The iconic stoner anthem “Smoke Two Joints” was released in 1982 by The Toyes, and contains the lyric “I smoke two joints when I play video games, and at every 2000 points…” That’s unusually progressive for a 1982 song; video game consoles at that point were in their first generation, so at best they were playing an Atari 2600. In 1982, could they have been playing… God forbid… E.T.?

Anyway, you might remember me from my stoner movie guide, and now I’m back with a stoner gamer guide. If I must belabor you with gaming credentials, I stand by my gaming posts at GeekyDomain.

What makes a good stoner game?

Our methods for picking good stoner games are different. Every video game is more enjoyable stoned than not stoned, across the board. But with that, there are a few aspects of some games that get more annoying while stoned:

• Rhythm games – Weed throws your sense of timing off
• Lots of text – Your reading comprehension just is not at its peak under weed
• Extreme difficulty – Old-school Nintendo platform games are out of the question
• Too many unskippable cutscenes – Your attention span is challenged enough already
• Repetitive tasks – The kind that seem boring and pointless
• Multitasking under pressure – Time management is another skill that suffers
• Two-player competitive – Your emotions are more engaged when stoned, which is the wrong time to subject yourself to trolling

Let me clarify some of this. Diablo II, a beloved classic, sucks while stoned. It seems like it should be great until you remember how much walking is involved. Oh, I have to go all the way back through Underground Passage again to rescue Deckard Cain. Then I have to listen to him wheedle “Stay a while and listen.” Oh, I can’t pick up this item, I have to rearrange my inventory again. Somebody out there in the mod community needs to make a patch for this game that lets you drive a car around, because that’s what it really needs.

All games on this list are on mobile, for Android at least.

So, on with some game recommendations for the dedicated stoner gamer:

Minecraft

Minecraft is almost tailor-made for stoner playing. You play at your own pace, and can sink hours building elaborate structures. There’s always a sense of progress. The music is tranquil. You can happily tend your crops within your base’s farm on easy difficulty. If you play on toughest difficulty and tackle the most challenging areas, it still isn’t that intense, barring the inevitable surprise creeper.

Terraria

Terraria is unofficially called “2D Minecraft” (even though it’s still different), so it goes right along with the first recommend. Once again, you can spend a lot of time just digging out ground, building stuff, adding a museum wing to your base to display all your trophies, and so on. Terraria gives you a great sense of advancement doing almost anything. We don’t recommend taking on boss battles while fully ripped, but once you’ve made some headway, all past foes you’ve faced become trivial.

Roller Coaster Tycoon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__W8ncWZYsU

It’s been ported to mobile, at least up to Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 + expansions. RCT is the definition of a stoner game. There’s goals, but you have plenty of time to complete them. Problems that come up are easily dealt with. And now the fun part: engineering rides and decorating park areas! If you’re completely baked, head for the ride designer and just focus on mastering coaster design. You can always use another pre-built ride to plop down during scenario play.

Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InqTnAx_mAY

Normally we wouldn’t recommend the GTA series because completing missions in this game franchise can be stupidly frustrating even cold sober. However, nobody says you have to actually play missions! You can just be a chill taxi driver. Or get a tat at the studio. Or explore town. Did you ever find that one armor drop in the Atrium in Los Santos? Did you finish finding all the special stunt jumps? Just playing it as an open sandbox game is actually pretty relaxing as well as amusing when your shenanigans cause a pile-up of havoc. Normally you can’t escape the cops when you’re at three stars using only a forklift, but by golly weed will give you that confidence. Out of all the GTA series, Grand Theft Auto : San Andreas has the best wide-open sandbox aspect, and its ported to mobile near flawlessly – provided you can adjust to the controls not being a PS2 controller.

Pixel Dungeon

Any classic-style dungeon crawler genre game is good here, because it’s inherently turn-based, which means you can take as much time as you want to ponder your next action. Pixel Dungeon is mainly recommended for being free (open source in fact), having a ton of different modded versions to explore, and being an overall chill old-school game. The pixel graphics are surprisingly easy on the eyes, while the game gives you steady progress without too much repetition.

Survive

Survive is a little-known game that is a wilderness survival challenge with many ranges of difficulty. It’s not the most exciting to look at, but give it time and it grows on you. It is a timed game within bounds of reason, but not at all a rushed pace. It is also primarily a text-based game but does not involve heavy reading. The ambient sounds of crackling fireplaces and gentle rain are downright soothing. Among Us Download PC

Tiny Tower

Tiny Tower is a cross between an idle game and a business simulator. It’s another game in the old-school pixel-art style, being very kawaii and cute. If you’re seeing a pattern here, it’s another game where you decide your own level of involvement but can also get busy building more levels.

Neko Atsume : Kitty Collector

We’re talking really, really low bandwidth here (you, not your mobile). Neko Atsume just barely qualifies as a game, it’s more like an interactive screensaver. The object of the game is to attract cats to your patio so you can take their picture. It is very slow-paced, maybe even checking in once every few hours will do. This is not for everybody, but if you’re just melted into the couch and need an activity level just above that of a Venus fly-trap, this is your party.

Fallout Shelter

While time management games are poorly rated among stoners, this one isn’t too demanding and there’s also build aspects, exploration aspects, funny dialog, weapon crafting, and so on. Fallout Shelter is based on the Fallout series as a kind of spin-off. It has just enough of a pace between random vault invasions and needy little sim-people to keep you invested like you’re tending a large hamster cage.

Honorable mention 1: casual puzzle games

Every casual single-screen puzzle game ever made is ideal for stoner zone-out play. Tetris, Bubble-Bobble, Snake, Solitaire, Bejeweled, and all those clones, sequels, and derivatives within the genre. They all require a little bit of thought and a small amount of reflexes, but it’s just enough to keep you invested without taxing your capabilities too much. We just don’t list these separately because – maye going out on a limb here – we’re pretty sure you’ve heard of Tetris before.

Honorable mention 2: SNES emulator

Look, the Present Author owned a Super Nintendo and a whole shelf full of games for it all the way through the ’90s. Therefore, I am entitled to play them any way I want to, and if Nintendo won’t port the game to the Android tablet then I’m more than happy for the third-party open source community to do that for me. We’re not telling you to go out and pirate SNES ROMs. However, if you were to hypothetically be in my situation, some SNES games make an enchanting little stoner Android game on an SNES emulator app…

• Caesar’s Palace – The best casino game on Android is a ripped port of an SNES game
• Earthbound – Turn-based combat, hilarious dialog, wacky characters, cult classic
• Harvest Moon – There’s a dozen farming sims out there now, but they’re all just knock-offs of this classic
• Secret of Mana – Cute little combat RPG, yet it’s not Final Fantasy
• Sim City + Sim City 2000 – Until they make an Android Sims game that doesn’t suck, this is your best option.
• Super Punchout – Doesn’t pounding a new attitude into Dragon Chan sound like the perfect activity when you’re ripped?

Stoner gamers : What did we miss?

Honorable mention: Anything you want. Most if us who stone and game can’t think of a game we haven’t played on weed. Tell us your recommendation in the comments below or in the forums.