Easiest Video Games, Ranked

Want to feel like a champion? Complete these video games with ease. Here's the most up-to-date list of the easiest video games to play right now.

Every video game has at least one unique, defining characteristic to help it stand out from other games in the same genre.

For some games, that may mean a cool art style, special gameplay mechanic, and increased or even reduced difficulty depending on the audience being targeted.

In this list, we’ll be taking a look at the easiest video games ever made and ranking them based on how much (or little) of a challenge they provide.

We’ll be updating this list in the future with new titles, so make sure to check back and let us know if we missed any games!

Related:Longest Video Games Ever (From Least to Most Hours)Best Cross Platform Games 2023Most Realistic Video Games Ranked

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Compared to the Castlevania games on the NES, Symphony of the Night is a total breeze.

While this doesn’t diminish the game’s quality in terms of gameplay, visuals, and atmosphere, the lack of challenge posed by its enemies is hard to ignore.

This can be attributed to the fact that, unlike previous games, players can raise Alucard’s stats by leveling him up and equipping certain weapons.

Although social deduction games require you to be a good liar, they’re typically not very hard when played casually with friends or strangers.

Among Us is currently the most popular game in the genre, and part of that success comes from being accessible and streamlined to the point that even kids know how to sus out who’s the Imposter.

With that said, the game’s difficulty can start to ramp up when playing with more experienced players that have mastered the art of deception.

Clover Studio’s brilliant action-adventure game helped define the PlayStation 2 generation and is still playable on modern consoles today via the enhanced Ōkami HD.

However, once you get past its fantastic art and captivating story, you start to realize the actual minute-to-minute gameplay isn’t as satisfying.

The difficulty is ridiculously low to the point that battles eventually feel like tedious obstacles that only serve to distract you from the story.

Instead of highlighting a specific game, we thought it’d be better to just lump every licensed Lego video game together to fill this spot, mainly because the gameplay rarely differs from game to game.

They’re typically based on high-profile properties with characters whose abilities and worlds greatly vary, though you wouldn’t be able to tell based on the series’ simple control layout.

Challenges usually boil down to holding down a button for a few seconds while your character magically builds whatever item they need to progress using random Lego pieces.

As much as we love to see games like Spyro get updated for the modern era, remasters such as Reignited Trilogy usually end up highlighting the outdated design of many of these classic games.

Like many video games of its time, each Spyro entry can be boiled down to a collect-athon with simple boss encounters and, at best, slightly challenging platformer levels.

Though one could make the argument that people who played Spyro in their youth are just older and more experienced, making them immune to the tricks 3D platformers used to trip us up back in the day.

Created by solo developer Ben Esposito, Donut County is an indie puzzle game that draws inspiration from the Katamari series and sees you controlling an all-consuming giant hole.

Aside from the fact that you can easily beat the game in 1-2 hours, the majority of puzzles have pretty surface-level solutions that don’t require much thought or effort.

With that said, it’s still a hilariously written game that executes its concept perfectly while still being an enjoyable yet brief affair.

The Goose from Untitled Goose Game may be the foulest fowl we’ve ever encountered in a video game, but he doesn’t have much working against them.

While the humans may huff and puff and chase you down, their AI is so dumb to the point they forget you exist only a few seconds later.

That aside, there are a few challenges that require a bit of finessing to clear off the Goose’s checklist.

The Animal Crossing series isn’t exactly known for its challenge, though some goals require a great deal of effort to reach, such as upgrading your home, catching every bug/fish, etc.

Of course, many of these hurdles can be overcome through cheating by advancing your system’s clock, something you’re scolded for in the older games.

However, New Horizons doesn’t try to reprimand you for skipping ahead but instead encourages you to play the game normally by reducing the grind and providing new methods for obtaining furniture and décor.

Adventure games typically fall into one of two categories regarding difficulty: absolute cakewalks and obtuse slogs.

Night in the Woods definitely belongs in the first group, as it’s pretty much impossible to get stuck as long as you’re talking to NPCs and fulfilling their requests.

This is fitting, considering Night in the Woods’ gameplay is meant to be a conduit for telling its deeply engrossing narrative.

The Stanley Parable got its start as a mod for Half-Life 2 in 2011 before becoming its own thing and is best known for its charismatic narrator and very “meta” story,

In it, you play as Stanley, an average office worker who suddenly decides to break his routine and investigate his coworkers’ disappearances.

Since there is no true ending but rather multiple outcomes depending on your choices throughout the game, it’s not really possible to lose in The Stanley Parable.

Abzû is an underwater adventure game that has you take on the role of a scuba diver who awakes to find themselves floating on the surface of a massive ocean.

You begin exploring the ocean’s beautiful, atmospheric environments filled with plant and animal life and discovering ancient technology and underwater ruins.

A majority of the game is spent solving simple puzzles and interacting with marine life through sonar; despite being underwater, there aren’t many dangers to speak of. 

Telltale Games had a stretch of narrative-driven episodic adventure games based on a wide range of intellectual properties, including the hit series The Walking Dead.

The Walking Dead was arguably the most successful of the bunch, with The Wolf Among Us in close-second, though neither is remembered for their difficulty.

Instead, they were meant to serve as “choose your own adventure” stories that warranted multiple playthroughs and little to no challenge beyond simple quick-time events or QTEs.

First-person adventure games, especially those labeled as walking sims, aren’t exactly known for their high degree of difficulty.

Instead, games like Firewatch try to immerse you in detailed worlds using complex characters with unique backstories and personalities.

While there are some puzzles and mysteries to solve throughout Firewatch’s story, the game follows a pretty linear path in order to get you to the next big moment. 

Gone Home lets gameplay take a backseat to storytelling and creating a strong sense of atmosphere, two things the game truly excels at.

Although its puzzles and narrative are a bit more involved than other walking sims, requiring you to examine objects and gain access to different parts of the house, they’re nothing too crazy.

Instead, what you have is an emotionally-charged story about the changes that a young woman and her family have gone through over the years. 

What Remains of Edith Finch is another walking sim in which you play as the Finch family’s last living member as she ventures to the old family home.

Although it features an abundance of unexpected twists and turns throughout its story, the actual meat of the game isn’t challenging in the slightest.

You spend most of your time exploring relatives’ old bedrooms and reliving their memories in sequences told from their perspectives.

Originally released as a free mod for the Source engine and later fleshed out into a full game, Dear Esther is notorious for its minimal gameplay elements.

You’re tasked with exploring different locations throughout an isolated island while an old man reads a series of fragmented letters from his deceased wife.

Considering all you’re doing is walking around and listening, Dear Esther is not a taxing game by any means.

Coffee Talk is a visual novel game that’s been widely praised for its diverse characters and relaxing gameplay.

In it, you play as a barista working in a Seattle café, preparing drinks for patrons and listening to their stories and complaints.

The gameplay portion of Coffee Talk is extremely surface-level and basically functions as a way to keep you engaged in-between customer interactions.

Kirby games are mostly regarded as entry-level platformers for children and casual gamers who may also dabble with other Nintendo platformers like Super Mario and Donkey Kong Country.

While the franchise is littered with laughably easy entries, it’s one of Kirby’s more recent adventures that takes the cake.

Kirby Star Allies is about as forgiving as platformers come, throwing power-up after power-up at you and pitting you against some of the stupidest, easy-to-beat bosses we’ve ever seen in a video game.

Pokémon has long been accused of being too handholding and forgiving with its player tutorials and degree of difficulty, namely in the mainline series games.

Things have only gotten worse over time, with Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee stripping out any semblance of challenge the original Pokémon Yellow had to offer.

From massive EXP gains that level up your Pokémon too quickly to under-leveled enemy trainers and simplified catching mechanics, the Let’s Go games are about as mindless as a video game can be.   

As is the case with many retro games from the 90s, Yoshi’s Story was clearly targeted at a younger demographic of gamers.

This is reflected in both its pop-up storybook presentation and puzzle game-inspired design, which was criminally easy compared to its challenging predecessor, Yoshi’s Island.

None of the levels are especially tricky, and both enemies and bigger bosses have fairly obvious attack patterns that can be avoided and countered without much fuss.

Probably the weirdest game to include on any list, Everything is best described as a world simulator that sees you taking control of various forms of life as well as inanimate objects.

This includes procedurally-generated animals, plants, and trees, in addition to entire landmasses, planets, and even star systems.

Like many other entries on this list, what makes Everything so easy is the fact that there are no real goals for you to achieve and no fail state or “game over” screen to speak of. 

A big part of what makes chill and relaxing games so great is that they don’t demand much from us in terms of gameplay, freeing up our minds to reflect and be at peace.

Flower is a game that fits this bill perfectly by assigning you the simple task of guiding flower petals along a wind current throughout vibrant levels overflowing with nature.

Considering the mellow vibe the game is going for, we can’t really complain nor knock the game for keeping things simple.

Cookie Clicker is a web-browser/mobile game that falls under the category of clicker/idle games that require little to no effort on the player’s part by design.

While it may not be fair to only highlight one game when there’s an entire genre dedicated to laziness, you’ll find some clickers are more interactive than others.

Though there are upgrades to unlock and different types of cookies to discover, it all boils down to tapping the same buttons over and over to get more cookies; where’s the challenge in that?

By far the oldest game on this list, Pong comes from a very different time in video games and was actually considered revolutionary for its time.

Its gameplay is relatively straightforward: one player moves a paddle up and down to control a block and hit a ball into the AI or enemy player’s goal while they try to do the same.

Though the difficulty ramps up the further you go, with later levels increasing the speed of the ball, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone today who considers the game challenging by any means.

It may not seem fair to rank what’s obviously a children’s game as the number one pick for this list, but all we ask is you hear us out.

While Barney’s Hide and Seek is a weak attempt at making a platformer designed for kids, the fact that you don’t even have to play the game to win is frankly absurd.

It includes a self-play feature that will start to guide the player to their next objective if left untouched for several minutes, allowing you to sit back, relax, and let the purple dinosaur do all the work for you.

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Justin Fernandez

As a fan of both indie and triple-A games, Justin finds joy in discovering and sharing hidden gems with other passionate gamers. In addition to reporting on the latest and greatest titles, he manages GamingScan’s social media channels.

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