For me it was Terraria, Satisfactory, Tetris Effect Master Mode, Minecraft with Mekanism mod & CSGO / CS2 (almost 2000 hours in CS alone).
Edit: There are so many answers that I might only reply if I have something interesting to say. I will read all of your answers though. 🙂
Edit 2: It has become too much for me and I have to disable notifications. Thank you for the massive response and please continue to discuss with everyone here. ❤️ 🫡
Definitely animal well. When I played it out was the coolest sense of discovery that I had ever felt playing a game, and it kept going for so long. I would play it whenever I had a spare minute, especially if I had an idea for a puzzle. I’m not great at normal puzzle games, my brain just doesn’t work like that, but I love exploration and easy puzzles and animal well really scratched that itch for me in a way no other game has.
Aside from that, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had like 10,000 hours in Minecraft, since that’s pretty much the only video game I like to play, and I’ve been playing it for almost ten years. Not an addiction though, I only play when I have the time and the desire.
Path of Exile. And by extension Path of Building.
I’ve only played like 8 leagues (each league is around 3 months long) and I have almost 5k hours :/.
Usually if I decide to play a league, i will make sure I have no obligations for an entire month and then I will take the first week of the league off work.
Have you tried Last Epoch?
I’ve heard about it but never played it.
So many, it’s generally how it goes for me as I mostly play one game at a time. But some that have REALLY made me dive deep and play many hours a day for long times: Halo 1, 2, 3 and Reach, Elder Scrolls Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, Minecraft, Terraria, Starbound, Satisfactory, Forza Horizon 4 and 5, Rocket League. There are many more, these are just what I thought of at the moment.
And the one I still play a ton and see no end in sight is Warframe, such a good game, and both the community and the devs are awesome so even after getting 1,200 hours in two years I’m still giddy about it and have so much fun.I think most here are too generous with the term addiction.
I had to uninstall Hearthstone years ago, because I compulsively played it multiple hours every single day, despite not really having fun playing it anymore. It was either grinding to get cards or tilting on ladder. That’s what I would call an addiction.
Edit: After Hearthstone I played a lot of Slay the Spire and after that Marvel Snap. Never more then I enjoyed it, so I wouldn’t count those.
I’m not sure if I should tell you to try Balatro, or to stay far away from it…
I had to put balatro down after spending 4 days straight trying to get conpletionist++. After the few hundred hours it took to get the rest of the achievements. I will get those last damned rare Jimbo’s at some point!!
Rares are the easy part, it’s the damn food commons that threw me off of it
I got a couple hundred dollars deep into hearthstone, but luckily they came out with cubelock and I lost all interest after having to fight that stupid deck over and over.
I loved that deck! Sorry, but I guess in the end I might have helped you escape.
You are right, that is part of an actual addiction diagnosis. It’s good that you did the right thing.
850 hours on Skyrim and counting.
I seem to have it under control now.
Terraria was like absolute heroin for me.
Rust. Its a horribly addicting game thats ruined many lives. Also, Frostpunk.
DOTA 2, man. Once you get past the massive learning curve, there is just so much to do in-game. Every match is entirely unique, with constant updates, tournaments, battle passes, and what have you. When I feel like disappearing, I disappear into DOTA.
Elite. Lode Runner. Castles of Dr. Creep. Boulderdash.
Lode Runner was so cool!!
We had LodeRunner battles, where one had to play (and survive!) a level that the other player had designed. It was fun designing them, and it was fun trying to solve that one got served in return.
Slay the Spire
There are a bunch of games that I’ll get super into, play for a while, then be finished with.
Slay the Spire taps perfectly into every compulsive center of my brain to make me keep playing. Like, we talk about ‘addictive’ games usually just as ones you like a lot… this is the first time I started to see it closer to actual addictive (though not actually a serious thing for me). It’s such a sweetspot for my habits, I feel like I’d just keep saying ‘one more run’ so consistently, hours, days would evaporate. It kept me busy, to the detriment of doing other things.
You get on a good run, better keep going. You lose a run, might as well just start a new one and see if you have good opening luck. There’s rarely a point that feels like “I should stop”, until some IRL obligation comes up.
I still go back to it often when I just want an enjoyable way to kill time, or do something while I watch videos/tv on the side.
Other games with roguelike elements tap into this feeling too, like Balatro, Vampire Surviors, or Hades. But STS is where it felt strongest to me.
I respect STS but I LOVE Monster Train (haven’t played the second).
Crash bandicoot 3 was my first heperfocus game. I played that game until I finished all levels, first time I did that my entire life. Second one was Skyrim. I played it so much!! I clocked over a thousand hours on the vanilla game, and I played more modded than vanilla, I can’t tell how much I played in total because steam didn’t track my modded playthrough. Then there was super Mario Galaxy (I got every star except the stupid thrash bombing one and I’m still so fucking mad about it). My most recent ones are monster hunter world (plus DLC) and current is monster hunter wilds, I’ve already 100% it and am in the process of crafting every single armour and weapons
Neverwinter Nights and Planeshift are the two that come to mind
Old School RuneScape. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like crack. I cannot stop playing it.
I have never left the Terraria addiction. Mods have made that significantly worse haha.
I considered playing calamity, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea. 😅
In playing around with the idea too. I can beat the vanilla game in my sleep, and I enjoy Thorium’s extra content, but from what I understand, Calamity ups the difficulty several notches, so I’m a bit hesitant.
Balatro










