How to Play Forever

Some games are massive. Others are endless.

October 09, 2025

Replayability is a common metric when it comes to measuring a video game’s value, usually in terms of monetary value. This makes some degree of sense: playing video games as a hobby can be quite expensive. Players generally want to maximise their enjoyment as cheaply as possible. Game designers want to avoid having their game traded in to the game store—as they earn nothing from the sale of used games—and are thus also incentivized to make their products last.

Most big-budget games today try to maximize their value by packing themselves full of content. Tons of extra levels, minigames, competitive multiplayer, and massive open worlds overflowing with checklists of fetch quests.

Some games, however, don’t need to stoop to such lows. Let’s talk about how.

Pikmin

Pikmin is a strategy game developed by Nintendo and released in 2001 alongside their then-new GameCube console as a launch title.

In this game, you control a castaway who must navigate a strange world and find the parts of his spaceship which were lost after crash landing—30 parts in 30 in-game days, otherwise the game ends in a loss. As the ship parts are too heavy to carry, and the planet is too perilous to cross unaided, the player must enlist the help of indigenous Pikmin creatures. Pikmin following the player can be thrown towards tasks to complete, but will loaf around when not otherwise occupied. It is a game of micromanagement.

I come back to Pikmin every few years. Despite having finished its story many times, the gameplay continues to compel me. Because the game simulates its Pikmin creatures as actual agents in-game—including frustrating behaviours such as tripping over or getting distracted—each playthrough is unique. It would be a fun challenge to optimise a path to obtain all 30 ship parts without this gameplay quirk, but its presence makes each playthrough utterly unique and engaging.

Another reason why I come back to Pikmin so often is that a playthrough of the game is short. I can play through the whole game—start to finish!—in a dedicated afternoon. That I’ve finished the game many times does not diminish my enjoyment. In fact, I would say that my enjoyment grows as my familiarity does. Part of the fun now is not merely in playing the game, but also in optimizing it—planning, and execution. It’s the same gameplay loop as always, but ever more stimulating as I continue to challenge myself.

This experience of coming back to short-but-varied video games over and over again is not unique to Pikmin. Pick any well-rated game from the NES and you’ll likely find one which is deeply replayable. Many independent games from the 2010s will also contain the trademarks that make a game you can play through again and again. Of recent note is of course last year’s UFO 50, a collection of 50 games which includes many which seem purpose-built for this kind of replayability.

To be so short that players can enjoy satisfying gameplay over and over again is just one way to make a game that endures in the player’s hands. Another is to make a game that only ends when the player wants.

Pikmin 2

Released in 2004, Pikmin 2 is everything that video game sequels are “supposed” to be. It contains all the same gameplay as its predecessor, introduces new kinds of Pikmin creatures and new ways to interact with the game world while addressing the quirks in the original game that frustrated some. This time, players must lead their Pikmin army to claim treasure and save their bankrupt employer—taking as long as necessary to do so.

If you’re a scholar of game design, you might find the removal of a time limit to be a questionable decision. Without any pressure to move forward, much of the challenge in a time management game is likely to disappear. Pikmin 2, however, has its own tools to create challenges.

This game’s big innovation is the presence of caves. These subterranean sublevels are filled with dangerous creatures who are all too happy to take a bite out of your Pikmin army. Within a cave, there’s no way to replenish any lost troops. Reaching the bottom of these dungeons is a matter of staving off enough attrition to maintain sufficient strength to overcome the beasts within.

The game’s primary goal of finding enough treasure to service a debt is easy enough to accomplish, but that gives way to the later task of scouring every cave to rescue a castaway. Achieving the true ending to Pikmin 2 is no small feat. Once you do, however, does the game end? For many players, it does—but not all of them.

Even after being emptied of their treasure, the game’s caves continue to provide especially engaged players with a challenge. Most caves' layouts are, to some extent, randomized. Every time you brave them, they’ll be subtly different. This means that memorization through repetition won’t be enough to be able to consistently overcome these challenges with few losses, if any.

Pikmin 2 even gives players reasons to continue scouring the overworld levels again and again, with helpful resources that can be collected and plenty of ways to increase the population of your Pikmin army. Without a time limit, players can spend as long as necessary building up their forces so that they can be well-equipped to keep spelunking within the more difficult caves. Even just amassing resources can be a fun endeavour, as with practice players can optimize each in-game day to take more risks and gain greater rewards. The game is built in such a way that if you enjoy the gameplay, then your save file can last indefinitely.

Why would someone want to keep playing the same game indefinitely, even after winning? Well, why would someone want to keep playing soccer after winning their first match? Why play solitaire again and again? The fun part of playing a game is the actual act of engaging with its gameplay, not the fact of having once overcome some arbitrary challenge. Treating a game as a one-time experience—or worse, designing a game as such—is for those who would rather feel a sense of pride and accomplishment than a sense of joy.

To me, dropping a game as soon as you roll credits is a sign that you didn’t actually have much fun with it. The real diamonds-in-the-rough are those games that lure you back in time and again, whether for new playthroughs or for continuing fun. The few contemporary games that feel like they’re aiming for persistent play do so by constantly updating themselves with new content, which just kicks the can down the road. These types of games eventually get abandoned by their developers, and what does it say about a game that its own developers feel like additional free updates are needed in order to keep players engaged? Games like Pikmin and Pikmin 2 were doing this in the early 2000s, years before games started receiving online updates. Arcade games like Out Run or Pac-Man were doing this in the 80s, long before home consoles. Whichever of 2025’s games get talked about in the 2060s or 2070s probably aren’t going to be the live services.

As for you, think about a game you enjoyed in the moment. Maybe pick it back up, fire up your old file, and play around to find your own things to do. You might be surprised at how much fun it can be to just play something.