SALT LAKE CITY — Thanks to the current COVID-19 pandemic, it appears as though we will all be staying indoors for at least the next few weeks, according to the Deseret News. If you’re looking for ways to entertain yourself and your family during extended downtime that doesn’t involve bingeing movies on Netflix and Disney Plus, then here are a few games that might help pass the time.
While there are thousands of games out there that might be worthy of your time, these five selections were chosen based on a few important criteria. Games like Fortnite, Apex Legends and Minecraft are popular options. But the games on this list offer unique social aspects, whether it’s playing with your kids on the couch or with friends online.
These games also offer elements of exploration, daily routines and exercise to help with normalizing your upended schedule.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Platform: Nintendo Switch
- ESRB Rating: E for Comic Mischief
- Price: $59.99
As seen by its status as a new internet meme at this point, “Animal Crossing” couldn’t have come at a better time. Nintendo’s latest entry in the village life simulator tasks players with creating their own villager and developing a deserted island for proper habitation.
The gameplay loop is pretty simple and unchanged from past entries, with a few new hooks — every day players can explore their island to pick flowers, catch fish and bugs, chop wood and dig up fossils. Anything that’s collected can be donated to a museum or sold for bells, which are then used to buy new furniture, clothes, or expansions for your house.
New additions to the game include a crafting system, which lets players make new tools and furniture items, and the ability to customize every aspect of the island — including homes, shops and the topography itself. “Animal Crossing” moves at its own pace (the first few days won’t offer a ton to do), but once a few buildings in town are constructed the game settles into a second-life groove that shines.
Another feature core to the game is visiting friends’ islands — a series staple made even more relevant thanks to the quarantine. Because each player has a randomized selection of flora and fauna, traveling to new villages to bring home new fruit and bugs has become wildly popular online.
While local co-op play is supported, player 2 will be limited to collecting items for player 1. You’ll definitely benefit more from trading friend codes and exploring with friends online.
While in-game communication is limited to simple text chat and sending letters, friends can voice chat with one another through the Nintendo Switch Online app. According to Polygon, players can enable NookLink access through the game’s settings to chat online.
Destiny 2
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC
- ESRB Rating: T for blood, language and violence
- Price: Free, offers paid expansions
Destiny 2 was released on consoles back in 2016, but is still going strong. This first-person shooter role-playing game is developed by Bungie, the creators of Halo, and showcases an ongoing battle between the forces of light and dark spanning across the solar system.
As a guardian of the last city, players can team up with one another to complete missions, bounties and patrols across locations like Mars, Mercury and the asteroid belt. Destiny tasks players with defeating alien enemies of humanity in exchange for endless loot, which usually takes the form of unique weapons and sets of armor. Even though the gameplay loop is simple, it’s engaging enough to keep you busy for hours on end.
The base game (which is free to play) features the game’s original campaign, The Red War, as well as story expansions Curse of Osiris and Warmind, each of which offers tons of single and multiplayer content.
Overall, Destiny 2 offers thousands of hours of ongoing content, all of which can be played with friends online with the promise of future content. Bungie has employed a seasonal model for the game since 2018, which means every few months new content — including new activities, loot and story missions — is made available, giving players a reason to come back at their leisure.
Ring Fit Adventure
- Platform: Nintendo Switch
- ESRB Rating: E10+ for fantasy violence
- Price: $79.99, includes Ring Con pilates ring
If you’re finding it difficult to stay active while staying inside, why not gamify it? Ring Fit Adventure is an RPG action game where players control their character by performing actions with a pilates ring. If you want to move forward, jog in place. Squeeze the ring to launch special moves, or squat to avoid attacks.
The game features in-depth settings to adjust the difficulty of the game, which in turn affects the intensity of the exercise. If a full-length exercise game doesn’t appeal to you, you can play minigames and isolated exercises that offer shorter sessions.
According to The Verge, Ring Fit Adventure manages to feel like a real workout rather than a video game, which is something home-bound gamers and gym rats alike could benefit from right now.
Additionally, more content has been added to the game, expanding its scope and workout options. Nintendo recently added a free rhythm-based workout mode set to songs from Splatoon 2, Super Mario Odyssey and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, CNET reports.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Platform: Nintendo Switch
- ESRB Rating: E10+ for cartoon violence, comic mischief and suggestive themes
- Price: $59.99, offers paid expansions
Smash Bros. is a perennial favorite and a great way to entertain lots of people at once. For the uninitiated, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a multiplayer fighting game featuring video game characters from across the industry. Up to eight players can join in the fight at once, providing plenty of opportunity for a large family to play together.
Players can choose from dozens of fighters including Mario, Samus, Zelda and Simon Belmont from Castlevania, and use a variety of special moves to deal damage and launch each other out of an arena. And even though the game came out in late 2018, Nintendo is still actively developing new characters, the most recently-announced one being a character from ARMS, according to Polygon. New remixed fights, which reward stat-boosting spirit characters, are also regularly cycled through.
On top of the basic Smash and tournament modes, the game also includes classic and arcade modes, which offer a themed series of battles for up to two players. In terms of single-player content, the World of Light story mode offers hundreds of unique spirit battles across a massive Nintendo-themed map.
Kentucky Route Zero
- Platforms: PC, Mac, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
- ESRB Rating: T for language and use of drugs
- Price: $24.99
While this one might not be as entertaining for kids, Kentucky Route Zero is a minimalistic adventure game spread across multiple experimental episodes. The main story focuses on Conway, a truck driver who must deliver an antique to an unfamiliar address in Kentucky. To reach their destination, players must venture down the Zero, an underground highway home to a variety of otherworldly forces.
Kentucky Route Zero’s hook — besides its simple, gorgeous art and lo-fi bluegrass soundtrack — is the ability for players to shape their deliveryman’s personality as they see fit. Players are often given various conversation options in-game, but none of them are necessarily right or wrong. Whatever gamers choose becomes the truth in their game, from the name of an old dog to Conway’s motivations for completing his delivery.
And while the first few chapters of the game are pretty straightforward, the interludes between main episodes are really experimental. One section places players in a first-person view of an actor in a stage play, while another lets players explore reality-defying art installations on a rotating stage.
Kotaku also notes the game — which is largely a single-player experience — includes some instructions for a multiplayer mode of sorts. In the game’s settings, players are instructed to pass the controller when they “encounter something — an image, a sound, a choice of words, a notable absence — that reminds (them) of someone else in the room.”
