Games to play while studying/listening to audiobooks?

I have adhd, and it's difficult for me to focus on reading class-type stuff for extended periods of time or even to break the inertia and start studying. One possible solution I've recently thought about is studying by listening to an audiobook of the reading material while playing a videogame. Today I tried listening to a thing for class while playing Don't Starve, but that game requires a bit too much attention to be a good solution here.

Does anyone have recommendations for games that don't require a lot of analysis or complex decision making, but require enough focus to soothe the brain's twitchiness? Puzzles probably bad, text heavy definitely bad, jumpy games probably good.

Also, if anyone has other solutions to help adhd brains study, I'd love to hear them. My main problem is that I can't make myself understand that my action (or lack thereof) in the present will make consequences happen in the future, so I'm trying to twist the work into being something that is fun at a very basic level, not just intellectually interesting.

 

I used to do minecraft while watching youtube videos a lot. When you get into the mining and farming the repetetive activity is boring but kind of stimulating. Also any mmo that requires grinding might be a good choice.

 

perhaps Flight Rising's coli, with a Culex-style team? (Culex wrote a guide on how to best min-max your dragons, it's really good.)

 

I don't have minecraft right now, but this sounds like it might be helpful for next semester! I've been meaning to check it out for a while now anyway, it looks like it would scratch the exploration and base-building itch the same way Don't Starve does.

I used to play Shock Switch a lot and was thinking of going back to that, but I bet the coli would also be good! And I'll look up that guide, too. I can't remember the last time I tried the coliseum, but I remember I wasn't great at it :P

 

I have a mire-flyer (a dragon statted to be able to take 2 exalt fodders through the Mire) that's ready to be sold, if you're willing to pay A Lot. (Still cheaper than statting one yourself-Rallies and Eliminates are both absurdly expensive.)

 

(You can also take a Flyer to a lower-level zone and do a coli challenge like the Determination challenge-or you can go to your flight's Dominance forums and see if there's any threads along the line of Arcane's "Donate junk-Fund the bank!" with its Grinders Keepers challenge.)

 

Thanks, but I think I'd rather grind my way up - the whole point is to have something mindless to do, after all :P Plus I don't really play FR anymore, so a super specced dragon would kind of languish in my lair. I might donate anyone who hits level cap, actually.

 

you actually probably don't want to do that-you'll have to shill out for a new Eliminate every so often and they're really, really expensive. once you have a dragon with eliminate, you don't want to just...give it up! you'll hit level cap in a few days, probably, and then you can just take your dragons and grind...wherever.

maybe stat 2 of the dragons to an exalting build, and then buy a third dragon cheap on the AH and train that to 25 in the party without following culex's guide?

 

I don't remember Eliminates being extraordinarily expensive, but then I haven't played the game in a couple years. I'll probably do something like what you suggest - I think I just need to refamiliarize myself with the coli first.

 

Yeah, because Culex's guide showed that Eliminate was really, really good for grinding, demand shot up, and most people following Culex's guide soon found themselves levelling exalt fodder in the Mire...which drops neither Rallies nor Eliminates, causing supply to drop...meaning that if you search on the auction house, the most expensive battle stone is the Eliminate.

Incidentally, there's a new game, Artifracture, which is the best for making treasure in a short amount of time, and you can now search the AH by dragon age, allowing you to find cheap adult dragons without having to sift through hundreds of hatchlings.

 

Going to a different physical space works when I can make it happen, but unfortunately it adds Another Step to the process of beginning the work (actually several More Steps, depending on where I plan to go). It makes it easier to focus while working, but much more difficult to start, because the Procedure gets even more complicated. And half hour breaks tend to turn into six-hour breaks for me :P

I really want to play puzzlestuck!! but judging by what I've seen it requires a little too much thought for this. I've been putting it off until after the semester ends.

 

So looking at the other games that other people have mentioned this feels a little silly but I usually play tetris or candy crush style games. They're usually about the right balance for me.

If I'm trying to read through a text I usually go for listening to something with words that I'm fairly familiar with (for example musical soundtracks or podcasts I've listened to before). It's also quite useful keeping track of time so I'll work for at least X number of songs/whatever and rest for a maximum of Y number.

 

Oh right music.

Instrumental music is good, video music is especially good-it's designed to help you focus.

 

Puzzle games might work if I played them enough beforehand so that the mechanics don't require any thought! I'll look into these.

 

Seconding 2048, especially if you do well with shock switch! I cant get shock switch to run well on my tablet and have found 2048 to be an excellent substitute. If the numbers part of it is too distracting, focusing on the colors of the blocks works just as well for matching up stuff and I've found the 6 by 6 grid to be just big enough that if you lose focus some mindless sliding around will free up the blocks to make it interesting again.

Plus it isnt timed/doesnt move unless you tell it to so theres no panic if you need to pause or listen extra carefully to a certain piece of audio

 

idle app games like Abyssrium or 10 Billion Wives or Hay Day (there is an abundance of idle games, for every aesthetic desire) might be good for that

also i like to do that with late-game Stardew Valley. or mid-game stardew valley. i would wait until you have the game mechanics under your belt before listening to a thing while you play but it shouldn't take too long, and then the game is nice and grindy and it's a satisfying thing to multi-task with while you listen to a book. there is a lot of text if you talk to the villagers every day, but they repeat a lot of their dialogue so outside of event scenes you can skim or skip most of the dialogue and keep focusing on your book. or just not talk to the villagers at all.

also, +1 vote for Minecraft, if you're into that. it's a bit too open-ended for me so i like stardew more, but they're pretty similar games as far as focus goes, imo

 

Idk how you feel about hack and slash type games, but they're often great for me to play while listening to recorded lectures or the like, because it's perfectly possible to set the difficulty to where surviving is just enough of a challenge to keep your attention, while powers and stuff are mostly muscle memory. I play Diablo 3 a lot for that kind of thing, because I can skip all the cutscenes and dialog because the plot isn't the point, killing waves of monsters is, and if you've got decent gear it's very difficult to die. Plus after you beat the main plot once you can just jump in to kill things and it eliminates cutscenes and story missions where you have to do annoying things like protecting townspeople.

Edit: There's apparently a starter edition for free if you play on pc to see if you like it.

 

if minecraft is too open-ended, maybe get the twitch app and search for packs with questing?

there's 2 mods, hardcore questing mode and one that's named something like 'better questing', and they both add quests-and if it's a modpack the mod author's filled up the questbook with quests already!

also, not all HQM modpacks are meant to be played in hardcore-regrowth, for example, is supposed to be played in Any Difficulty But Hardcore, agrarian skies puts in lots of extra lives for anyone playing in hardcore (including a recipe for them) and a way to get mob drops in peaceful if you like that, and so on.