Now you have one candy. Another second and now you’re rolling in all of two candies. Good lord, the possibilities are endless.
The best part about Candy Box (1 and 2) is how little you need to interact with it to succeed. You can sit and let it generate candy in the background while you work and then when you do have a moment to play, you’ll be decked out so many of the titular sweets you’ll put Willy Wonka to shame.
Candy Box 2 is an oddly deep game for a browser project that uses ASCII art reminiscent of old text adventures; it is a weird hidden gem that has mechanics from both RPGs and web clicker games but manages to never overwhelm you with things to do, only confuse with its peculiar sense of humour.
Playing Candy Box is like mining bitcoin, but more environmentally friendly. Tastier, too.
FTL: Faster Than Light
Good evening and welcome to an audio account of everyone’s first battle in FTL:
“Aha, that’s a pretty cool ship, can I steal it? I doubt it- OH GOD WHAT WAIT IT’S SHOOTING ME”
“Okay I can do this, I just need to get the cannons on and then- FUCK WHY IS THERE FIRE IN THE ENGINE ROOM”
“No, wait, okay. Let’s get Sarge to the medbay first and then get the cannons and engine back online.”
“Who’s that? They aren’t from my ship. How did they get in here and why are they attacking the doors to the medbay… oh. Oh okay, yeah, no, sure, just kill everyone in there. Whatever. See if I care- OH YEP, game over, cool.”
Every battle after this is easier once you discover the pause button.
This is the most action-based game on this list but the reason it made the cut is because of the pause feature, which lets you stop and assess the chaos with no consequences. Not only will you be using the pause button to swap from weapons stations to work stagnations, but you will also use it as a vital function of gameplay.
Like other roguelikes, FTL brandishes unforgiving difficulty and immense depth like a badge of honour. If you play this game outside of lectures (which is advisable to begin with) you will find a huge range of new ways to play and you will have a different play experience every single time.
And there you have it. The four games you should play during online lectures. You should only play these four games. This is it. And if you can’t afford these or have the wrong console then I guess you’ll have to do something else during online lectures.
I hear porn is particularly good these days.
Images: Reiss Mason, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Mini Metro, Candy Box 2, FTL: Faster Than Light
