The genres that only really work with a mouse, plus the long RPGs and co-op.
The case for PC is not graphics settings. It is that whole genres — grand strategy, colony simulation, hardcore racing, anything that needs a mouse and four hundred hotkeys — barely exist anywhere else, and the ones that do exist elsewhere usually started here.
This is split into the things a PC does that a console cannot, the RPGs worth clearing a month for, and the co-op games worth buying twice. Every entry links on to a full list of similar games.
The reason the keyboard is still attached.
2016 · PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox, Mobile
One more turn, for six thousand years. Districts made cities a spatial puzzle rather than a list of buildings, which is the biggest change the series has made.
2022 · PC
Turn-based empire management that drops into real-time battles with thousands of units. The Warhammer setting freed the series from having to be plausible.
2018 · PC, Console
A colony simulator that is really a story generator, and the stories are usually disasters. The mod scene is larger than the game.
2019 · PC, Xbox
A 1999 real-time strategy game still receiving expansions, because nobody has improved on it. Villagers, four resources, and a wall you should have built earlier.
2023 · PC, Console
A city builder where traffic is the real opponent. Rough at release and still the most detailed thing of its kind.
2022 · PC, Console
Start as a nobody with a horse, end running a faction. The only game that lets you be a single soldier inside your own strategy layer.
2013 · PC
A military simulator rather than a shooter — kilometres of map, real ballistics, and a mission editor that has outlived several sequels' worth of mods.
2008 · PC
A subscription racing service with laser-scanned tracks and a licensing system that penalises contact. As close to motorsport administration as a game gets.
Clear a month. Several of these are longer than that.
2019 · PC, PS4, Xbox, Switch
An RPG with no combat, where the skills are parts of your own mind and several of them lie to you. The best-written game there is.
2020 · PC, PS5, Xbox
A disaster at launch and, several years of work later, one of the best first-person RPGs there is. Night City is the achievement.
2024 · PC, PS5, Xbox
An action RPG with a party of AI pawns you train and lend to other players. Deliberately inconvenient, and the combat is worth it.
2025 · PC, PS5, Xbox
Turn-based combat with parries and dodges on every enemy attack, in a setting that looks like nothing else. A small studio's first game.
2023 · PC, Switch, PS5, Xbox
A deliberate throwback to the 16-bit RPG, with timed hits and no random encounters. Kinder than the games it is imitating.
Worth buying twice, or free.
2021 · PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch
A co-op game that never reuses a mechanic, and cannot be played alone. One copy covers both players.
2018 · PC, PS4, Xbox
The same studio's prison-break game, in permanent split screen even online. Three or four hours and entirely built for two.
2014 onwards · PC, Console, Streaming
Everyone plays on their own phone, so the room only needs one copy. The best thing to own for a gathering where most people do not play games.
2024 · PC, PS5, Xbox
Survival crafting with an action-RPG spine and voxel building, which means you carve into the terrain rather than snap to a grid.
2025 · PC, Console
Physics puzzles solved badly by wobbling humans. Funnier with four people than with one, and almost the whole point is failing.
Grand strategy, colony sims, hardcore racing and anything mod-driven. Total War, RimWorld, Age of Empires II, Arma 3 and iRacing either do not exist on console or lose most of what makes them work when they get there.
Disco Elysium if you want the writing, Hades if you want something that plays in twenty-minute pieces, Civilization VI if you want the one that eats a weekend without your noticing.
For most of this list, no. Civilization VI, Age of Empires II, RimWorld, Disco Elysium, Stardew Valley and Hades all run on a laptop. Cyberpunk 2077 and Total War: Warhammer III are the ones that want real hardware.
The short-session ones — Hades, Slay the Spire, Stardew Valley, Sea of Stars, Disco Elysium. Strategy games with dense interfaces are technically playable and unpleasant without a mouse.