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. ❤️ 🫡
Factorio, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria 3, Baldur’s Gate 3 when it was new, and special shout-out to Outer Wilds which hooked me unforgettably
Everquest Online Adventures and then City of Heroes.
For EQOA had 3 CRT tvs and five PS2s with an account for each one going for a couple of years straight. I worked on the road at the time. I was in a different hotel every two months and lugged that around with me. I was in a guild, led raids, powerleveled my and other people’s alts.
City of Heroes was similar. Three accounts, I met my ex wife there, was a prominent member in one of the largest Super Groups in the game. I was there from the first couple months of the game u til it shut down.
When I found out about the CoH private servers I went back and caught myself slipping right back to the old ways so I haven’t touched a multi-player game since.
All FromSoftware games including most recently AC6. Also Stardew. I’ve beaten Stardew probably more than any other game and there’s a ton of mods that expand the experience.
I was in university and had just passed my midterms and as a treat for myself picked up both KOTORs. Mainlined that shit.
Gemstone 3 mud back in the late 90’s. Had its claws in me for a few years.
Most games that spark a Tetris Effect with me, where I’m still playing them in my mind while I’ve put them down hours ago, are industrial automation games. So the likes of Factorio, Satisfactory, Captain Of Industry.
Diablo 2, Skyrim, BL2, BL3, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Valheim, V Rising, Oblivion Remastered, D3, and now Helldivers 2. Roughly in order.
Subnautica, Witcher 3, Far Cry 4, Metro Exodus, Dead By Daylight so far
Rhythm Doctor
Sad to say league
Less sad to say hades. Incredible game that I have preemptively already told my partner she won’t see me for a week after hades 2 comes out
My heart aches knowing I’ll likely have to wait an extra year to play Hades II after it comes out. u_u
Payday 2 probably takes the gold medal for me. I was once playing casually with a friend of me after work, chatting about the day, and when we were about to finish the level we noticed that we damn near broke the world record for that level, a record made by 4 players.
I only played payday 2 casually because all I would play is hoxton breakout LOL
I was invested enough though to make my own skin mod (pre lootbox) and it was kinda popular
Urban Terror, it has such a high skill ceiling. Spent many hours just happily running jump maps, let alone all the thousand of games. Thinking of going back.
I once calculated my Minecraft hours across all platforms I’ve played on and it’s over HALF A YEAR. I was like mega addicted in middle school, I still play often.
servers SUCK now though, they’re all pay to win and have custom texture packs that look horrible :(
the best one I’ve found (that isn’t private) is UltraVanilla, and I actually found it from firefoxes “Minecraft Indy wiki redirect” plugin which crashed once and there was a little box on the side which mentioned the server bc the person that made the plugin is an admin of the server. When I joined the discord I had already interacted with several members from other modding discords.
As far as I know im the ONLY person that checked it out due to that popup lolI don’t play on that server because some friends made a different (private) server.
If only I could relive the wonders of beta 1.5 from fresh
Don’t get me wrong I think the evolution of minecraft is cool and one of my favorite mod packs was sevtech, which was around 2017, but beta 1.5 hits different when kid me was just spamming random mats into the crafting table to see if it built anything
I’ve easily got a full year into Minecraft since I started playing back in high school. and that’s just active hours, not afk. I’ve never joined a public server
even accounting for the second account I bought for java and the bedrock account I may have had to buy when my account didn’t port over properly, it’s still the highest time/$ game I’ve got
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.
Operation Harsh Doorstop multiplayer - I can’t get enough of Project Reality style semirealistic battlefield games.
Motortown: Behind The Wheel - the driving just feels so damn good…
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead - specifically Sky Islands mod to give the game a more “run based” focused feel. This game has passed an event horizon of environmental richness no other adventure game comes close to, the landscape truly feels alive and it is very addictive in a good way.
Call Of Duty Mobile & Other Battle Royale Mobile Games - such as (now defunct) Apex Legends Mobile or Farlight 84, never spent money on it in addictive way I just find higher level competitive battle royale gameplay fascinating.
