Games within games

What games within a game do you enjoy?

What I mean by this that in certain games, you or your character can play a game. Examples of this are the card battle games in the Final Fantasy games, Gwent in the Witcher 3, Maniac Mansion in Day of the Tentacle.

I’ve started playing Opus Magnum - a puzzle game where you find the most efficient way of combining alchemical elements to create a final product. It’s a lot of fun and I’ll speak about it in another post. But within Opus Magnum there is a board game called Sigmar’s Garden which plays somewhat like Mahjong and is a lot of fun. I’ve found myself spending more hours on Sigmar’s Garden than the main game itself at the moment.

Loved Gwent in Witcher 3, Final Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII.

Does custom (arcade) maps in WarCraft / StarCraft count? If so, then DOTA and TD are the obvious answers here… I think I’ve spent more hours in GemTD and EleTD in StarCraft 2 than the campaign. I haven’t played the multiplayer at all and don’t have any interest in doing so either, but the TD maps are divine.

A fun one to play now and again while in game would be the one from stardew valley. Journey of the Prairie King

Definitely, the arcade contains many games, if not whole genre’s of games within the game of Starcraft