The Best Video Games to Play While High in 2026
Gaming high is one of life’s great simple pleasures, but the wrong game can turn a relaxed evening into a stressful mess. Nobody wants to fumble through a punishing boss fight or try to follow a dense storyline when their brain has gently checked out. The right game meets you where you are. It looks great, feels good in your hands and asks exactly the right amount of you, no more.
We have sorted the best of them into categories below, because what you want depends entirely on your mood and your company. Chill games for sinking into the couch alone. Co-op games for a night in with friends. Funny games for when you just want to laugh. Focused games for that locked-in flow state. And competitive games for the brave. Nearly everything here is on both PC and PS5, so you are covered either way.
Chill Games
Stardew Valley
You inherit a rundown farm and slowly turn it into something beautiful. That is the whole game. You plant crops, you fish, you befriend the townsfolk, you wander into a mine when you feel like it. There is no clock forcing you forward and no way to really fail. High, this is close to perfect. The pixel art is warm, the music is gorgeous and the loop of watering plants and watching them grow taps into something deeply satisfying when your brain is soft and happy. Hours vanish. You look up and it is somehow 2am and you have just been arranging fences.
Journey
A short, wordless game about travelling across a vast desert toward a distant mountain. It is stunning to look at, the sand shifts and glitters, the light is extraordinary and the whole thing is scored by a sweeping orchestral soundtrack. It lasts about two hours and asks almost nothing of you beyond moving forward and taking it in. High, it becomes genuinely emotional. People finish this one quietly moved, and it is one of the few games that works as well as a film for a mellow solo evening.
Abzû
If Journey is the desert, Abzû is the ocean. You dive through impossibly colourful underwater worlds surrounded by schools of fish, drifting past whales and glowing coral. There is barely a challenge to speak of. It is a game you play to feel calm, and it delivers that better than almost anything. Put on headphones, sink into the couch and let it wash over you.
Co-op Games
It Takes Two
A two-player adventure that is built from the ground up for playing together, and one of the most purely joyful games of recent years. You and a friend control a bickering couple who have been turned into dolls, and every level throws a completely new mechanic at you. One minute you are controlling time, the next you are flying, the next you are shrinking. High, the constant novelty is a gift, because it never lets you settle into boredom. It is also very funny and very silly, and the shared discovery of each new idea produces a lot of laughter. You only need one copy for two people, which is a nice bonus.
Overcooked 2
You and up to three friends run a chaotic kitchen, chopping, cooking and plating meals against a ticking clock while the kitchen itself tries to kill you. Floors move, ingredients slide around, everything is on fire. This is either the best or worst possible game to play high depending on your group. Played right, it is helpless, breathless laughter as four stoned people scream about onions. It is chaos as a group sport, and there is nothing quite like it.
Lego games
Any of them. The Lego Star Wars, Harry Potter or Marvel games are all built on the same easygoing co-op formula. You wander through familiar worlds smashing everything into little studs, solving gentle puzzles and cracking silly visual jokes. Nothing is hard, nobody can really lose and you can drop in and out whenever you like. High, the simple satisfaction of smashing a Lego set into a thousand pieces and hoovering up the studs is oddly hypnotic. Perfect low-stakes company.
Terraria
A sprawling 2D sandbox where you dig, build, explore and fight your way through a huge randomly generated world, and it is even better with friends. You start with almost nothing and slowly carve out a base, mine deeper and deeper for better gear and take on increasingly ridiculous bosses together. There is always another cave to explore or another thing to craft, and splitting the jobs between friends, one mining, one building, one fighting, gives a co-op session a lovely easy rhythm. High, the endless small discoveries and the simple pixel-art satisfaction of watching your world take shape will swallow an entire evening without you noticing. Just one shared world and you are all in it together.
Funny Games
Untitled Goose Game
You are a horrible goose. Your job is to terrorise a quiet English village, honking, stealing keys and generally ruining everyone’s day. That is it. It is short, it is charming and it is one of the funniest premises ever built into a game. High, the simple joy of being a menace with no consequences is exactly the right speed. You will honk. You will laugh. You will steal a man’s slipper and feel nothing but pride.
Goat Simulator 3
A deliberately broken game about being a goat and causing as much destruction as physically possible. The physics are chaotic on purpose, everything is glitchy on purpose and the whole thing is one long string of absurd surprises. There is no real goal beyond making a mess and seeing what happens. This is a game engineered in a lab to be played high with friends, passing the controller around and losing it every time the goat launches itself through a window.
Fall Guys
Sixty jellybean-shaped contestants stumble through obstacle courses, fall off things and flop around in a battle royale that is basically a giant cartoon game show. It is free, it is colourful and it is impossible to take seriously. Losing is as funny as winning, which takes all the pressure off. High, the ragdoll physics and pure visual silliness make it endlessly entertaining whether you are playing well or getting bounced off a platform into oblivion.
Focused Games
Tetris Effect
Tetris, but reimagined as a full sensory experience. Every move pulses with music and light, and the backgrounds bloom into these gorgeous swirling scenes as you play. It is still Tetris underneath, so the focused, meditative flow of clearing lines is all there, but the presentation turns it into something close to a trance. High, this is one of the best experiences on this whole list. It locks you in completely and the visuals are genuinely breathtaking. If you only try one game here, make it this one.
Beat Saber
A VR rhythm game where you slice flying blocks in time to music with two lightsabers. It demands total focus, gets your body moving and produces that clean, in-the-zone flow state where nothing exists but the next block. High, it is exhilarating. The combination of music, movement and concentration is a genuine rush. You do need a VR headset, which is the only catch, but if you have one this is essential.
Mini Metro
A beautifully clean, minimalist puzzle game where you design subway lines for a growing city. It sounds dry and it is quietly gripping. You are constantly rearranging routes to keep up with demand, and the simple shapes and colours make it very easy on a hazy brain. High, it delivers that pleasant, low-pressure focus, all tidy lines and satisfying solutions, without ever getting stressful. A great one for winding down while still keeping your mind gently occupied.
Crazy Machines
A physics puzzle series built around elaborate Rube Goldberg contraptions. You are handed a goal, light a candle, pop a balloon, get a ball from A to B, and a box of parts like gears, ramps, motors and rockets, then you tinker until the whole chain reaction works. It rewards patient, playful experimentation rather than fast reactions, which makes it a great high pick. High, that loop of placing a piece, hitting run and watching your daft machine clatter to life is deeply satisfying, and the trial-and-error never feels stressful because half the fun is watching it fail in silly ways.
Competitive Games
A word of warning on this category. Competitive gaming while high is a gamble. Your reactions are slower, your focus wanders and there is a real chance you spend the whole match wondering why the map looks so interesting. But if your group is all in the same state, none of that matters, and it can be a brilliant time.
Mario Kart
The obvious pick and still the best. Everyone knows how to play, the rounds are short and the rubber-banding means even the person in last place stays in it until the final corner. High, the barely controlled chaos of a four-player race, blue shells and all, is pure fun with zero real stakes. Nobody is going to rage quit Mario Kart. It is the friendliest competition there is.
Rocket League
Football, but with rocket-powered cars. It is fast, it is flashy and it is genuinely one of the easiest competitive games to enjoy without being good at it, because even a wildly mistimed swing at the ball looks spectacular. High, the pace and the big satisfying booms of hitting the ball keep it fun whether you are winning or losing. Play casual matches with friends rather than ranked, and it is a great time.
Gang Beasts
A multiplayer brawler where you play wobbly, gelatinous characters trying to throw each other off rooftops and out of moving trucks. The controls are deliberately floppy and hard to master, which is the entire point. This is competition as comedy. Nobody looks good playing it, everyone looks ridiculous and every match dissolves into laughter. The perfect bridge between funny and competitive, and a brilliant way to end a night.
Mortal Kombat
The legendary fighting series, famous for its over-the-top gore and its brutal, cartoonishly violent finishing moves. You pick a fighter and go head to head, and while there is real depth here for people who learn the combos, you absolutely do not need to in order to have fun. High, mashing buttons and watching the absurd, wildly excessive Fatalities play out is entertainment enough on its own, and playing against a friend on the couch turns every round into a laughing, trash-talking spectacle. Don’t take it seriously, don’t bother memorising move lists, just pick the coolest looking character and enjoy the chaos.
The best game for a high session is not the most impressive or the most demanding one. It is the one that fits your mood. If you are alone and want to disappear into something beautiful, reach for Journey or Tetris Effect. If you have got friends over, It Takes Two and Gang Beasts will carry the whole night. And if you just want to laugh, a horrible goose is waiting for you.
A quick practical note on pairing. Sativa leaning strains suit the focused and competitive games where you want to stay sharp and reactive. Indica leaning strains suit the chill category, where sinking into the couch is the entire goal. Edibles are ideal for long co-op sessions, just remember they take a while to kick in, so the second hour may hit very differently to the first.
Have a browse through our weed store to sort out your night and if you are not sure where to start, weed deals is a solid place to begin.
