5 (More) Games With Near-Infinite Replayability
Need more bang for your buck? These are the games we've been playing on repeat.
Long time, no be-in-your-inbox. We got a little caught up playing these games.
When we decided to pick up Minmaxer again this year, we knew immediately what we wanted to start with: a re-up of our most popular article on replayable games. Just like last time, we thought carefully about price points (because games are still expensive), how often we returned to the game, and the hours of enjoyment we got out of it.
These are the five games we’ve been returning to this year that are worth every single penny.
(Did we miss one you think should be on the list? Comment on our Substack to let us know what you’ve been playing!)
Cult of the Lamb
$24.99 on Steam, Nintendo, and Game Pass | Included with PlayStation Plus
THE MIN:
Manage and grow your cult, go fishing, become a cannibal, live out your polygamist dreams, and sacrifice your followers for power in this darkly cute rogue-like. Two new free DLCs give more options for becoming a debauched cult leader and open up a co-op feature for those who want to work out their religious trauma together.
THE MAX:
It is the nature of beasts to forget, and Gods to be forgotten, and for you to play this game on repeat.
This game captured our attention for its horror wrapped in an adorable package. How easy it was to pick up and put down kept us coming back. A run, on average, only lasts about 8 to 16 minutes. If that feels too short, don’t worry — you’ll spend twice that time managing your cult by indoctrinating new followers, farming, cooking, and doing follower quests. You can choose how evil or benevolent of a leader you want to be, and the fun is all in finding out the best combinations.
Two new free DLCs —Unholy Alliance and Sins of the Flesh — have completely changed the game, opening new doctrines, buildings, and gameplay options that have us picking up the controller any chance we get. The best part? The Lamb can now team up with The Goat, making this a viciously fun way to spend time with a friend.
Dave The Diver
$19.99 on Steam & Nintendo | Included with PlayStation Plus | Game Pass soon?
THE MIN:
This game has it all: Restaurant management? Check. Fishing? Check. Uncovering an ancient undersea civilization you have to help save? Check. A pettable cat? CHECK! This is a low-pressure rogue-like for the rogue-like novice.
THE MAX:
Dave the Diver was a sneaky favorite of the year for us. You play as the titular Dave, who has agreed to start a sushi restaurant with a disgraced world-class chef and a guy who is definitely not a smuggler. Your job: Dive into the Blue Hole, an ever-changing aquatic biome, to find ingredients to use at your restaurant.
Every dive is different, with different fish, supplies, and random encounters. You can spend your hard-earned tips on upgrading your gear and diving deeper into the Blue Hole, where you uncover mysteries of the deep. But no matter how far you go, you’ll always come back to your restaurant, where you’ll manage your waitstaff, social media, and farm … as well as TV show hosts who show up to challenge your cooking skills.
Its retro-inspired graphics, fun music, and quirky mini-games are only part of what makes this so charming. The characters in this game ooze losercore energy, each charming and affable in their own way (Our favorite: Duff, the K-Pop-obsessed weaponsmith). But the best parts of the characters? Their cutscenes.
Oh, and there’s a free Godzilla DLC – if that helps sway you.
Borderlands: The Handsome Collection
$59.80 on Steam | $39.99 on Game Pass | Included with PlayStation Plus
THE MIN:
Blood! Guts! Bad puns! Wanton violence! Borderlands: The Handsome Collection doesn’t offer much variability from play-through to play-through, but it offers a turn-your-brain-off kind of fun that keeps us coming back years later.
THE MAX:
For those who aren’t intimately familiar with the blood-soaked planet Pandora, here’s what you can expect out of a Borderlands game: Get guns shoved in your hands and then wreak havoc on a back-water planet where you’ll battle late-late-late stage capitalist overlords to get your hands on alien tech.
Oh, and there’s lots of poop jokes.
While the entire Borderlands franchise is fun to play, Borderlands 2 has been cited as one of the best games of all time – and that’s despite Claptrap. Borderlands 2, to us, is the perfect distillation of this franchise: it’s raunchy, funny, and gives you that sweet dopamine hit of being nearly impossible to kill (and even if you die, you won’t mind — after all, “anyone can live. Have the courage to die!”).
Handsome Jack is one of the best video villains of all time, equal parts lovable menace and despicable tyrant. And the four characters you can pick from — an assassin who only speaks in haikus, a magical Siren who can trap enemies in energy, a “gunzerker” (self-explanatory), and a turret-wielding commando — offer interesting combat experiences that you enjoy alone or with friends.
And what better time to catch up on the series than after the Borderlands 4 teaser?
Baldur’s Gate 3
$59.99 on Steam | $69.99 on PlayStation and Game Pass
THE MIN:
Look. It swept the Game of the Year awards for a reason.
THE MAX:
If you want a game that changes every single time you start a new game, this is it. Every choice you make affects something. Change your class? It’s a whole new combat system. Decide to play a Drow instead of an Elf this time? You can waltz through a fort that might have taken you hours to fight through otherwise. Fail a dice roll you passed last time? You’re now locked out of that path for the rest of the game.
Yes, Baldur’s Gate 3 is the most expensive on this list. But once you’ve logged over 200 hours in the game without ever leaving Act 2, you won’t care. This game captures the feeling of sitting down and playing a Dungeons and Dragons game with friends. You’ll feel like anything is possible — including owlbear physics previously unknown to this world.
And no, we’re not just telling you this game is good because the companions are hot and full of trauma (and in true D&D fashion, your character can be, too). This game feels like it has endless quests, dialogues, and areas to discover … and Larian Studios has hinted they’re not done yet.
Slay the Spire
$24.99 on Steam | Included with Game Pass, PlayStation Plus, and Apple Arcade
THE MIN:
Whether you are familiar with the deck-building rogue-like genre or not, we’d like to introduce you to the gold standard. With its affordable price tag and low barrier to entry (especially on mobile), this game offers hours of fun.
THE MAX:
Slay the Spire is a highly addictive strategy card game adventure. For each “run” of the game, you start at the bottom of a tower as one of four characters, each with their own deck of cards and skills they use to fight their way up the tower.
Your path upwards holds rooms full of foes, treasure, special encounters, and even more secrets behind powerful floor bosses. Add new cards to your deck after every encounter and discover new synergies to mold your strategy around. Choices you make during your climb can result in game-changing relics and curses that could hurt or help your play style.
The typical gameplay loop is about an hour, but each combat room only takes 1-2 minutes. The game is always fun within seconds of picking it up, and you are never punished for putting it down thanks to the autosaves after every room. You could easily hop on the PC or Console version of the game for a longer session, or utilize the mobile version as the perfect pick-up/put-down game.
For example: John picked up this game and didn’t put it down until 3 hours later when he needed to help finish this article. We said you could put it down easily, not that you would ever want to. (Oh, and there’s a sequel coming, too).
Honorable Mentions:
Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — We had a spirited debate about whether to move this up to our top five. There are two reasons why we didn’t: 1) Nintendo’s high price tag and rare sales, and 2) Because we haven’t returned to start a new game yet. But we know there will be endless shenanigans and engineering opportunities when we do.
The Sims 4 — We finally broke down and bought the expansions. If you’re a person who enjoys spending hours building houses and making Grey’s Anatomy-level drama in your Sims’ lives, they are worth it. Just try and wait for a bundle sale.
Helldivers 2 — For the first-person shooter fans out there, you, too, can join the fight for managed democracy! Recent issues have kept it from being a favorite, but with its highly engaged community, it could be a game to keep an eye on.
oh I am SPRINTING to Cult of the Lamb as soon as my pc's set up again 😤