A slow game (or is someone has a better name please do tell!) is a multiplayer game where you get some action points every day (or twice a day), that you spend on walking around and usually fighting monsters a la CRPG.
Played in a browser those games took like 5 minutes a day to play and were quite popular in the early 2000. Obviously people spent more time setting up groups going hunting or fulfilling some quest, often for weeks and weeks…
Have you played one of would you try one out?
The only game like this I really play is Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket. I refuse to pay real money, so I get two packs a day. It’s good for a 15 minute burst of… not quite dopamine, and then you’re off.
Similarly, Pokémon Quest is a game that falls exactly into this category with a charge system that depletes after every short level and reacharges once per hour, to a max of 5 in the beginning. I played it when new and then just recently went back and played it quite heavily, again. That is until I accidently undid something that took me a week of RNG to get, so I quit.
Generally, I hate the mobile game charge system, though. At that point, I’d rather just pay for a full version. And paying for charges is not the same thing.
Yeah the dark pattern (ability to pay for “fun” / no “fun” if you don’t pay) is so bullshit. Usually they build the whole game around it too, like in your example.