Not everybody thrives off of time pressure, and you might find yourself pulling out your hair whenever you hear an alarm go off. But if you love being hounded for time, some games fit the bill perfectly, with every passing second being crucial to the game’s outcome.
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Some of these span for days in-game, but only last for minutes to an hour in reality. If you’re not a fan of seeing the clock tick, these games might make you reconsider just for their fun factor. Conversely, they can be frustrating, but you’ll never know unless you try these games out.
10The Legend Of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
If your existential dread involves imagining planet Earth engulfed by the sun’s flames in the faraway future, this is its spinoff. Instead of the sun eating a planet with living inhabitants, the moon simply falls from the sky. It might not be a ball of flame, but you’re able to imagine why it’s game over for you when that happens.
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Maskis known for its 54-minute gameplay and on-screen clock that tracks the time and day of the game. You have three days to save the world of Termina, or all that awaits you is a terrible fate.
9Civilization 6
Strategy games aren’t meant to be easy, but their difficulty can be raised with a turn-timer present. This timer feature exists in both singleplayer and multiplayer, so games with your friends (or enemies) can be a little more exciting than usual.
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Maybe excitement is an overstatement since many people tend to feel anger above all else when they don’t know how to shut this feature off. It’s nice to know that you can at least modify the amount of time you want per turn at the start of the game.
8XCOM 2
Speaking of turn-timers, many first-time XCOM players despise this mechanic. Those who play XCOM 2 are hardcore, and this is all because it’s a menacingly hard game, even in missions that don’t have turn-timers. Many are overwhelmed by this mechanic and even say that the timers in this game are endless.
Suffering is the name of the game, and if you’re up for the challenge, this game isworth playing over and over again. The premise of fighting against an alien invasion and being a grand strategist that tries to take Earth back from foreign invaders sounds too cool to pass up despite its infamous difficulty.
7Pentiment
Every interaction you decide to engage in is crucial inPentiment, and not everybody is worth your time compared to others. You also wouldn’t want to oversleep unless you want to get nothing done during the day. With several mysteries to solve in Tassing, you’ll have to manage your time well.
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All of your choices in this game save, so you can’t exactly take your time back unless you go for a new game. As tempting as it isto do everythingin this picturesque game, you can’t—but you’ll have a lot of fun experiencing 16th-century Bavaria, and you won’t even feel the time pass.
6Unsighted
One of the things Unsighted is best known for is the way time passes in its world. That’s realistic for a world that’s dying, but it’s not just the world that’s dying: everybody living in it has a timer, too. Even the NPCs are bound by time, so you have to make each moment count.
You can buy them some time with Meteor Dust, but they’re still doomed to die in the end. If you’ve played this game, you can rest easy knowing that there’s an Explorer Mode that doesn’t burden you with time—but that arguably takes the fun and desperation you’ll feel from this game.
5Time Crisis
If you’re an arcade go-er, you’ll know just how limited time is with Time Crisis. You better be a good shot with the number of enemies you’ll have to clear in this game. Otherwise, the game will restart from where you left off of.
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It’s much worse in the PlayStation version since you’ll be forced to restart the level from the beginning. Don’t worry, you have 60 seconds to run and gun, and you’re given some time extensions for shooting some enemies down quicker.
4Papers, Please
There are many difficult mechanics inPapers, Pleasethat will test your aptitude for detail, but the time pressure makes it so much worse. You’ll be overwhelmed by the information presented to you, and the other things you’ll have to keep an eye out for can easily stress you out.
With only six minutes to evaluate and scan as many Arstotzka entrants as possible and new rules introduced almost every day, things can get hard quickly. Not to mention, you have yourself and your family to feed, so you literally can’t afford mistakes.
3Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13
Saving the world has always had a time limit, butLightning Returns: Final Fantasy 13takes it to a different level. With only 14 days to save the world, the in-game timer is ticking except when you pause the game or have conversations or fights.
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But roaming the overworld of this game takes time, and you’ll have to be purposeful with your movement if you want to make the most out of your time in the game. It feels impossible to save the world in general, but giving it a time limit makes it all the more absurd.
2Keep Talking, And Nobody Explodes
Nothing screams time pressure more than Keep Talking, And Nobody Explodes. You’ll find that theoretically being stuck in a roomwith your friendsas a time bomb ticks is a ton of fun, even if there are lots of panicking and screaming involved.
You’ll be able to test just how good your communication is with your friends through this simulated bomb game. If you find out that you don’t really get each other and can’t work together, at least it’ll be just your mind that’s blown.
1Twelve Minutes
Twelve Minutes is frustration at its peak, and you know it is when even the main character of the game ends up banging the door and cursing after going through what appears to be his hell loop after 12 minutes are up. Every second will count here, and 12 minutes will feel awfully short when you’re trying to save your wife and survive.
Even if you do “beat” the timer, you wouldn’t feel like you’ve wonin any ending of this game. You wouldn’t know what feels worse, understanding this game’s endings or the timer that doesn’t let you do much.
