Laser tag.
It's really dropped off as a sport over the last thirty years. I think kids get the same rush from video games these days.
this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2025
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I think it was the cost. We would go do it but it was a bit pricier than seeing a movie or bowling or hanging at an arcade. Was great though. Super fun and great exercise. Our photon had coin operated guns above the arena so you could not just try and sit and snipe. I remember this guy who was so rediculously good at the game he beat my friends and I and his team was a bunch of kids.
I think it was the cost.
It was this. In fact, it was awkward all around. The dollar cost was high, you were stuck with the arena's schedule and openings, you had to add in time for travel to the site and waiting to get in, going through the suit up... or you could just log onto Call of HaloField Tournament 3 and get a similar hit but with more animated explosions and stuff.
I remember towards the end a few companies sold consumer lasertag kits for home use. I think one of them even had a "rocket launcher" with a little radio thing in the "rocket" to register hits? But they were also super expensive, never cross-compatible so good luck making a big team, and if one broke you were SOL because they only came in big packs.
I actually had the consumer ones. both the original and an updated one. Both on clearances (and pretty cheap). Played with my friends but it was not the same as playing together against another group of friends or random people that got grouped together.
Airsoft has grown massively. While it is more of a whole day event, it fills that same niche but better in many ways.
Most lazertag places I remember seeing were inside or connected to arcades, and those really aren't a thing for kids these days either so it makes sense the lazertag places aren't as widespread as they used to be. If you're specifically going to travel to just do lazertag, you'll probably just travel to do airsoft or paintball.
I really wish there was a good airsoft group nearby me, but it seems like the only ones who are close by don't play on a schedule that works for me. It's really frustrating.
It's still big for kids. At least one kid per class did a laser tag birthday every year throughout elementary school.
omg my dad used to take me to laser tag so much when I was a teenager lol. it was fun
last time I played neither my gun nor vest was working right, major bummer
I played laser tag once and it was so incredibly underwhelming. I thought you'd see the laser in the air and I didn't see that. I much prefer airsoft. You'd probably have more fun playing airsoft with tracer rounds in the dark
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FTL with Multiverse Mod
Its essentially FTL 2.0
FTL is already underrated. And most people who do play just stops playing because it can get boring quickly. But Multiverse essentially bring more life to the game. Make the game like 50 times more fun.
I want a game that has the primary gameplay loop of FTL, but with a choose your path role playing game like Fallout behind it instead of a roguelike.
As Yahtzee Croshaw says, it has the most Star Trek "Target their weapons systems! Damage control to the engine room! Transfer power to the shields!" effect, but I kinda wish you were more able to choose where you want to explore, have a little more agency in quests...
Most quests in FTL follow the format of:
A space thing is happening! Do you:
- Send in a crewmate to help (50/50 chance of succeeding and getting a reward, or failing and taking damage/losing a crewmate)
- With them luck and fly away (guaranteed nothing happens)
- (blue text) use special equipment (guaranteed chance of a nice reward, if you have the equipment/resource/type of crew aboard)
So you don't have a lot of agency in the kinds of quests you want to explore. A lot of beginner quests happen to you a lot (how many times have we all done the giant alien spiders one) and in a lot of cases you don't have the blue text options available, so you get to choose "do nothing" or flip a coin. And then you have to face the ship at the end, which a lot of the builds that are kicking ass up to that point just can't face the end boss.
I want a longer term roleplaying game under these primary mechanics.
Yes, this so much!
The installation guide is not good, and it's annoying on Fedora since it's blocked by SELinux, but it's worth it for the amazing experience. Such a good expansion for an amazing game.
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Battletech should be the king of tabletop wargames. But no, everyone just wants to play 40k because of the sunk cost.
I love Battletech, but I understand why it isn't for everyone. The crunch of of detailing armor hits and internal effects, and keeping track of heat sinks is all the kind of thing that appeals to a specific kind of numbers nerd.
Yes Alpha Strike exists, but it's relatively new and I think it exists as this weird thing that by stripping out the details takes away the appeal for the loyal crunchy brained people.
Further, the miniatures are really neat, but 28mm (or 32mm, whatever is happening with 40k scale creep these days) scale really allows people to paint and customize characters which is appealing to more people than relatively less characterful mech sculpts.
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DotAge. It's a rogue-like turn-based strategy game where you try to build a village on cursed land, where you have visions of upcoming doom events and the eventual apocalypse. You have to balance stacking resources for growth and basic survival against efforts that will improve your chances of surviving doom events.
The board obviously is different every time. The factors you have to weigh and plan for are just complex enough, and just enough of the future is beyond your sight and control. The gameplay mechanics also change just a bit every time, due to a new mix of buildings and resource gathering methods, as well as new random events that can sometimes have a huge effect on your strategy. You're not just accounting for randomness in your strategy--you have to adjust how you play the game all the time.
Just when you think the game is getting easy, the next chapter drops, you start doing the math, and realize you have overlooked something that may doom your village, depending on whether the RNG punishes you sufficiently. There's definitely a big luck factor, as there is in real life. But you can make your own luck if you see far enough into the future and play well.
It's a very well-made game that can run on a potato, and I'm a little obsessed with it.
Never heard of this and now I wanna give it a try!
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For video games, Full Spectrum Warrior.
It's got a unique third person-ish view where the player swaps between different fire teams or special units, and orders them. It looks like a third person shooter but is just a real time ground level tactical game. It's demanding but fun. It's the kind of game that Brothers In Arms, old school Ghost Recon, or Doorkickers players would love. I don't know why nobody really remembers it or why somebody hasn't made a spiritual successor.
Like, from 20 years ago? I mean I loved that game too, and playing it in Iraq made it all kinda silly surreal in a fun sort of way. OK, yes, I second this!
Simon the Sorcerer
It always seems to be overshadowed by Monkey Island. Personally I think it's actually better in many ways.
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I thought Slice & Dice was going to take Steam by storm but it kinda just came and went. Amazing little roguelike dice battler
The biggest factor for me was that it just felt better on a handheld platform. I put dozens of hours into that game on my android
Super Puzzle Fighter II: Turbo. Easily the most fun and competent puzzle game I have ever played. It is especially great with 2 players.
So here's a dumb Puzzle Fighter story. When I was 18, many years ago now, my girlfriend at the time, my best friend and his girlfriend at the time went camping near a little lakeside resort town.
It was the last day of our trip, we'd been extremely frugal and so we all still had some spending money left. The girls wanted to go clothes shopping, my buddy and I weren't as interested in that but we're trying to be cool so we tagged along. Except, on a covered section of boardwalk we passed a 2-player Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo machine. The girls just left us behind, laughing that the boardwalk was a straight line and we could catch up.
3 hours later, we were both broke and my buddy had to borrow gas money from his girlfriend to get us home. The girls had ducked into a little café and also lost track of time. That was a 50 cent machine and we must have put over 50 bucks a piece into it. We just stood there, getting better and better in perfect lockstep, trading wins and getting more competitive for an entire afternoon, oblivious to the whole world.
That was a great trip. God, nostalgia like that makes me feel old.
I never got to experience it on an arcade cabinet. My first exposure to it was emulated on my original xbox. My friend and I played that game for many hours every weekend for months, and then some! I believe it was available on PSN for a while as well. Such a great game.
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Plasma - a wildly programmable physics game where you can build just about anything in a fairly accessible manner. The devs eventually just made it free because it wasn't getting much notice.
BPM: Bullets Per Minute - at some point everyone thinks 'what if you combined an FPS with a rhythm game so you had to shoot on the beat?' BPM is that, nailed. Others have tried but BPM got it right.
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Aotenjo Infinite Hands is like Balatro for mahjong. Strongly recommend it
For tabletop, I loooooove Sentinels of the Multiverse, always hard to find other folks that play it though.
Video game: Remember Me
I love Sentinels! A friend of mine and I actually found an apparent game-breaking combo a few years ago. We defeated one of the harder bosses in I think 2 or 3 turns? It really felt like we were doing something wrong but we couldn't find anything.
Ooh, which one? I remember some of the older foes in particular could be flakey like that
I don't remember much of the specifics, but I remember it was with Dr Medico's alternate. It was something about being healed by the rest of the team which turned into damage that was redirected (and enhanced) where we wanted. I remember being able to do ~50 damage in a single turn.
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Cattle Country, a completely unique stardew-esque game set in the wild west. It feels way more in depth and polished than Stardew, and you can be attacked by random wildlife and even outlaws lol
I have just no capacity to judge what's popular anymore, not sure i ever did.
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Would chess count?
I mean chess is not not popular by any stretch of the mind, a lot of people around the world are playing it every single day and that won't go away anytime soon, but I'm always surprised to see so much more excitement going on around a new version of This or That video game that people will play for a little while before switching to a newer version than for chess. Despite its apparent simplicity (and lack of visual effects), chess has remained a challenge for the smartest among us, and will keep on being so no matter how much better computers can be playing it.
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I could name so many tabletop RPGs for this. Unfortunately, since Hasbro has dominated the space like a generational pile of elephant dung for over 2 decades now, and TSR actually did manage to make a few smart marketing decisions before Dragon Dice and the bankruptcy, I guess I can't be too shocked.
So I guess I'll go with a board game. Tsuro - The Game of the Path. It's super-simple to learn and play, can be interesting for kids and adults alike, and it's just a really solid, fun, game. There's even an iOS version. I don't understand why it's a niche game instead of being front-and-center ahead of Monopoly or Clue(do). It's not even prohibitively expensive, honestly - the wholly valid argument against Carcassonne and other niche games. There's no good reason I can think of why Ticket to Ride is more popular than Tsuro.
I could name so many tabletop RPGs for this.
GURPS has been my obsession for a few years now. It's both the simplest, in terms of base mechanics, and most complex, in terms of optional rules, TTRPG I can imagine. It can handle literally any setting, play style, or crunch level with ease.
I love GURPS, but have since moved to the Cypher System, which is mechanically beautiful and rewarding like nothing I’ve ever seen.
Yeah I looked at Cypher when I was looking for a new home after abandoning D&D5e, but the crunch of GURPS appealed to me. I like having optional play tested mechanics for everything, so my power gamers get consistent rulings but my casual players don't feel too much pressure.
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I mostly play co-op games and I am tired of the "everything is dark, ugly, and evil, and chaos is rampant" with a souls-copy aesthetic. I crave colorful games and fun co-op mechanics.
Nine Parchments is casual, fun, and beautiful. The point IS that there is friendly fire because the challenge is to get the enemies without getting your friends. Played also by up to 4 people on a single screen.
Coridden is very home-made but has cool mechanics of turning into beasts or riding your friends when they turn into animals. Fun isometric rpg-ish game that can be played on a single screen.
Pizza possum. Steal the food and don't get caught. It's casual, chaotic and hilarious. Co-op as well.
Spiritfarer is a great game. Not sure if it's popular or not bc idk what's popular. No killing, very therapeutic if you've lost someone, is a journey about loving and letting go. Co-op allows you to play the cat.
And go play bombsquad with friends, it is the best and my go-to if I have videogame-comfortable guests at home :)
Love you all. Keep being nice people
The Legend of Alan D'ar, it was for me the first co-op rpg I'd ever played. My brother and I couldn't out our controllers down. Sadly all you ever hear about it IF anything is how much people hated it.
An indie 3D platformer game from a couple years ago called Hell Pie. You're a low-level demon who gets an angel chained to him, and you can use it to do things like spin him to launch yourself and swing on stuff. If you like classic 3D platformers and toilet humor, it's really very good, and pretty novel.
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Me and my girlfriend are big fans of Doomsday Paradise, a rouge like dating sim
star trek online and champions online. they were pretty reasonable for free to play mmo's and the costuming was amazing.
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