12 simple games for any PC

You've come here to search for interesting laptop games, you've come to the right place. I guess not everyone has a powerful gaming PC to play PC games, but there are plenty of laptop games if you have a machine that matches your toaster in terms of graphics power. Indie developers are creating some of the best gaming experiences right now, and their games aren't walled off by expensive graphics cards and powerful gaming rigs.

Because we're good people, we've handpicked some of the best laptop games you can play right now. These games can be played on any PC, but they are generally quite cheap to purchase from Steam, which is always a bonus these days, or play free. Anyone who plays games should play the games below. Let's begin our review of these games in no particular order.

Slay the Spire

It doesn't matter if you don't usually like card games, you'll still lose dozens of hours to kill the Spire. Every single run always feels different, and you're constantly unlocking a stream of new cards and items that make you think about what you could achieve in your next attempt. The game is strategic and relies on luck, but without deception.
 
Into the Breach

 Into the Breach gives you a squad of robots and some kaiju to fight in turn-based, grid-based combat. 


If you really don't like card games, here's another strategy for you. It's like chess, but cooler. If chasing overgrown insects into the mountains doesn't sound very appealing, consider completely changing your outlook on life and talking to yourself. 

Elysium disk

You must investigate a murder related to a union dispute, but the real story behind the experience revolves around self-discovery and recreational drug use.
Most RPGs have you playing as a chosen one, fighting some deity, but Disco Elysium puts you in the urine-soaked boots of a slacker cop caught in a spiral of self-destruction. 


Papers, Please

If the latter was too carefree for you, consider becoming a border agent in a fictional Eastern Bloc country. Your family is starving, your wages are meager, and you have to cope with your own needs and the suffering of the people crossing the border. Will you sacrifice your professional integrity for personal gain or will you stand your ground and do things by the book?

When your food supply at home begins to run low, you may have no choice. And what happens when empathy takes precedence over reason? It may essentially be a playable spreadsheet, but Papers, Please is a powerful, memorable game filled with moral dilemmas. 


Hotline Miami

What do you think about the little bit of violence on our list? Hotline Miami is a stylish top-down shooter where you have to kill people as brutally and efficiently as you can. Throw hot oil in someone's face, pick up a bat, kick down doors and pull out a shotgun - all while synth beats pulse over the action.
 But what is it? Are you forced to return through the carnage you caused at the end of each mission and reckon with your own cruelty? Okay, we promise we'll give you a fun game next time. 


Prison Architect 

Prison in the United States is a profitable business, and you are an important link in the corporate prison system. Build your own prison dystopia in this prison construction and management game. Play with the lives of your prisoners or try to solve institutional problems that also exist in real life. 

RimWorld

One person's unpleasant feeling at the sight of a dead body - and another psychopath's mockery. Whether you want to create a colony of slavers, cannibals, body modders, or religious fanatics is up to you, but RimWorld will continually surprise you no matter which route you take.
Managing a group of people who just crashed on an alien planet is never easy, but it's even harder when you realize that each of your colonists has needs, and sometimes those needs conflict. 


moonlighter

You delve into dungeons and take on enemies in old-school Zelda-style combat, learning enemy attack patterns and viable tactics through repetition. Eventually, you defeat each dungeon and its bosses, unlocking the next biome where you'll find even better loot. 
A dungeon crawler with a difference, Moonlight puts you in the shoes of a shop owner who sells monster parts and other spelunking trophies. 

As much fun as all of this is, it's the in-between action where Moonlight shines. You place your treasures and monster entrails throughout the store, set prices, and open doors. From there, you gauge customer reactions as they browse and purchase, using them to determine the optimal price for each item. You use the money you earn to craft better weapons and create potions that allow you to dive deeper, and you use gold to upgrade your store so you can sell more efficiently. It all falls apart a bit once you unlock investment banker, but it's still worth playing and works on most laptops. 

Civilization 5 

You can't go wrong with a little Civ, a game that you turn on for “a few turns” and then the sun comes up and you have to drive straight to work with baggy eyelids. This strategy game 4X pulls you right in. There's something about watching your civilization grow and expand over the course of a campaign as you make friends with all your neighbors (except Gandhi) and create trade routes (with everyone except Gandhi) to ensure your people prosper. Well, this will continue until your army is big enough to crush everyone (starting with Gandhi). 

There are multiple paths to victory in Civilization 5, and neither game has the same feel due to the topography, the base civilization you start the game with, and what other nations you share the map with. If you want to make the clock (and Gandhi) disappear, there's nothing better.


Mini motorways

This game is about managing the flow of traffic, traffic lights, intersections and roundabouts as needed to minimize congestion. When everything is calm, it's one of the most meditative experiences on PC and mobile, but then you reach a tipping point, all hell breaks loose and you load up the level for another try with a new plan in mind. Mini Motorways - improves your brain activity, because you save the whole city from traffic jams. 

If you're looking for a strategy game that doesn't involve a deadly Gandhi, Mini Highways is one of the most relaxing around. This is one of Apple's best arcade games, but you can play it just as easily on a laptop. You're given a top-down view of a minimalist city and tasked with making sure its vehicles can move between color-coded warehouses. You do this by drawing roads, highways, and bridges. 

It's 2D stealth game, in which you can rewrite levels, turning every door and light switch into a potentially lethal weapon. 

What if you were a private detective who sneaks around and hits people with doors until they pass out? This is the question we ask ourselves every night, and Gunpoint provides the answer: it would be extremely fun. Beyond that, you can pounce on unsuspecting enemies and punch them into sleep, each mouse click unleashing meat-based violence onto their soft, jagged faces. There's a slapstick comedy in the immediacy of violence at gunpoint that you just can't get anywhere else, and that's what games are all about: beautiful, beautiful violence.

FTL: Faster Than Light

A space game about putting out fires - sometimes literally by opening airlock doors and depriving the flames of oxygen - while juggling metaphorical hand grenades.

Control a starship as it attempts to escape an enemy fleet, navigating star systems and encountering threats ranging from asteroid fields to aggressive alien slugs and opportunities ranging from valuable rescue to friendly alien slugs along the way. FTL may have a minimalist visual style from top to bottom, but there's a lot going on when you look beyond its basic graphics. Ship-to-ship combat is more tactical here than in most games, where you take direct control - targeting weapon systems to disable them, cutting off an enemy's oxygen supply, and dispatching a boarding party are just some of your options. 

All these games and others can be downloaded using such programs.