Highlights
- Stardew Valley and Papers, Please turn repetitive tasks into engaging experiences by offering fulfilling progression and introducing new challenges.
- Taiko No Tatsujin and Tetris use repetitive button presses and block placements to create rhythm and puzzle-based gameplay that is surprisingly fun and addictive.
- Games like Spelunky and Hades embrace repetition as a core element, forcing players to learn from mistakes, improve, and find satisfaction in the challenge of starting over. Call of Duty: Zombies also keeps players coming back for more by increasing difficulty and encouraging cooperative play.
A great strength of just about any video game is offering variety. Being able to play through a diverse range of gameplay mechanics, levels, or genres keeps things fresh and interesting for players. In most cases, repetition is a huge weakness. After all, no one wants to play the entirety of a game that goes stale after the first few hours.
7 Games of the 90s With The Best Replay Value
Many games of the 90s golden age video games still have replay value today. These are the best of those games.
However, in certain unique cases, repetition lies at the core of a game's overall charm. Every so often, that sense of routine and familiarity is all part of the process and in the end, works in favor of a game's experience instead of against it. Here are some games that do the seemingly impossible and turn boring repetition into a genuinely engaging experience with tons of replay value.
7 Stardew Valley
The hard life of a farmer in Stardew Valley may sound like a bore at first since most days are the same "rinse and repeat" formula of planting crops, picking crops, tending to animals, and grabbing some materials from the mines. As the game goes on, most players begin to ease into a familiar routine, building a strict cycle of tasks that fall into place after getting used to each changing season.
Despite how boring this sounds, Stardew Valley still manages to make the mundane-sounding life of a farmer entertaining! Stardew Valley does a fantastic job of making routine feel genuinely fulfilling and offering varying tasks and events that can make a simple day feel just a little livelier, whether it be crafting a new tree tapper, upgrading a barn, or attending a festive luau.
6 Papers, Please
As bizarre as it sounds, the tiring (yet stressful) life of an Arstotzkan border checkpoint inspector is easy to get lost in. Papers, Please sounds rather drab on paper (no pun intended), but after an in-game day or two, players are guaranteed to get hooked.
Day in and day out, the Papers, Please protagonist is confined to their work booth, bound to the same routine: check papers, stamp, and call the next citizen. The way the game manages to keep this repetitive procedure fresh is by slowly introducing new licenses, permits, rules, and regulations to the player's ever-growing checklist. Just when the player feels as if they've gotten the hang of things by the end of their shift, higher-ups change the rules, creating a whole new challenge for the day.
5 Taiko No Tatsujin
Almost any music/rhythm-based game can boil down to hitting the same few buttons/directions over and over again. However, it doesn't stop them from being a great time (especially with friends). Taiko No Tatsujin is a drum-based rhythm game that only really utilizes two to four buttons. In theory, pressing four buttons in varying order at varying times doesn't seem much like a game and instead sounds like tedious work.
5 Best Rhythm Games For Beginners
Players new to the rhythm genre can begin their journey with these games.
However, Taiko No Tatsujin (along with many other rhythm games) is far from tedious! The simple premise of making the player feel the rhythm, get into the groove, and get every button press on beat makes a world of a difference. Being able to listen to favorite anime openings, J-Pop, and J-Rock tunes already makes for a great game but being able to play along with each passing note puts Taiko No Tatsujin in a league of its own.
4 Spelunky
Spelunky is a platforming roguelike game that challenges players to always assess their surroundings before taking a step forward as one wrong move can cost one's life. The underground world of Spelunky isn't a forgiving one and likely forces newbie players to retry their first few playthroughs before reaching the end of the game.
The game doesn't allow for mistakes, at least not too many in one single run. Spelunky is about learning from mistakes, slowly improving, and planning from rigorous trial and error. In other words, repetition is at the game's core. However, it's not all frustration and "Game Overs." Spelunky makes improvement feel satisfying and fulfilling.
3 Tetris
Imagine building a tower but as the tower grows a layer diminishes every time it is filled. That is the crux of all Tetris games. Tetrisat its core is a puzzle game, giving players a set of unique puzzle pieces in the shape of blocks and allowing them to figure out the best/most strategic way to lay each block down to get as many points as possible.
The game in its essence is very repetitive; lay blocks down, build, and clear some layers to start all over again. Of course, the speed of the blocks falling increases over time, giving players a slowly increasing difficulty so the game doesn't become too easy, but on paper it simply sounds like a tiring, never-ending task.
2 Hades
Hades
- Platform(s)
- PS4 , PS5 , Xbox One , Xbox Series X , Xbox Series S , Switch , PC
- Released
- September 17, 2020
- Developer(s)
- Supergiant Games
- Genre(s)
- Action RPG , Roguelite
Any good roguelike/roguelite dungeon crawler is built on the foundation of repetition, and Hades is no exception. Taking poor Zagreus all the way up to the surface from the Underworld is quite the task, and it's not uncommon for players to fail the first few times around. Although the levels and enemies will vary, the core of the game doesn't really change in substantial ways.
The 15 Best Roguelike RPGs, Ranked
With so many new ones coming out every month, it's been a tough debate between the fans of the genre to see which one stands at the top.
However, this doesn't stop the grind from being incredibly entertaining! Hades' charm is in its difficulty, routine, and finding what works best for each player, challenging gamers to push themselves, and up the heat/difficulty to start the fight all over again.
1 Call Of Duty: Zombies
There is a good amount of variation in the Call Of Duty Zombies mode, especially since a ton of different versions of the popular mode have been created after the mode's initial debut back in 2008 in Call Of Duty: World At War.
However, even with all the different versions of the Zombies mode, the core idea of the game mode stays the same: survive as long as possible. With each passing wave of zombies, the difficulty is upped a tiny bit, making each wave more deadly and resource-draining than the last. Eventually, players will succumb to the hordes and will be forced to say goodbye to all their hard-earned progress and start from the beginning. While that may sound discouraging, many players find themselves hyped and eager to get back in the game alongside their friends and fight the good fight all over again.