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Comment by gingerlime | Hacker News Reader

As someone who doesn't play any games at all and looking for a new hobby, would you recommend picking this up as one? if so, which platform/games would you recommend? (something light/fun)

some background:

I'm 45, I don't think I can handle anything too intense (even watching TV gets my heart pounding, I get too immersed and don't exactly enjoy too much adrenaline); I used to enjoy the Atari console in the 80s and then later played games on my Apple IIc and then PC, up to around year 2000 or so. Now I own an iPhone SE and Macbook air 2015, so nothing too powerful. I don't have a TV (but a decent computer screen).

EDIT: so many great suggestions for things I didn't know existed. Thank you so much!

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There are tons of non-intense video games! It's not all shooters, thankfully. Especially building/management style games, turn-based games, and role-playing games can be calm.

Personal favorites: FTL: Faster Than Light. Not turn-based, so can get a little heated every now and then but generally pretty calm ime. https://store.steampowered.com/app/212680/FTL_Faster_Than_Li...

The Civilization series is all turn based and as long as you play against the computer you get to take as long as you like for each turn. https://store.steampowered.com/app/289070/Sid_Meiers_Civiliz...

Cities: Skylines! Love trying my hand at infrastructure design. https://store.steampowered.com/app/255710

Prison Architect https://store.steampowered.com/app/233450

I've heard good things about Factorio. If you want to dip your toes into first person games you should try the Portal series, which has a bit more action but not too much imo.

These all will work fine on your Macbook Air!

I don't think Factorio is good recommendation here. It's kinda intense with biter on, and trains.

Stardew Valley should be the alternative.

Ohh how could I forget Stardew Valley! That game is great.

Well with factorio it is easy to turn off the biters completely at least.

>Prison Architect

Oh yes, what a game!! Love it!

I want also to recommend Broken Sword 1 2 and 5

And "The Raven: Legacy of a Master Thief" And most of the Goldbox Games,

and my Favorite:

The Longest Journey with ResidualVM and the HD patches.

Cities Skylines is a wonderful game, but sadly it's going to be a slideshow on MacBook Air, or any MacBook other than 15" with dedicated GPU.

I haven't tried it obviously but I assumed it'd work since it works fine on a Switch

Get an Apple Arcade sub for $5 / month (cancel any time) and try things. It's like Netflix but for games, and your SE will be able to handle many of them.

I'm not a fan of mobile games in general but Apple Arcade games have no micro-transactions as a rule and they curated by Apple, which means they are generally very polished.

I can recommend Grindstone in particular, but with the service being like Netflix, you can try just about every game; I'm sure some things will catch your eye.

For your Mac and given your preferences I can recommend Sim City 4, and indie classics like Bastion, Braid and Fez; the latter two will probably challenge your preconceptions about video games.

I'd recommend maybe some strategy games that are turn based or slow in general. Here are my 2 current favorites, they both run well on a Mac.

Civilization 6 is a turn based, hexagon grid, strategy game where you build an empire from the ancient era, researching pottery and animal husbandry, an so on, all the way to the future with satellites and rockets and war robots.

It's all turn based, so it's not particularly intense, however it can be infuriating (usually in a good way) when another civ nukes you because you wouldn't trade with them.

Cities Skylines a city builder. (The most famous game in this genre would be SimCity which is also great fun but can feel quite dated nowadays.) You can either play it traditionally, managing your city budget, revenue, taxes, milestones as your small town grows into a metropolis. Or you can play in a sandbox mode where money and all supplies are infinite and you're mostly dealing with infrastructure and zoning.

Note, while they both run well on a Mac, Cities Skylines can get very laggy when your city reaches the hundreds of thousands of citizens.

I can also second the suggestion for chess, or maybe digital versions of other board games.

Please don't bother with Civilization 6. Get Civilization 5 and the expansions, then get Vox Populi.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ez34jp/the-modders-who-de...

https://civ-5-cbp.fandom.com/wiki/Civ5_CBP_Wikia

Civ 6 is just so bad in comparison.

Some things are up to personal taste, like the graphics and art style. I definitely prefer how Civ 5 looks.

There's also the fact that Civ 5 was primarily designed and developed as a desktop PC game, while Civ 6 was designed as cross-platform (desktop, tablets, consoles, and smartphones). Some people will prefer that too, though.

But there are major differences that aren't up for discussion:

Civ5 has better mods because Firaxis exposed/released APIs that give modders more control/access than Civ6 provides. This means more & better mods.

VP has better AI than Civ 6. I think it has some of the best AI in the history of gaming.

VP has better balancing, for both civs/leaders and tech/social.

VP has an active developer who releases frequently and listens to community feedback. More importantly, VP's developer primarily cares about making the game fun. Firaxis primarily cares about squeezing money out of customers through expansions and DLC.

I really regret buying Civ6. I even got suckered twice with the expansions, thinking they would at least lead to modders bringing the game up to par. Nope.

I have 1000 hours in Civ 5 (mostly Vox Populi), and ~100 in Civ 6. Those hours in Civ6 have been in 5-hour bouts of me trying to enjoy the game, then giving up because it feels so bad to play.

I wish Firaxis would just hire the guy behind VP and put him in charge of the series.

Civ 6 was such a massive disappointment.

It seems like, 10-20 years ago I could reliably look forward to the next installment to the franchise to give me more of what I want, or at least be decent. Lately I realized how almost the opposite is true, that the longer a game series goes on the less innovative it is, the more bloated, less joyful.

If you want a new hobby and not a new time drain I recommend installing https://openemu.org/ on your Air and download some roms. Watch some videos on YouTube going through the best roms for SNES and NeoGeo. So many nice games from that era you can just fire up and play for 30 minutes and have a great time. I find that many modern games require hours and hours to give something back.

Try Portal and Portal 2. The series is really friendly for begginers, and it has one of the best stories and writing in video games. If you never played a first person game, it might take some time to get used to the controls, but Portal is perfect for it - you can play as slow as you want.

Gris: https://store.steampowered.com/app/683320/GRIS/

It is a beautiful, calm, amazing game. It has not text but you can feel the sadness (and happiness) of the game through the visuals and music.

I usually don't like platformers/puzzle games, but I think I finished it in 1-2 sittings

Braid.

Try chess. Lichess.org is good place.

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