What's your favorite game within another game?

[ZedClampet]

As examples of what I'm talking about. I was thinking about Balatro and all the card games I've enjoyed on PC and realized that some of the ones I enjoyed the most were actually embedded within other games.

Fallout New Vegas: Caravan
The Witcher 3: Gwent
Resident Evil 7: 21 (which is kind of like a very simplified blackjack version of Balatro)

I'm going to count 21 even though it was a DLC.

Out of these, I guess my favorite was, in fact, 21.

So what's your favorite game within another game? Things like Garry's Mod or Roblox or the Fortnite Crapcade don't count.

 

[Pifanjr]

See also:

Question - Your favorite minigame

Games are great fun, but sometimes you need to switch things up. You could just get up and take a walk, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing... or you could play another game INSIDE the game you're already playing! Some minigames are just little things you do to hack a computer or...

forums.pcgamer.com

Seems like last time I couldn't really think of a good one and nothing comes to mind right now, though I feel like there's a specific one I'm forgetting.

 

[Frindis]

Playing Pazaak in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and playing Texas hold'em in Red Dead Online.

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[Alm]

I remember Maniac Mansion in Day of the Tentacle, though they are the same genre. Texas Holdem in Red Dead was a good shout.

 

[Pifanjr]

Oh, I thought of one: Tiny Chao Garden from Sonic Adventures on the Game Boy Advance. I didn't even like Sonic that much.

There was also Chocobo World, a minigame for Final Fantasy VIII, which ran separately from the main game, in which you could level up a Chocobo and send the items it found to your FF8 game. Too bad that as a kid I had no idea what to do with those items, but the minigame was still fun.

 

[Pifanjr]

My kid is also good at making up her own games within the game we play together. For example, in Stardew Valley we often end up playing House, where I have to play her child and she takes me to Evelyn's house to "visit the grandparents" or we go to the restored community center and pretend it's a school or we go to the pool and get swimming lessons.

She also likes playing hide and seek in Boomerang Fu. One of the power ups turns your character into a piece of scenery when you stand still, so one of us closes our eyes and the other one hides somewhere. It's basically prop hunt.
Getting the right power up is a pain though, as it's completely random which one you'll get. I'm pretty sure we often spend longer looking for the power up than actually playing hide and seek once we've found it.

 

[Pifanjr]

Another one that just came to mind is from Mario Party 6, which obviously has a ton of mini-games, but it also had a 2 vs. 2 basketball game that you unlocked by completing a specific board. It wasn't a normal mini-game and didn't show up during the board games, it was more like a simpler version of the other Mario sports games that have come out.

 

[Brian Boru]

I mentioned Far Cry 5's Arcade in the post Pifanjr linked, which would be my favorite of all I've tried—there's just tons of content there.

There are also target and skeet shooting side games in some FCs which are fun—unlike the racing or flying side games which I both don't like and suck at.

Many more indie games have little minis scattered thru them—jigsaws are always popular, and can be a nice 5-min break. My fav among Indies are the 3 mini word games included with word game Amazing Pyramids Rebirth—I got top of the leaderboard for 2 of 'em for a while

 

[ZedClampet]

See also:

Question - Your favorite minigame

Games are great fun, but sometimes you need to switch things up. You could just get up and take a walk, I suppose, if you're into that sort of thing... or you could play another game INSIDE the game you're already playing! Some minigames are just little things you do to hack a computer or...

forums.pcgamer.com

Seems like last time I couldn't really think of a good one and nothing comes to mind right now, though I feel like there's a specific one I'm forgetting.

I originally intended for this to only be about card games, but got rushed and forgot what I was doing.

Sorry all.

 

[Zloth]

I originally intended for this to only be about card games, but got rushed and forgot what I was doing.

So that means you can still reply to the older topic!

Marvel's Midnight Suns was a social hobnob-with-supers game that had a battle mini-game based on cards. Well, OK, it was kinda large for a mini-game.....

 

[Cranberrycc]

Tetra Master (The Wind Waker, Zelda's Legend) Discovering new places is made even more enjoyable with this strategic card game that is collectible.

 

[Johnway]

i suppose that card game in shovel knight wasn't bad. had a layer of complexity and made it easy to play and commit time to. I would have played gwent more if i could get more cards easier and i could figure out who were easy players to build up cards etc. but gave up on it near the start of the game tbh.

 

[Brian Boru]

fyi Gwent is available as a separate stand-alone freegame—GOG, Steam.

 

[Aldarion]

Chicken Puncher in Doom 3. Punching a cuckling animal shouldn't be that fun, yet it was.

 

[Colif]

Casino in Test Drive Unlimited 2 - its where I got most of the money to buy all the cars I had in game.

Fishing in Zelda: Ocarina of Time... sure, it wasn't very hard, just catch biggest fish... but was fun at time... in 1998.

 

[Smellincoffee]

I genuinely enjoy sitting down in one of RDR2's saloons and playing blackjack. There's a constant patter of the men talking, and because different NPCs will enter and exit the game (in a fairly realistic rhythm) it doesn't get uber-repetitive.

 

[Hveðrungr]

My favourite game within another game is Grognak and the Ruby Ruins from Fallout 4.

It's a complete turn-based RPG like Ultima, and it's a cracker.

I first played it on the Fallout 4 companion app for mobile, the one you could use as a real-time Pip-Boy during the game.

 

[MarkZukers]

That’s a solid list of in-game card games! Caravan from Fallout: New Vegas and Gwent from The Witcher 3 are definitely classics, but I have to agree that Resident Evil 7: 21 had a unique tension that made it really stand out.

For me, one of my favorite games within a game has to be Triple Triad from Final Fantasy VIII. It wasn’t just a fun distraction—it had real in game benefits, like letting you refine cards into powerful items. It was also surprisingly deep for a minigame, and I found myself hunting down rare cards just as much as I was progressing through the story.

I also have to give a nod to Pazaak from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. It felt like the Star Wars version of blackjack, but with a strategic twist that made it addicting.

Anyone else spend way too much time playing minigames instead of actually completing the main story? 😆

 

[ZedClampet]

Anyone else spend way too much time playing minigames instead of actually completing the main story? 😆

I know I have. I've seen a lot of people requesting that developers put casinos in their games. I'm not as into that because you tend to lose money, but Big Ambitions has a small casino that helps your character out by significantly improving their happiness, so I did that one quite a bit.