Why I Love... ‘One More Go' Videogames

These are the titles that have us begging, “Please, just one more go!” – and they’re just as important as time-sapping epics

- Alex Nelson

Gaming technology has progressed to the point that we have tonnes of narrative-driven campaigns, rich with multiple choice stories and interwoven plot threads. In the triple-A space, these games have been common for years. Think your Witchers. Think your Mass Effects. Sprawling games that reward your hours of play and prolonged gaming sessions with ever deeper lore, more characters to interact with, more quests and more collectables.

But sometimes, you just want to stuff all that and dive into a purer, much more simple gaming experience. After all, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘game’ as a “complete episode or period of play, ending in a final result”. No mention of loot, collectables or side-quests there. That’s why I so cherish ‘one-more-go’ games, titles that you can dip in and out of, chipping away a few minutes here and there to suit the amount of time you may have available to you.

Some minds may turn to mobile games at this point, lamenting shovelware business strategies and dismissing that style of gaming with a sharply muttered “casual”. But these sorts of games can be anything but casual, offering experiences just as deep and easy to learn but as hard to master as any hours-long RPG with a spindly skill tree.

Try again