Looking for casual hotseat game recommendations
Every year my friend group and I have a long weekend meetup where we rent a house and communally nerd out with each other. Lots of tabletop gaming; plenty of Magic matches; handheld consoles everywhere; etc.
I always bring my Steam Link so people can cast their Decks to the TV, and I'm looking for recommendations for games that would be good for hotseat play where people can pass around a Deck and each play a little bit of. (So, specifically single player games rather than multiplayer games.)
In past years Peggle and Peglin have been big hits with the group. They're immediately pick-uppable even by people who don't play a lot of videogames (of which there are a few in our group). They're also eminently entertaining to watch because it's easy to tell what's going on.
I'm looking for other games that would fit the bill: casual, simple, fun, easy to hand off to others, relatively quick intervals between players. If you have any recommendations, let me know!
Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - This is technically multi-player, but only one person is holding the deck at a time. Swapping out hot-seat defusing would be great, plus the rest of the players can help defuse either individually or together. Intervals can be super quick depend on how good or bad your communication is.
Death by Scrolling by Ron Gilbert (of Monkey Island fame) is a fun pick-up-and-play title from last year where you constantly run upwards in purgatory until you either reach the ferryman or get killed again by something. A single run takes a couple of minutes and it would be possible to hand over to a different player in between levels. The progression, humour and goal design could work well in a group setting.
Peggle is fun! Definitely keep that one in the mix.
Dorfromantik might be interesting to experiment with. It's slower paced but still easy to pick up and hand off to other people. A Little to the Left is a bit more challenging but it's a similar puzzle game that might also be interesting.
How many players are you gonna have?
Recently, I really liked Sunderfolk, which is a TTRPG-inspired game, so tactical combat, some story, but generally separated missions with a card-system. You host the game on the big screen and everyone uses their phones as a controller.
It might not fit your criterion of "easy to hand off to others".
Separately, the whole menagerie of wobbly-party-games like
comes to my mind. Those should be easy to pass along for a single round.
My regular multiplayer group and I really loved Sunderfolk, though we're in the market for something more casual for our upcoming weekend.
Should be around 10 or so people total, maybe more, maybe less. It's unlikely that everyone will be doing hotseat stuff all at once though.
Hear me out, Dark Souls 3.
It's the "most casual" of the Dark Souls and I think it works really well as a hot seat game.
It's got enough teath for the sweaty players to have fun and it's easy enough for casuals to pick up and do some good, maybe not boss fights but definitely get through sections of levels.
You build a character together, laugh at deaths, laugh at people getting mad, jump in cheer at getting past a hard section or boss. What's not to love.
VVVVVV and GOiwBF are good for quick-handoffs. Buckshot Roulette and Spin Rhythm are switches every couple of minutes at the end of a "round". Escape Simulator, Superliminal, and Portal/Portal 2 are switch offs at the end of every "room" (iffy when rooms begin/end, and you all might be working as a group anyway). Until Dawn and The Quarry are hand-offs every time someone shits their pants.
Could go for classics with hilariously bad/poor controls like Surgeon Simulator or Octodad. Get some laughs from people struggling to perform basic actions!
Noita could be a good option.
It has a ton of content, despite being a short-form game, and it's extremely entertaining to spectate. My partner and I have played it hundreds and hundreds of times, and we're still surprised (and often laughing nearly to the point of tears) every new run.
The level transitions offer a good opportunity to swap between players. Alternatively, you could use the game's pause function to do time-based transitions (say, set an alarm every five minutes to pause and swap), which be absolutely hilarious IMO.