For me it’s probably Age of Empires. I used to watch my father play it when I was younger, so replaying it now feels weirdly nostalgic.

Without a doubt DayZ. Many thousands of hours in, and I'm still a n00b. This game is the final form of gaming. The ultimate survival sandbox.

If we don't count shooters or MMOs, probably some flavor of Civ.

Solitaire is probably right up there though lol.

Borderlands 2 (BL2). I love the characters, the writing and the story. Handsome Jack is my favorite villain of all time. The game play mechanics feel good to me. The difficulty levels goes up with subsequent play-throughs (True Vault Hunter Mode (TVHM) and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM)). There's decent DLC; "Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" was my favorite. Also, it is possible that the story of BL2 hits for me because I also played the snot out of BL1 and fell in love with the characters there who re-appear in BL2 in very well written ways. For the record, I think BL3 and BL4 are inferior to BL2 by a long shot.

Stardew Valley. The first play-through without spoilers and without knowing what I was getting into was magical. After that, the variety of things to do and different ways to play the game kept me coming back. You can just chill and take things slow, or min/max it, or try a speed run, or just focus on your farm.

Edit to add: GTA V. Love the characters and the open world. So much to do.

gta vc - one love, play it every time feel depressed to be recovered by warm childhood memories (around once a year)

Slither.io

Deus Ex or Half-Life, probably. The first Halo, too.

Football manager

Command and Conquer series skirmish

Cities Skylines

For more recent games: Control, HardSpace ship breaker, Ori, and Hollow Knight.

Oh and Journey

Probably Manic Miner!

Morrowind, without a doubt. It looks and feels janky now but the storytelling is amazing. Far more interesting and unique quests than later TES games.

Minecraft and the Civilization series.

Sim City 4 and Civilization 5. Both are timeless and I still play them a few times a year. Hard to believe Sim City 4 is over 20 years old.

I've gone through Universal Paperclips[1], 100 times in a row. I stopped when I accidentally clicked on the option at the end that killed all progress. I managed to get Covid/Long Covid in 2020, and have subsequently been yeeted out of the workforce, and find myself with nothing but time on my hands, and little energy to actually do anything productive.

I've played thousands of hours of Factorio[2], I tend to play a rocket-rush game on an island, and stop when I've cleared the island of biters. The Space Age expansion made it interesting, but there's something about the grind that just killed the fun for me.

I keep playing Exponentile[3], which I think was from someone here on HN. (Yep, it's from MikeBellika, [3a])

Now I find myself playing Arrows Escape[4]

I love MineCraft[5], but I can't play it because it induces vertigo. The same was true of Doom[6], and pretty much all first person shooters from the distant past.

[1] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/

[2] https://factorio.com/

[3] https://www.bellika.dk/exponentile

[3a] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39897112

[4] https://arrowsgo.io/game/

[5] https://www.minecraft.net/en-us

Sudoku. Wordle is a distant second.

Witcher 3