Games to "play" while doing something else

[Corrupted Unicorn]

So, the older I get, the more I prefer getting things done to playing games  However, in this era where we try to get hands glued to the console as much as possible, I've grown a little more appreciative of games that are a little less... aggressively engaging. I still like games where your full focus is on the game, mind you, but I found out that I can do daily tasks while playing some more monotone games, and this is one of the way I get tasks done, both in the game and in real life 

It's not playing games while doing tasks, it's doing tasks while I play games. 

Most of the time I use music to push through tasks, but when that's not enough or I come up with a good "synergy" between a game and a task, that's what this topic is for 

Here's a few examples:

- Recently I've gotten used to leave Chao Garden (from Sonic Adventure 2) while doing other tasks. Your mileage may vary, but if you have a garden of about 2-3 Chao or a lot of races to do, this is pretty ideal. A lot of Chao Garden is just waiting for things to happen (unless you're grinding for animals/drives), and I enjoy the nice music and cooing sounds of the Chao while I do something else, like working on crafts or cleaning up. 
- I also used to play Toontown while drying my hair. I fell out of it, but it was fun to get 1-2 buildings done while getting my big messy hair done.
- I also know the "timing" of making pancakes and flipping them thru Pokemon battles
- This is not really a "task", but since I suck at eating fruit by its own, I play a little self-made game called "The Fruitening of Isaac". I grab a bunch of fruit that can be eaten in small pieces (cherries, grapes, orange slices...), and sit down for a game of The Binding of Isaac. For each item I get, I eat one piece of fruit. As simple as that. 

Do you have any habit like this where you combine playing with doing chores? 

[candycanearter07]

I have been going on and off with using clicker games? I don't have any other really "idle" games i can use.

[milo]

I love the idea with leaving the Chao Garden on while doing chores around the house. Howcome I never thought of that??

Whenever I'm raising a Digimon v-pet, I'll get their training sessions done while I'm driving. I just have the little guy in my pocket and hit buttons with the training minigame running. I do various forms of this with various vpet games. The Digimon game for Wonderswan is good for having on and sitting there while I get something else done. I can just check in, feed it, clean it's poop, then put it back down and keep working on whatever.

[Bede]

This sort of thing is exactly why I shiny-hunt in Pokemon! A lot of methods require nothing more than moving the character back and forth, which means you can do it while doing a lot of different things!

[invader_gvim]

Stellaris is great if you play it on the lowest speed setting and don't habitually pause it. It can help u develop a very large overarching narrative of space history to think about while you work. It will help you understand why George Lucas thought the Senate scenes wouldn't be boring. It really puts you into that Emperor Palpatine headspace.

A fun thing to do is to be a peaceful empire and roleplay it. I find Stellaris boring when I play as an ultra expansionist imperialist war monger. Diplomacy and economic development are the way to go. I recomend setting yourself to pacifist (but not extreme pacifist) ethos along with maybe dictatorship or oligarchy so you have more control over politics. Democracy can be boring in Stellaris because its too expensive to direct who is in charge of what unless you take the shadow government trait.     

[candycanearter07]

This sort of thing is exactly why I shiny-hunt in Pokemon! A lot of methods require nothing more than moving the character back and forth, which means you can do it while doing a lot of different things!

You do have to do it with one hand though... unless you set up a script, but I feel like that also ruins some of the magic of it.

Speaking of pokemon, I actually did find a idle clicker pokemon game that is pretty fun called... pokeclicker. yea so creative ik. It's pretty cool tho, since you actually do kinda explore each region and apparently they have up to around gen 8 fully programmed which is AWESOME/

[KiwiMeowo]

Im not sure if this game counts, but I feel like HuntCook is a somewhat casual mobile game. While it sometimes require your reflexes and speed with your fingers, most of the time its just collect ingredients and wait for food to finish cooking, especially during the late game.

This game will take a very long time to complete all the main goals with very high upgrade prices and slow cooking time (if you haven’t upgraded the cooking tools), it has been over at least 6 years, and I only just recently completed all the main goals, and I haven’t even 100% the game.

But because this game is a lot of waiting, there’s a chance you will get bored of it. But yea I think this is a game I would like to open sometimes to get rid of a bit of boredom.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Im not sure if this game counts, but I feel like HuntCook is a somewhat casual mobile game. While it sometimes require your reflexes and speed with your fingers, most of the time its just collect ingredients and wait for food to finish cooking, especially during the late game.

This game will take a very long time to complete all the main goals with very high upgrade prices and slow cooking time (if you haven’t upgraded the cooking tools), it has been over at least 6 years, and I only just recently completed all the main goals, and I haven’t even 100% the game.

But because this game is a lot of waiting, there’s a chance you will get bored of it. But yea I think this is a game I would like to open sometimes to get rid of a bit of boredom.

I'm not sure if that quite counts: at least for me, counters are pretty ineffective to get me doing things (pomodoros? only sometimes  ), and visible timers like the ones mobile games often have make me feel anxious and antsy to open the game again as soon as the time is down... and they can take me away a lot from the actual task I'm supposed to be doing.

It's a delicate balance: ideally, you'd want to achieve a state of flow, the perfect synchrony between concentration and enjoyment. However, since I can't really achieve that by doing things like peeling potatoes or unloading the dishwasher  sometimes I need a little extra "push" in form of a game: a fun companion, a little bit of sugar to make the bitter task go down better. But when it comes to games, especially mobile ones for me, it's easy to just skip the medicine and eat up all the colorful yummy candy instead.

If you make it work in a way that helps you, then I'm glad, however, I thought this could be an appropiate time to raise concerns about mobile games and how they work.

Plus, we could talk about something to be done about boredom: it's very easy to not be bored nowadays; there's something always available at our fingertips to help us distract. That also can be a problem.

[Corrupted Unicorn]

Bringing back this topic (and I hope it's okay if I doublepost) because I found another way to make games work (as in, helping me get tasks done) for me 

Okay, so people who are at least a bit into forming good habits are aware of repetition & reward, right?  The more you do a thing, the easier it'll become to do it overtime. And if it's hard at first, it's a good idea to reward yourself along the way. I read about the gummy bear method (and I think it shows up as an example on Atomic Habits, a great book about the psychology and biology of habit-forming!).

With that said, I've struggled to find appropiate "rewards" for myself. I don't want them to be food-based because of several reasons, but I managed to find a very tantalizing non-edible reward...

Shiny Hunting in Pokemon!

Shiny Hunting has already mentioned in this topic (thanks, Bede!) but I'd like to offer an alternative way to use it.

You see, I granulated shiny hunting to the point that every task accomplished is one Pokémon encounter, ergo, one chance to get a shiny. I'm currently horde hunting (which means I can view 5 Pokemon at once and it still counts as a single encounter) on a copy Pokémon Alpha Sapphire with the Shiny Charm (thanking the Unicorn from the past for completing the Pokédex back when the servers were up  ). This is the most optimal Pokémon game I own for shiny hunting, but it doesn't detract from the point that getting a reward is as quick and easy as whipping out the 3DS, turning on the game, look for a Pokémon, defeat it, save, close the 3DS. It takes less than 2 minutes, you don't have to buy extra candies somewhere and always keep a tempting full stock around, all it needs is some batter charge and it has variable rewards integrated into it.

So overall, this idea, paired with making my progress visual by making "progress bars" with post-its on the wall, seems to be my most effective habit-growing method so far!!! 

(in less exciting news, the Pokémon Diamond copy I hacked with the Cute Charm glitch has been relegated to dishwasher duty)