You -like me- might have gotten used to having a second screen providing background noise during your gaming sessions. You -and I- need to stop doing that, and we need to start playing games the way we used to before ‘second screen’ became a thing.

During 2026 I have been trying to go through my backlog of Steam games. Like many of us gamers, the current economical landscape makes me pause and truly question if I need a new game, or if I can even afford it. Inevitably, I decide that groceries (once again) are the priority and that my monthly extra allowance is already being consumed by the gym membership I’m still convincing myself hasn’t gone to waste.

I haven’t gone to the gym in a month. Probably longer.

So, with the same decisiveness with which I signed up to the gym, I take a plunge into my Steam library to dust off the indie sweethearts that I have very kindly stored for myself for this exact conundrum. Thanks past me.

And thanks to an incredible birthday gift from my partner, this time around I’m finding it easier to really knock out some of the titles that have lived in the backlog for the longest time. All with the help of my Retroid handheld and the black magic that is GameNative.

So, new handheld companion in hand, I set off on my backlog clearing journey to give my wallet a breather, which I feel has become a sort of ritual for gamers all around the world in 2026. Tough times we live in. Thankfully we’ve spent years gathering indie games and past triple A titles in seasonal Steam sales, like squirrels hoarding nuts for the winter. And winter has come.

This time around I also wanted to try and really just play games whenever I decide to sit down and play games. And that means no music, no podcasts and no 2 hour long YouTube deep dives into cruise line comparisons. I sit down, raise the volume of my little handheld, and play games the same way I used to do as a kid.

Aside from rediscovering some of my favorite gaming soundtracks -the synth drones of Hyper Light Drifter have rejoined my music rotation- I have also found that a lot of games that I bounced off years ago, now have completely hooked me. More specifically Pizza Tower, Hyper Light Drifter and The Banner Saga. And I feel that a big part of this is because I am now giving these games 100% of my attention, as I clearly should have from the beginning.

To this you might think ‘well, yeah. How else are you meant to play them?’. Which only tells me that you have never fallen prey to a game like Monster Hunter. A game with so many systems and positive feedback loops that scratch your lizard brain in such a way that playing never becomes boring, but it does become just a series of tasks you perform. You are no longer playing games. You are now just a factory of monster materials, praying to the gods of random number generators to end your misery by giving you the one material you need…

Sorry, what were we talking about? Oh, right. Playing games.

Certain games like Monster Hunter, Destiny or really any MMO, eventually become activities that we can do with half of our brains turned off. It’s like doing laundry. So, a lot of us started watching YouTube videos or catching up on that show we wanted to watch while playing, because we know how to fight the Rathian, so might as well watch something while the washing machine is going.

And that’s fine, keep multi-screen playing Balatro while watching Great British Bake Off with your significant other is totally fine. But if you are playing a game for the first time, give it your full attention.

I remember playing Hyper Light Drifter for the first time some 8 years ago. The aesthetics, the music, the world, all of it captivated me from the moment I started playing. Even the mechanics and combat were great. But for some reason I kept losing my way and had no idea at all what I needed to do. Throughout the years I would try to come back and pick it up, but always failed to make any progress. And now that I am replaying it, I understand that it is because I wasn’t truly playing it. I was mindlessly putting another load in the washing machine. Fighting enemies and following paths, but never actually engaging with the game and with what it was trying to tell me.

This time around I decided to figure the game out, and I quickly realized that I had been the problem all along. From the main objective to the small signs of secret paths or hidden rooms, when I played Hyper Light Drifter actually paying attention, listening to the music, pausing to “read” the dialogue -I say “read” because there is no actual dialogue in the game- the game was clear as water. And boy is it a good game.

The same thing happened with Pizza Tower and The Banner Saga. Games that in their own times I started, tried for a couple of minutes, then failed to get ‘hooked’ and abandoned them along with the rest of the backlog. And now, with my full attention and my Retroid Pocket, I am loving every second of them.

A big part of my enjoyment is also having a gaming handheld to play these games. Even though I’ve had gaming PCs before, I have always been a console gamer, and more specifically a handheld console gamer. That’s how my Monster Hunter brain rot began. Playing on my 3DS while watching TV. But even if you don’t have a gaming handheld, I encourage you to try to take gaming in small chunks rather than hour long multi screen sessions.

Sit down for 20 to 45 minutes, maybe an hour if you have time, and play as much as you can in that time. Then pause and give yourself a breather. Maybe go on a walk, you might find yourself unable to think about anything other than the game, the same way we used to as kids sharing cheat codes at school.

For a long time I was in a gaming rot. I was either hooked on an ‘infinite’ game like Balatro or Dead Cells, playing at night well into the A.M while watching YouTube, or dumping an entire weekend into a game like Elden Ring and then being unable to pick it up again. Sometimes I just didn’t click with the game, other times I didn’t have much free time to actually play, but now I recognize that other times I was simply not giving myself the time to properly enjoy them.

So if you have a gaming handheld or a PC with which to tackle your backlog, maybe there’s a game you’ve been meaning to go back to, I encourage you to do so with your full attention. Maybe even put on some headphones and immerse yourself into the game. You might start finding yourself excited at just hearing the music of the tile screen, just like many of us probably did booting up games like Final Fantasy VII or Ocarina of Time.

Shit… The Ocarina of Time remake is coming in less than a month. Well, I guess I’m not buying groceries in November.