General

If you're interested in trying out Pokemon, I would start with one of the Let's Go games.

How much do you use your phone throughout the day and how many apps with notifications do you have?

Endless notifications for every email, social media message, YouTube or Tiktok video (not to mention the endless numbers of videos on feed) has taken a toll on people's attention span.

Tiktok's short form videos have become so popular that YouTube and Meta are trying to copy them outright with Shorts and Reels respectively.

I think trying to find a game that suits a short attention span might not be the best way to go about it. If you uninstall some apps when possible, and turn off notifications on others, that might help too.

Back to your request though, try finding some games that proactively divide their gameplay into manageable chunks.

You get overwhelmed by Breath of the Wild? Try Four Swords Adventure for gamecube - each level is self contained and takes maybe an hour or so to complete. Or Hyrule Warriors if an hour is too much right now, most of those missions are maybe 10-20 minutes each.

Other genres that are really good at chunking:
Classic Platformers (with defined levels, not Metroidvanias)
Racing Games (though not so much yhe open world ones like Forza Horizon)
Strategy RPGs

benstylus wrote:


I am definitely aware that this is causing the issue for me. Just last week I downloaded and app called one sec to help take measures on my tik tok usage, and it's help me realize I was just instinctively opening the app whenever I had any kind of down time while working, since I WFH. It's definitely already caused some significant harm to my attention span though.

Good looks on Hyrule Warriors. I'll check that one out.

Thank you.

Scott wrote:


These look interesting. May be the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thank you.

braxton wrote:

They're nice because they're remakes of Gen 1, so you'll get to start right from the beginning, but with plenty of modernization and QoL updates. The games does a good job of teaching you how things work. The catching is also more enjoyable (IMO), and it's a game that would be easy to just pick up here and there and play for just a little bit.

If you're new to the Nintendo catalog, I highly recommend getting Nintendo Switch Online and trying out some SNES titles. Games like Super Mario World and Legend of Zelda Link to the Past have aged really well and there might be other games that pique your interest, like Breath of Fire II and EarthBound.

There's always Mario Kart. You can get on, play just a few races then go do something else. No story to keep up with or anything. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe has a ridiculous amount of courses now, it's endless fun.

Scott wrote:

I do actually have Mario Kart, Mario Party Superstars, and Katamari Damacy lol

Donut County is a fun/silly little game. Very short overall, and each level is short.

Also short and enjoyable: Journey

What about beat’em ups like Shredder’s Revenge? Those should be suitable I would think.

I think focus can be blamed on the game. I can't get into BOTW either. I keep trying and always lose interest even though my son has played through it 3 times and thinks it's the best game ever. That's one where I need more on the map.

All 3 of the PS4 Tomb Raider games are worth revisiting. They hold up great, and if you just go towards the goals it's completely linear and you can ignore trying for collectibles. Same for the earlier Uncharted's.

When I look at an open world map and it's just massively packed with icons I usually end up just going straight for unlocking the fast-travel points.

One of my favorite games of all time is great for those with short attention spans: N + +. It's a platformer with extremely short levels, but usually require multiple attempts to complete them. The best part for me is the multiplayer. My daughter and I have had a blast with this one on our Switch. While the challenges can often be overwhelming and frustrating, the joy you feel after comleting the levels makes it worth it. Since it has over 2,000 levels, I don't think I'll ever finish it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFl3zU56-e0

Warioware.

https://www.mariowiki.com/WarioWare_(series)

I would also suggest Burly Men at Sea. You can finish the story in 15 minutes or less. It's a choose-your-own adventure format, so the value is in the replayability - make different choices and see where that leads you. I didn't mind the repetition, but I can see how it could be annoying. I used a guide to remind me which choices to make, so that I didn't do the same ones by accident. As I mentioned, each play session is super bite-sized.

I can advise which games to avoid: open-world games tend to have so much content and often little direction, so it can be easy to get side-tracked and lose the thread of the main campaign.

I like the older God of War games (the Greek setting), because the levels are mostly linear, the story is linear, and the pacing is usually steady/predictable: you keep moving forward and there aren't optional side quests or other distractions from the plot.

In that vein, I also like Darksiders 1. While it has more backtracking (typically optional), I liked the lack of involved inventory management, and the straightforward "go here next and do this" nature. I never felt lost, stuck, or unsure what to do next - the game maintained momentum. Like GoW, there's a balance between puzzles, traversal, and combat. Tidbits of story are sprinkled in, which I find very rewarding (I like story-driven games, otherwise I feel as if there's little point to whatever I'm doing - I am not motivated by getting high scores, for example).

I haven't had a long attention span for games in a bit, but Cult of the Lamb is doing it for me right now

Is the point of you asking for recommendations that you want games to cater to a short attention span, or that you are trying to increase your attention span? Because those are going to be different lists

benstylus wrote:

I recommended Cult of the Lamb because it kinda hits both. The gameplay is great for short periods but I feel like I can dig in and play for a long time as well. Pure short attention span would be more like Vampire Survivors

benstylus wrote:

I would say moreso that I'm trying to increase my attention span

Alaisiagae wrote:

Great recommendations with the God of War games and Darksiders 1. Will check these out! Thanks!

citizen_zane wrote:
Is that different from N+ on the ?

nonamesleft wrote:

Yes. It's the third and final game in the series.

citizen_zane wrote:
There were 3 games?

Had no idea.

I remember my cousin used to play N+ on the DS. Really enjoyed it.

If the goal is to increase your attention span I would suggest reading books. I know that's an eye roll suggestion, but that really helped me a lot.

I 2nd reading books...

For video games: try Dorfromantik on PC or Switch. It is a very calming game where you are laying tiles to try to get points. Every turn is a new tile that has you look at the tile map of the beautifully illustrated tiles you've created and see how to maximize it for points. It's glorious.

Voxelgram https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/voxelgram-...

It's good for playing in short bursts, it saves your progress separately per puzzle, and the Steam version has a massive amount of user created puzzles (some good, many are just bad.)

I have pretty bad ADD so starting and then FINISHING a game is very hard for me, but I have played Hades for 30+ hours so far because the ability to play for small bits of time and save your run literally anywhere and just turn the console off has been perfect. One of the best games I have ever played, which isn't really a surprise since it's the same people who pumped out Bastion and Transistor.

I’m not sure how useful of a recommendation it is and I don’t have the shortest of attention spans but I fudge with Tetris 99 pretty hard on switch. It’s usually my go to game when I get out of work and just kinda wanna zone out (weirdly zone in after a few rounds). It’s busy enough to focus my mind on a singular task but simplistic enough to not busy my mind with anything else.