Look, Mum, no hands (games that make great screensavers)

Your gaming room is so perishingly cold, removing hands from pockets is unthinkable. You’re cradling a dozing infant or pet and don’t wish to wake them by operating a keyboard or controller. You’re cohabiting with a petulant poltergeist who’ll trash the place unless distracted 24/7 by moving images… There are many reasons why you might want to ‘play’ a video game without actually playing a video game. Here are four current THC favourites that double as splendid animated screensavers.

If you don’t mind manually selecting a new unit when the currently selected one kicks the bucket, Nuclear Option is a great option for minimal input gaming. Once in spectator mode, you can click on any unit on the map then sit back and watch from cockpit, chase, or fly-by view as your chosen camera mount attempts to wreak havoc and avoid elimination.

When dispensing or dodging shells, missiles and bombs in person, there’s generally little chance to savour the spectacle effortlessly generated by NO’s unscripted territorial tussles. Riding as a rubber-necked co-pilot in a Chicane, Cricket, or Compass, the pressure is off, and the ogling opportunities myriad.

Autodriving procedurally generated thoroughfares in the Slow Roads 2 beta preview (accessible to all through the game’s Discord channel) makes me feel like a sleepy passenger on some dream-like English roadtrip. Dream-like? As the endless road we’re speeding along sports no junctions, the imaginary road atlas in my lap serves no purpose. And, as the invisible driver at my side possesses no mouth or ears, there’s no point in me offering them sweets, or asking if they’d mind if I switched to Radio 3.

Thanks to more naturalistic flora and environment transitions, SR2’s scenery feels a lot more English than the original’s ever did. After a spell winding across heather- and gorse-dotted moorland, invariably roads dip into valleys and lowlands plausibly partitioned by walled fields and irregular patches of woodland. If we had powerlines, farms, and a light sprinkling of potholes and fellow road-users, the illusion would be as potent as Somerset scrumpy.

Deer Hunter 2005, the subject of last week’s Dusty But Trusty, doesn’t need regular player input to captivate. Using its wildlife observation mode, you can follow foliage-browsing, dung-depositing, ear-scratching ungulates as they wander maps.

Only a hunt sim developer deeply proud of what its animators and AI coders had achieved would dare to offer a play option this revealing.

The bogs don’t flush, the benches are unusable, and the chap manning the cafeteria doesn’t move a muscle on hearing ‘A cup of tea and a currant bun, please’, but in train sim terms, the version of Lancaster station that comes with West Coast Main Line : Preston – Carlisle is a remarkably lively and evocative place to spend time in.

There’s certainly enough timetabled rail traffic to keep a virtual trainspotter busy, and sufficient detail and period atmosphere to remind a quinquagenarian rail enthusiast of the time he spent on the real Lancaster Station in the early Eighties.