I am not a professional gamer nor do I have much time to invest into a game in one stretch. However I do enjoy the cumulative progress I make with each session I have with the games, specifically progress of acquiring loot, money, powers or in-game materials. Are there any games that try to match my interests?
An example of such games would be Papa Louie’s food games. Though these are very simplistic and made for kids, their per-day game sessions (which last about 10 minutes) perfectly fit the idea of the type of game I am looking for. (I could have come up with a more appropriate or mature example, but that is exactly the point why I am looking for similar games.)
I have looked into the genre of roguelikes, however the basic premise of these games are that they start all over again from each session, which is what I am trying to avoid.
I can play on PC (controller included) and mobile. Apart from this, I would really appreciate if the game is under 10GB, single-player and is just easy in general to understand and play.
Hades is a good one. Every run is under 20 minutes and makes some reasonable progress with personal upgrades.
Minecraft is also good at this. Even if you’ve only got 5 minutes, 5 minutes of mining or 5 minutes of building is appreciable. The only task that I would avoid (without a map markers mod) is exploration.
On mobile, I’ve been really enjoying Mini Metro. You typically finish a level in 5-10 minutes, and it can be surprisingly challenging.
Against the Storm is also good. Every game is a couple hours long, but you can drop it and pick it up at will. The game never gets so bogged down that it’s too hard to just look around your settlement while paused and remind yourself what needs doing.
Another option is a rhythm game like Etterna. You don’t progress with levels or game mechanics, but in the skills you gain as a player. I’ve found the skills in accuracy and such to be surprisingly durable, and easy to make marked improvements just playing a 1-5 minute song every day. Though while the time needed is only a couple minutes, I think that going more than a week or so without a session would result in some degradation of skills that you’d have to get back.