Care to recommend a Single-Player Timesink Game?

[Ender910_v1legacy]

Orcs Must Die (2) might be right up your alley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHN7id2ToWE
(I don't know how to embed videos in my post sadly)

Think tower defense, only with traps instead. And lots of interesting tactics and placements to experiment with, and it has about the same kind of learning curve and "non-luck based" mechanics that you requested.

 

[Xeorm]

Star Realms is a pretty good deckbuilding game.

TotalBiscuit did a review of it recently, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMESJvYT39I&list=UUy1Ms_5qBTawC-k7PVjHXKQ

 

[Mirroga]

Give Shovel Knight a play. Its old school platforming goodness at a fraction of the price of a AAA game and its got many of them beat in the reviews as well. http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/shovel-knight

Whoa! A game which plays like a Megaman but with a touch of knights and magic? I'm going to try this. Just spoiled myself with some of the bosses. They're well made and unique to each other.

 

[Weaver]

I know you said PC, but if you have a PS3 I'd recommend one of the games in the disgaea series because it ticks off a lot of your boxes, and is basically time sink: the game.

 

[Gxas]

OP, try Risk of Rain, it's fucking hard as hell, especially with the first character on normal instead of easy.

Once you unlock characters, it changes everything up so much and it's just one of my favorite games. I've over 100 hours logged.

 

[Mirroga]

I know you said PC, but if you have a PS3 I'd recommend one of the games in the disgaea series because it ticks off a lot of your boxes, and is basically time sink: the game.

I've heard its infamy for being the best, grind-fest game.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

Right now I have plenty of games to make a man happy. But right now I am lacking a kind of game that I would consider timesinks. I have so many games, but none of them leaves me satisfied if I only play them for a short amount of time like an hour or half.

I would like a game with the following characteristics:
- Played on PC
- Single Player
- Easy to Pick-up, Hard to Master
- Very Addictive & Replayable
- Single Runs or "Campaigns" are short or can easily be paused
- Game play has tons of contents & tactics
- NOT LUCK-BASED! (Roguelikes are fine. Bejewelled clones are not)

Here are games I have that I would consider "close" to the characteristics I have mentioned above:
- Frozen Synapse
- FTL: Faster Than Light
- Hotline Miami

The games I have mentioned are just examples. Don't let your suggestions be based solely on the games I have mentioned.

EDIT: Also, I play casual games with most of the characteristics above, like Plants VS Zombies & Cook, Serve, Delicious.

dude, check out The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. it was just recently released on Steam and GoG by XSeed, and it is a fantastic game, I can't recommend it enough. be warned, the game is very slow, it is the first game in a long series of games, so it primarily focuses on world and character building, so the story really doesn't begin to move till you get to the last chapter. from what I have heard, the sequels have a much faster pace story wise, and ass far as I know the second game is the longest of them all. it has a very awesome cast who feel like real people, and the main character is female who is straight and has a love interest, which is something of a rarity.

 

[Vigormortis]

Well, if sandbox games are your bag you could try out Terraria.

There's an incredible amount of content in the game, lots of exploration and construction potential. There's also a bevy of boss fights and events to challenge yourself with.

It's a bit old, and technically a multiplayer game, but Diablo 2. Even on your own, you'll lose about a year of your life to that game. The only downer is that it's not that great for short play sessions, since you will have to hunt for waypoints.

Or he could just try the (to my view) vastly superior Torchlight 2.

Similar to Diablo 2 in every way that matters but improved in those areas where Diablo 2 falls short. Notably, in the way-point system.

Plus, Torchlight 2 has an extensive and robust modding workshop and toolkit. So even if one gets sick of doing solo or team campaign or NG+ runs they can load up any combination of addons or mods and run through a wealth of other play options, styles, campaigns, etc.