The best games that are endless without padding their run

Dedicated players and completionists are rarely confused. Tasks like getting the maximum Smashing stat in every single tier Donkey Kong Banana (undoubtedly one of Nintendo's best releases of 2025), it might be too much of a challenge, but some players will do absolutely anything. Inevitably, we end up squeezing every drop of fun out of most games.

However, we want to have fun the whole time. Sometimes a title has over 100 hours of content, but less than half of that is the main story, and the rest is repetitive work like mopping up collectibles. If instead you're looking for titles that seem almost endless without resorting to this kind of padding, this could be a great fit for you.

7

Minecraft

Mining and crafting since 2011

Of course, the closest titles to being literally endless are often sandbox experiences. The advantage of this system is that it doesn't have to rely on lengthy campaigns or releasing more and more levels. Instead, the key is to provide as many creative tools as possible and an almost infinite space in which to use them.

Minecraft is the primary example that comes to mind. In survival mode, hardcore running can end quickly and permanently if you're confident, but in standard mode you can enjoy running effectively forever. You can persist in it as long as you have goals to achieve, and the same goes for creative mode. The more elaborate your building project is, the more time you can spend perfecting it. To give you an idea of ​​the scope of Minecraft's creative “endgame”, Guinness World Records states that the largest Minecraft project to date is “Build The Earth”, a self-explanatory 1:1 scale project.

6

Hades

Underworld defenses need to be tested again, and again, and again

Along with sandbox games, roguelikes are also perfect candidates for endless content. The central concept is repeating runs over and over again until successful, then returning even more times to experiment with builds, unlocking more content, and so on. Supergiant's hades, along with its celebrated sequel, it is now considered by many to be the pinnacle of the genre. With fantastic integration of an ongoing story between runs and rich content to unlock and challenges to solve, hades, with its interesting Dark Thirst mechanic, it's not that stuffy as it constantly offers something new for those dedicated players to test their mettle against.

The actual endgame is only available after defeating the final boss multiple times, and that alone won't get you far enough to upgrade each of your weapon aspects. Companions also require leveling with Ambrosia instead of Titan Blood, while upgrades and mods for House of Hades require diamonds and other resources. To get them, it takes more and more runs and keep adjusting the terms of the Pact of Punishment to get more rewards. The heat level rewards are separate for each weapon type, further necessitating shuffling between them as you run. In order to achieve maximum success and obtain each of Skelly's statues, you will need to constantly increase your heat level in dozens of runs.

5

Borderlands 2

Keep The Carnage Coming

Some fans of the show still claim that Borderlands 2 is the best game in the series, an excellent step up from the original, and absolutely overflowing with content when finished. Each of its many content packs offers a large and varied experience with unique spaces, such as the large Vault Access Tournament set up by Mr. Torgue in the Mr. Torgue's Campaign of Carnage. This particular campaign culminated in a boss battle against a giant mechanical t-rex truck, perhaps one of the weirdest and most fantastical enemies in the entire game.

Vault Hunters are designed with split skill trees in hopes that players will find unique and powerful strategies that work best for them. The last skill available in the tree is generally the most powerful, but it takes an awful lot of leveling to achieve. To get the most out of your character build, it may require switching to True Vault Hunter mode and possibly Ultimate Vault Hunter mode to continue leveling effectively. And that's just for one character. Loot scaling means you're not just filling runtime, you're completing builds with access to all skills and the best weapons and gear available. It would indeed be an almost endless effort to try this with all the vault hunters.

4

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Your island can be your permanent home

Some players experience a sort of “letting go” cycle. Animal Crossing games. They go from a daily routine to every other day, then maybe settle in once a week, and finally disappear out of shame so Cube the penguin doesn't ask why he hasn't seen you in seven months. However, if you're truly committed, it could become your permanent island home.

There really is no such thing as padding in these games. Your routine is what you make it, and if you're an avid landscaper, hybrid flower grower, and proud owner of a five-star island, you can switch up a little and often every day to maintain it. Even after you've completed your museum, acquired every single item you could possibly want, and designed your home exactly to your liking, the cycle of life continues. After all, your favorite villagers love to see you as much as you love them. That's not even counting the Happy Home Paradise DLC, which can take a second life on its own if you want to perfect the theme of each individual island home. Don't forget that you unlock new furniture sets as you go, meaning you can go back and improve earlier builds once you have access to a larger catalog.

3

Civilization 7

One (hundred) more revolutions

Civilization is infamously known as one of the most engaging series ever. It doesn't feel like you find a Civ and Leader that perfectly matches your playstyle, tailor your strategy to their strengths, and then watch your progress towards your chosen type of victory skyrocket as your carefully crafted plan and set of bonuses come together. However, you can also prefer a more relaxed route, assigning a high victory score requirement so that the game lasts longer. It's all about the kind of experience you want to have, and if you want the campaign to be nearly endless, there's a facility for that.

Civilization 7 is a title that continues to improve with each update from a less than emphatic launch. In April 2025, the One More Turn mode was announced, allowing players to continue with their Civ for as long as they want after achieving victory. Having multiple victory types with different Civs and specific scenarios to play through was already daunting enough, but making the game truly endless is a whole other prospect.

2

Diablo 3

The story is far from over

One of the keys to avoiding cluttering up a game's runtime is to provide multiple options for continuing the game, but making sure they're beneficial and don't feel tacked on. Respecting the player's time is an important factor in longer games and Diablo 3 can be a great example of that. The games in this series have different approaches to their endgame content, and this installment has struck an effective balance.

The main campaign itself is quite short, How Long To Beat clocks vanilla Diablo 3 at 6 pm for that. However, he adds that the finalists will spend around 170 hours playing the game. That's because after defeating the big bad, there's an opportunity to delve into a wide variety of endgame content. There are Rifts of both the Nephalem and Greater varieties, seasons and co-op multiplayer for those with like-minded adventurers to take on board. Challenges that adjust to your strength ensure there's virtually no end to the content if you want to stick with it, and it's hard to resist the allure of new gear. You might even discover a new build you'd like to try, and that might mean starting over.

1

No Man's Sky

How big is the universe?

As Civilization 7 is currently No Man's Sky has undergone a campaign of updates and improvements designed to give players more of what they wanted: Lots of different things to do and a huge space in which to do it. No Man's Sky it doesn't inundate the player with mindless work to keep them engaged, but rather adds some major story quests for the sake of fine-tuning and providing some structure. However, that's not really what the game is about.

You can create a trading empire, build a huge and elaborate base, or simply travel from planet to planet to see how they differ. Procedural generation means you never know exactly what you'll find, and your experiences can be as ordered or chaotic and random (typically the latter in multiplayer) as you like. There is potential for the experience here to be almost endless, but only as much as you wish. You will hunt for uranium and all kinds of other activities besides.