I’m not gonna name any names, but somebody here at Fanbyte totally beefed it today by way, way oversleeping, party due to a late-night playthrough of Inside that was too enthralling to stop.
This person had plenty of opportunities to put the game down and go to bed, but their real mistake was starting a game like that on a work night. So! In order to prevent additional lapses of impulse control in the future, I’ve assembled this brief list of games that I they can avoid on work nights.
For everyone who doesn’t work here, you should still heed this warning! Avoid these games if you have work and/or school in the morning!
Civilization 5
I’m calling out Civ 5 because I know that’s the one that the person in question owns, but technically no Civilization game should be played on a work or school night. The turns in this game are so quick, and their effects so tantalizingly incremental, that succumbing to the allure of just one more turn is an inevitability.
You tell yourself that you’re only going to play for a couple of hours, and the next thing you know it’s 7:30 a.m., three days later, and the apocalypse happened in the interim. Don’t become a Twilight Zone character by playing Civilization 5 when you’ve got stuff the next day.
Dead Cells
Similarly, Dead Cells‘ does a tremendous job of incentivizing just one more run. Maybe you’re only a dozen or so cells from finishing that big upgrade you’ve been working on. Maybe you’re this close to breaking the top 100 on the daily challenge leaderboard. Maybe you walked up to the start of the first zone, just to see what the random weapons were this time, and — oh look! It’s your favorite pair! One more run couldn’t hurt anything, really, could it?
It could. One run turns into two, then three, then four, and before you know it, you’re waking up in a hospital bed, having been in a coma for 10 years. Were you really playing Dead Cells that whole time? Was it a dream? Who is this woman crying at your bedside? Don’t risk it.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Again, this actually applies to all XCOM games (well, save for The Bureau), but I’m working off this person’s Steam library. Another turn-based game, XCOM pulls the user into a fugue state of strategic machinations that are exceedingly difficult to break away from, especially when something goes wrong.
Okay, so that last mission was a disaster and you lost your best sniper, who was dating your lead engineer you had decided, but after this next mission you’ll be able to piece your operation back together. At least, that’s what you think. In reality, you’ll be playing XCOM for the next 14 hours, and at the end of it the world will have been conquered by aliens, and you’ll have lost your game of XCOM.
Nier: Automata
Story-focused games can be just as dangerous as roguelikes and strategy titles, especially when it’s something like Nier: Automata. While always engrossing, Nier becomes exponentially more consuming after its second ending, so if you’re anywhere near the end of Ending B, save it for the weekend.
That’s what happened actually to all the humans, it turns out. They weren’t destroyed by aliens, they just played Nier when they had stuff in the morning and eventually this is how everything turned out. Don’t make the same mistake!
Overwatch
Overwatch was actually predicted by Nostradamus, in the eighth quatrain of Century I, from his tome Les Propheties:
How often will you be captured, O city of the sun?
Changing laws that are barbaric and vain.
Bad times approach you. No longer will you be enslaved.
Great Hadrie will revive your veins.
There is no more egregious or inescapable a treadmill than that of Overwatch. It should be avoided at all costs, especially when you’ve got stuff in the morning. Let this list be your Great Hadrie — revive your veins!!
