A while ago I read a Reddit post from a dad who had the whole weekend to himself. His wife and daughter were away.
He said he couldn't settle on anything. He'd start a game, quit a few minutes in and start another.
We've all been there. With games, movies, books, whatever.
We get a bit of time and we want to squeeze every drop out of it. We want it to be perfect. We go round and round planning every minute and build up sky-high expectations for it.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, lives up to the evening you've built in your head.
It's happened to me and it'll keep happening. That's fine.
These days, when I know some free time is coming, I don't picture it, I don't plan it, I don't imagine what I'll do. I accept it won't be perfect, but it'll be mine, and it'll be the best it can be for whichever player I am that day.
I don't know if I'll be in the mood for that new RPG or the one everybody's playing. Maybe I'll want the old favorites.
I'm the same person, but I'm not always the same player.
Deciding today what I'll play next Wednesday is a mistake. It depends on which player sits down on the couch that day.
The funny thing is, I see it clearly now, but for years I did the exact opposite. With a method, no less.
A spreadsheet with start and end dates, which I've told you about. A couple of apps. Lists with hype columns. The twelve-games-in-twelve-months challenge.
None of them lasted three weeks. And they all died of the same thing: they made me decide in January what I'd want to play in March.
I was the weekend dad, gone pro.
If you saw yourself in him, in chapter 7 of my book I explain why every system fails, and the one thing that's lasted me more than three weeks:
For when…
…all you've got left is your thumbs and half an hour: Vampire Survivors. You move and that's about it, the attacking happens on its own. Hundreds of monsters closing in and the screen filling up with shiny stuff.
You can pause whenever you want. What you can't do is leave halfway: quit the run and it's over, though you keep your gold and everything you've unlocked. Come back after weeks and there's nothing to remember.
Not for you if you need to stop halfway and pick it up tomorrow: every run gets played to the end or it's gone. It's on PC, PS5, Xbox and Switch.
Vampire Survivors doesn't fit on any calendar. There's no way to know in January that some night in March you'll show up with nothing but your thumbs. If you want to get it right first time, with whichever player sits down on the couch that night, chapter 7 is about exactly that:
P.S. Tell me what you did the last time you had a whole afternoon to yourself. I read every reply.