Many titles have Easter Eggs and mini games to play within them, and these are some of the best ones that you can find.
Take a trip down memory lane in Wolfenstein: The New Order
One of the most famous minigame Easter Eggs in all of gaming comes by way of Wolfenstein: The New Order. The 2014 release of one of gaming’s most popular and long-running series continues to ride the coattails of one of the most revolutionary video games ever made, 1981’s Castle Wolfenstein, considered one of the breakout games of the first-person shooter genre.
Some gamers had been playing Wolfenstein and its sequels for over 30 years by the time of The New Order’s release, and the developers left them a nice thank you present within the latest game. An Easter Egg allows players to keep their 3D character and his modern weapons, but to play through the game in the original style of the 1981 release.
Founding fortresses and starting settlements in Fallout 4
Sure, technically this isn’t actually a minigame in the strictest sense of the world as it is an element of gameplay. However, it’s one that for the most part you can easily ignore if you so choose. This semi-optional aspect of the feature, coupled with the fact that it’s such a new addition to the Fallout series, means that for this list we’re counting it.
There is a huge number of different options for players to build fully-functioning towns, small self-sufficient hamlets using all manner of building tools and resources, as well as defending them with a wide range of weaponry and assigning guards who can be armed with the weapons you collect throughout the game. Fallout 4 proved divisive with long-time fans, but many enjoyed this new aspect of the game.
Gyms and gambling in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas took the open-world and interactive style of GTA gaming that began with Grand Theft Auto III and was refined by Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and went quite frankly insane with it.
The number of activities that your player could engage in was through the roof, including the need to eat regularly – eat too much, though, and your avatar gets fat. Go to the gym and you’ll burn it off and put on muscle. In addition, the game allowed players to wager their cash in casinos and try to strike it rich – but if you went into debt, then in true GTA style the casino would hire gun-wielding thugs to attack you. Sure, San Andreas’ roulette rounds weren’t as graphically polished as the casino sites found online these days, due to the obvious technological restrictions of its time, but it certainly did provide countless hours of entertainment trying to win big bucks with the elusive jackpot.
The Witcher 3: how about a round of Gwent?
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the most critically acclaimed and popular video games of all time, garnering Polish studio CD Projekt Red over 800 awards including more than 250 Game of the Year titles from various publications and companies. The massive open-world gameplay, fantastic worldbuilding and fluid combat options and character development were a hit with fans.
All that pales, however, in comparison to the popularity of Gwent. A Hearthstone-style card game within the world of The Witcher 3, Gwent has spawned standalone games and countless societies, with many players becoming heavily addicted to the turn-based strategy card game. In spite of the overwhelming success of the main game, Gwent managed to nearly eclipse that – surely this makes it the most successful video game mini game of all time?
