Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup

Factorio

Both are almost exactly like programming for me. Impossible not to get in the zone.

Used to get this from Rocket League back in the day. My eyes would practically glaze over at times with just how automatic my movements would be.

Doom Eternal and especially its challenge arenas are immediately what came to mind for me!

While id soft screwed Mick Gordon on the OST, they did so much right in the gunplay and movement mechanics in that game. Rotating through the power trinity and bhopping around an arena whilst gibbing demons is something I just don’t tire of.

Sekiro, and nothing else has ever come close. It’s so smooth and so fast that I drop into the flow state with no trouble at all.

Any soulslike. When the boss movements click in your brain it’s very much a flow state.

Katana Zero did it for me

Infinite forest for Destiny 2’s Halloween event did it as well

Trackmania sometimes does it

Super Hexagon too

Anything that can get my adrenaline pumping, which generally only happens with multiplayer games when I am facing a human opponent. Dark Souls is a great example for me, here, because the single player gives me that rush for a while but eventually I’m able to breeze through every boss and enemy in the game with minimal effort, so going into invasions and getting sweaty against a host and his 2 OP phantoms is the only way to get that rush again, because, generally speaking, other players can think so no two opponents are really ever the same.

I actually kinda wonder now what the flow state even feels like to others who suggest things like strategy games or puzzle games. To me, it’s like that fucking hyper focus the protag has in the movie Wanted. Crazy Lazer focus on whatever action is going on, and it’s just like… Automatic. No thoughts. Just actions. So I’m really curious how it might manifest in something slower paced like Civilization and what not. Or even how some folks can enter that state via meditation. That sounds awesome and I wish I could trigger it with something else.

Dark Tide (Warhammer 40K). The combat just flows so well, and the relentless hordes of enemies lay on the kind of pressure that forces you to use every tool in your character’s arsenal to its maximum potential.

Rocket league

Celeste.

Currently Deadlock.

Apex Legends. Its a difficult game to master, but every once in a while I get “in the zone” and pull moves/plays that impress myself. It’s not often, but feels nice when it happens. I still enjoy it even though I “suck” most of the time. I basically play it as a survival game >90% of the time.

Rogue Legacy does it for me in a pinch.

The Last of Us does too, but I tend to zone out and take my time sneaking around or observing stuff. So I don’t play it unless I know I have a lot of time to waste.

Sound Shapes did it for me too, but I haven’t played in awhile.

Monster Hunter World once I got down the controls/equipment well enough that I didn’t have to think about them. But once I dropped it, I didn’t go back because I don’t have time to relearn.

Halo Reach would take my time for hundreds of hours back in the day. It’s a unfortunate/fortunate that the Master Chief Collection doesn’t include multi-team in matchmaking.

Xcom was a good one too during missions. I have some great war stories from that game. My first encounter with chryssalids was straight out of a horror movie. Quickly went FUBAR and barely got one soldier out alive.

Roguelikes. Binding of Isaac is one of my top played games with something like 500 hours in the game. I put it down a year or two and picked it back up like nothing. Just dodging and weaving and min maxing like i never stopped. Even new games that have a similar feel, I just tend to lock in and end up getting really far in my first run.

Don’t play it much anymore, but the original Borderlands on xbox360.