If you like resource/simulator games, 50 Years is a stripped down nation sim where the goal is to keep your kingdom going for fifty years. It’s meant for fairly quick play. It’s also $3.50 on sale right now on Steam.
Darkest Dungeon can be picked up and played in small bites. It has an overarching story but mainly you’re just doing side-scrolling turn based dungeons until you’re ready for the end game dungeons. It’s easy to just play one or two dungeons when you can. Only down side is that you could be ending on a brutal defeat since the dungeons are designed to chew you up.
Whelp. Looks like I’m hooked on Rimworld. Nearly lost two of my three colonists in a mad squirrel attack, had to amputate Sparkles’ leg but somehow she can still walk around. Hmm. And just survived the first, hard, ‘‘So exactly what are the drawbacks of eating human flesh?’’ winter. Fortunately, a giant sleeping sloth saved the day. (By allowing me to kill and eat it.) I’m not sure how long the joy will last, but so far I’ve played 20 hours on relaxed AI and I am into it. And it seems like the better you get at it, the faster you get yourself killed, so in the future I can see these games playing themselves out in 2-3 hour spurts.
I tried Oxygen Not Included which was great fun but it also gives you a sense of pervasive impending doom. I quit when it became clear that all of my duplicants were going to die, that I probably couldn’t prevent it, and that it was going to be days if not weeks to witness their slow demise. I don’t understand physics or engineering well enough to excel at it, the most minor of errors can destroy your whole setup. The only real reward in that game is continuing your bleak existence just a little bit longer. I might describe Rimworld that way, but the rewards seem bigger. Surviving a winter seems huge!