5 Nintendo Switch games for the gamer with ADHD

Holiday season is starting to come up and people might be looking for gift ideas for people in their life. Some of those people might be gamers. Some of those gamers might, like me, have a giant planet of ADHD resting upon their shoulders. And like anyone who has ADHD will tell you, eventually, is that there’s something that they all want. You guessed it, dopamine.

See, dopamine is that fun little neurotransmitter in our body that gives us little bursts of happy feelings. People with ADHD try to gobble down hits of this stuff like Pac-Man to pellets. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy for us, especially when our brains almost force us to lose interest in something when the rewards start to dip. This is why I have so many games that I loved at some point sitting unfinished. It’s why I never finished Persona 5 Royale. It’s why I never finished Final Fantasy XV. It’s why I never finished a lot of games I really enjoyed because, eventually, the end game grind became less rewarding and I completely lose interest.

Obviously, this extends beyond the realm of gaming but oh my god is this not the website to read about those particular foibles of mine. Oof, you don’t want it, trust me.

But there are some games that work perfectly for people with ADHD if you want to keep that dopamine rolling in strong.

Here’s five that, from personal experience, I’ve found complete joy in playing over and over and over again.

Miitopia

I absolutely loved Miitopia. Originally this was a gift for my kids to play on their Nintendo Switch Lites but I ended up playing it religiously until I beat the game. In Miitopia you’re constantly given quick little microtasks, especially when you first enter a new area.

See, in Miitopia, Nintendo went all-in on the “Mii” bit. You use a Mii to build your character. You use a Mii to build each member of your party. It goes beyond that. Every time you enter a new area or encounter a new character, the game describes the character you’re about to meet and then you design them. This alone gave me little boosts of dopamine as the plucky elderly shopkeeper became Betty White. The cowardly tiny man that wanted to flee the city when danger struck became Ted Cruz. Building and releasing these characters into the fictional world gave me that quick hit of “I did something” energy. And that’s not even the “playing” part of the game.

The meat and potatoes gameplay of Miitopia involves you entering small dungeons and facing off against enemies in a turn-based battle. You have standard classes like Warrior, Cleric, Mage. You have bizarre characters like Cat, Scientist, and a tank class that is…a  literal tank. And if you want to go all-in you can even unlock hard-to-get hidden classes like Vampires and Elves.

The dungeons don’t last too long though, mostly a few minutes so you can complete a dungeon in a relatively short amount of time to keep your flow going. You don’t control too much in battle beyond your main character. The rest of your party controls themselves, heavily based on the amount of time they spent hanging out with their other party members and what kind of personality you gave them. So maybe a character that’s hyper will want a second turn or…maybe they’ll be distracted and not realize they’re about to get hit. I’ve been there.

And while the end game content may be a bit of a slog and lost my interest, the guest to get through the main story and defeat the final baddy was something I enjoyed doing making this one of the first “RPGs” I’ve beaten the main story for in almost a decade.

Fun bonus, it also helped me cope last year when my kids were in distance learning and their teachers kept playing Jack Hartmann videos ad nauseam.