Baldur's Gate 3
2023Baldur's Gate 3
A tabletop campaign given a budget, where almost every stupid idea you have actually works.
RPGStrategy
The best long games worth hundreds of hours
43 hand-picked games
Games you don't finish so much as move into. Deep systems, big worlds, or a loop good enough to keep pulling you back. Start one of these when you have room for it.
Elden Ring
2022Elden Ring
An enormous, hostile world that explains nothing and rewards you for poking at it anyway.
Action RPG
Stardew Valley
2016Stardew Valley
Inherit a farm, meet the neighbours, lose four hundred hours. One developer made all of it.
SimulationRPG
Minecraft
2011Minecraft
The default answer to "what should we play together" for an entire generation.
SandboxSurvival
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
2015The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
The side quests are better written than most games' main stories. Budget accordingly.
RPG
Hades
2020Hollow Knight
2017Hollow Knight
A vast, quiet, hand-drawn ruin that trusts you to find your own way through it.
MetroidvaniaPlatformer
Red Dead Redemption 2
2018Red Dead Redemption 2
Slow on purpose. Give it the first six hours and the pace becomes the point.
ActionAdventure
Grand Theft Auto V
2013Grand Theft Auto V
Still the benchmark for a city that feels like it was running before you arrived.
ActionOpen World
Terraria
2011Terraria
Looks like a side-scrolling Minecraft, plays like a boss-rush RPG with a construction habit.
SandboxAdventure
Cyberpunk 2077
2020Cyberpunk 2077
Launched badly, rebuilt thoroughly. The version on shelves now is the one that was promised.
RPGShooter
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
2017The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Climb anything, cook nonsense, ignore the plot for thirty hours. All of that is intended.
AdventureOpen World
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
2025Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
Medieval Bohemia with no dragons and no chosen one. Learning to fight is genuinely learning to fight.
RPG
Monster Hunter Wilds
2025Monster Hunter Wilds
The most approachable Monster Hunter yet, which still means the first ten hours are a tutorial.
Action RPG
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
2023The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Hands you a physics sandbox and a glue gun, then refuses to say what the solution is.
AdventureOpen World
Sid Meier's Civilization VI
2016Sid Meier's Civilization VI
The one-more-turn game. Start after dinner and watch the sun come up.
Strategy
Deep Rock Galactic
2020Deep Rock Galactic
Four dwarves, one cave, no map. The best drop-in co-op shooter nobody talks about enough.
ShooterCo-op
Monster Hunter: World
2018Monster Hunter: World
Fight a big animal, wear the big animal, fight a bigger animal. Deeply satisfying loop.
Action RPG
Sea of Thieves
2018Sea of Thieves
The sailing is a four-person job, which is exactly why it works with friends.
AdventureCo-op
Valheim
2021Valheim
Viking survival with genuinely good building. Made by five people, sold millions.
SurvivalSandbox
Assassin's Creed Shadows
2025Assassin's Creed Shadows
Two protagonists with genuinely different playstyles — one sneaks, one very much does not.
ActionOpen World
Hollow Knight: Silksong
2025Hollow Knight: Silksong
Faster and more aggressive than Hollow Knight. Worth the wait, which is not a low bar.
MetroidvaniaPlatformer
Dark Souls III
2016Dark Souls III
The most approachable entry point to the series that made every other game harder.
Action RPG
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
2020Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Runs on a real-world clock and asks for twenty minutes a day, indefinitely.
Simulation
Ghost of Tsushima
2020Ghost of Tsushima
Follows the wind instead of a minimap, which changes how the whole world reads.
ActionOpen World
Elden Ring Nightreign
2025Elden Ring Nightreign
Elden Ring restructured into three-player roguelike runs. A strange idea that mostly works.
Action RPGRoguelike
Horizon Zero Dawn
2017Horizon Zero Dawn
Robot dinosaurs, and a mystery about how they got there that genuinely pays off.
Action RPG
No Man's Sky
2016No Man's Sky
The redemption arc is real — years of free updates turned it into what it claimed to be.
SurvivalExploration
Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
2025Death Stranding 2: On the Beach
Still a game about walking carefully while carrying too much, and still unlike anything else.
ActionAdventure
Hades II
2025Hades II
Bigger and denser than Hades, with a protagonist who is much less interested in your approval.
RoguelikeAction
Persona 5 Royal
2020Persona 5 Royal
Part turn-based RPG, part calendar management, entirely the best-dressed game ever made.
RPG
Subnautica
2018Subnautica
Underwater survival that understands the scariest thing in the ocean is not being able to see.
SurvivalAdventure
Ghost of Yotei
2025Ghost of Yotei
A new protagonist, a colder setting, and the same trick of letting the landscape do the navigating.
ActionOpen World
Dead Cells
2018Dead Cells
Fast enough that a failed run costs you nothing but the urge to start another one.
RoguelikeMetroidvania
Slay the Spire
2019Slay the Spire
The game that made deckbuilding a genre. Still the cleanest version of the idea.
RoguelikeCard Game
Balatro
2024Cities: Skylines
2015Cities: Skylines
You will spend four hours on a roundabout and consider it time well spent.
SimulationStrategy
RimWorld
2018RimWorld
A story generator wearing a colony sim's clothes. The disasters are the content.
SimulationStrategy
Factorio
2020Factorio
The factory must grow. People say that as a joke until about hour thirty.
SimulationStrategy
Crusader Kings III
2020Vampire Survivors
2022Vampire Survivors
You barely press anything and it is still one of the most compulsive things ever made.
RoguelikeAction
Don't Starve Together
2016Don't Starve Together
Harsh, funny, and much easier to stomach with friends dying alongside you.
Survival
FTL: Faster Than Light
2012FTL: Faster Than Light
Your ship is always slightly on fire and someone is always in the wrong room.
StrategyRoguelike
How this list is put together
Every game here was added to the PlayNext catalog by hand and tagged individually. The order is editorial — a popularity weight set by a person, not an aggregate review score — so the games most people are actually looking for come first rather than whichever obscure title happens to have a 9.4 average from forty ratings.
Length estimates are how long the game takes to finish, or to feel done with if it doesn't end. Use the game finder to narrow any of these lists further by time and budget.