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I reviewed a bunch of dad games and now I’m sad

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Patrick Gill (he/him) has been making serious and unserious videos for Polygon since 2016. He also co-hosts & produces Polygon’s weekly livestreams on Twitch.

Dad Games. There are a lot of them, and I don’t just mean games where you gotta use your violent tendencies to protect a precious little egg of a child. I’m talking about the stuff dad gets up to while you’re at swim class. Dad can manage a virtual football team, clean out a virtual garage, or chill in a virtual wood shop. A dad’s delight. But for us non-dads, do these games still hit?

I’m not a dad. I’m a childless millennial gamer who makes YouTube videos and I text my mom when I have a tummy ache. Can this growing genre resonate with me? We’ve talked about the daddification of games, but what about the daddification of me.

So I downloaded five premium dad games and gave myself an hour each to review them, based on FUN FACTOR and FATHERLY INSIGHT. I ventured into a world of big trains, powerful water guns, heavy fish, and a whole lot of loneliness. The results of the experiment are in the video up top.

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