Sometimes, despite your busy schedule, you’ll find yourself in the house with little to do. At the same time, you don’t really feel like expending a lot of energy on anything.
These are the perfect instances where a good game fills that gap very nicely, and in this article, you’ll learn which ones are best for keeping your mind busy without having to work too hard.
10 FUN GAMES TO KEEP YOUR MIND OCCUPIED
Whether you are playing board games or games on your phone, there are some benefits to keeping your mind busy. It is better than vegging out on the couch in front of the TV for hours!
Here are some fun games to keep you busy when you just need a break from all that housework!
Wordle
Wordle is everywhere these days – everyone seems to be playing it. There are a lot of good reasons for that, too: the game is fast and addictive, making for a great way to occupy your mind and improve your vocabulary to boot.
The premise is nice and straightforward: you have to guess a five-letter word, and each time you guess, you get a hint as to what the word is based on which letters are correct and which are wrong. It’s a game of deduction, ultimately, and it offers just enough of a mental workout to keep you hooked without being too taxing.
Elevate
If you want to have the games you play have a little more utility in your daily life, try Elevate. The game is a lot like Dr. Kawashima’s Brain Training, that released for the Nintendo DS roughly 15 years ago, in that it offers a series of cleverly designed minigames that are built from the ground up to improve your mental fitness.
The game can be fully customized to suit you and your learning style, and it offers steady challenges to keep you on track over the long term.
Monument Valley
Monument Valley is a great choice when you want to fully relax. The game is essentially a series of interesting puzzles set against the backdrop of some truly stunning visual design, with your goal being to guide your character from area to area, beating each small challenge and then moving on to the next.
You’ll easily get swept away in the atmosphere of it all, and it’s perfect for both shorter and longer sessions, depending on where the day takes you.
What Remains of Edith Finch
What Remains of Edith Finch is more broadly categorized as a walking simulator, but that’s far more interesting than it sounds. All it really means is that there’s no true fail state to the game or ‘game over’. You’re simply walking around and letting the narrative carry you, and this particular walking simulator has a great one.
The game follows the story of Edith as she travels back to her abandoned home to discover the origins of a perplexing family curse. It’s a brilliantly written story with many twists and turns, and something you can just meander through at your leisure.
Oxenfree
Oxenfree and its sequel, Oxenfree 2, are very well-told tales. They’re part horror, part thriller, and take place on a mysterious island with some strange phenomena that’s best not delved into as not to spoil.
The cool thing about these games are the branching paths and, eventually, branching endings. You’ll spend most of your time listening to conversations and then responding with one of three different answers, each of which alters the story in a subtle way.
You’ll be pretty much hooked from the start, and only taking roughly four hours to complete, you could easily get it finished in a day.
Lumosity
Lumosity is another set of mental fitness games that offers the player more than 40 unique games that aim to build skills in different areas of the brain.
The platform has been developed with the help of scientists and aims to improve various aspects of your life, such as your attention span, memory, and problem-solving.
It’s a nice one to try while you sit and have a coffee in the mid-afternoon.
Chess
Chess has a lot of staying power as games go, and that’s partly because people keep coming up with increasingly more complex strategies. There’s a lot of depth to chess, but even if you’ve never played before, you’ll quickly get the hang of the rules.
One of the best ways to play these days is online: from the comfort of your sofa, you can play on your smart device or laptop with players all over the world, and be matched with someone of your current skill level. If you’ve never tried the game before, there’s never been a better time.
GeoGuessr
If you love learning about new places or are an avid traveller, GeoGuessr may well be the perfect game for you.
The game leverages the power of Google Street View to plonk you down somewhere in the world, and it’s then your job to figure out where you are. The more accurate you are, the better you perform.
It’s a great formula and can help inspire you to book your next holiday as you learn about each location.
Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley is a great game to kick back and relax with. You start having just inherited a rather barren plot of land in a farming village, and your objective is to make a life for yourself there.
This involves a lot of weeding, planting, and rearing, but also a lot of communicating. It has some truly brilliant dialogue between its characters, and it’s surprisingly easy to get lost in this colorful 2D world for hours at a time.
Two Dots
Two Dots is a very simple game indeed, but within that simplicity is a lot of nuance. The aim is to connect colored dots together to complete a series of tasks, which gradually get more and more difficult.
It’s another great one for getting your mind working, but not in a way that causes any kind of stress or frustration. The game is masterful in the way it builds upon the initial concepts, offering just a little bit of extra challenge each time as not to be too abrupt with a big difficulty spike.
WHAT WILL YOU PLAY NEXT?
You’ve now got some great options for your next day in. Hopefully, you’ll discover something here that resonates with you, and perhaps one or more of these games will lead to the discovery of others down the road. Have fun!
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