If you're a fan of City Builder games, give the Impression Games Series a look. There's Pharaoh and its expansion, Cleopatra, Caesar III, and Zeus + Poseidon.

All 3 are bundled for $20 on GOG I think. A good deal. If you like them, there's also a Chinese version, but I've never played it.

https://www.gog.com/game/pharaoh_cleopatra

 

Are you only looking for new(ish) games? I generally refuse to game on a laptop (I need a proper mouse and keyboard dammit), but there are games I find well-suited to laptops, by which I mean they don't require a proper keyboard. I have an old machine that I use for school stuff. I play Heroes of Might and Magic 4/5 on it.

 

It's less the kb/m and more the power. I gamed on a laptop for years because of travel for work, I took a kb/m with me everywhere.

Laptop doesn't equal zero kb/m.

As for you Sorrows, what type of games are you into? Pretty much every genre has great games that don't require a beast of a comp to run. When I get bored of the main games I play I also enjoy simple games like Terraia and Starbound. You can play them on pieces of shit comps but you can also sink a fair few hours into them.

I can't really think of a genre that doesn't have low resource intensive games. So what are you into?

 

Anything Paradox will keep you entertained for months on end and not take big holes out of your GPU.

 

Creeperworld 3 (Steam) is quite good, and shouldn't ruin your laptop. Creeperworld 1 and 2 free online, too, although they're browser games.

Crypt of the Necrodancer (Steam) is also quite amusing. A roguelike rhythm game, you can only move on the beat. Enemies also move on the beat, but not every time. You have to memorise attack patterns to proceed through randomly generated maps. Be warned, you might only spend a half hour at a time on it, because it is really frustrating.

Anything from the WotC DotP series (Steam) is decent for whiling away an hour or two, but only if you like M:tG. If you're not a fan of the paper version, you won't like the electronic version.

Clicker Heroes (browser) is an idle game, but you can pop in every hour or so if you want, although more frequent log ins do mean faster progression.

Bloons TD5 (Browser) is one of the better tower defense games (most are worth trying). It does also have progression, with more difficult levels, and multiple upgrade paths. Your laptop might not like the much higher levels - I've had issues with framerate and overheating at ~L100.

 

Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten
Tower defense meets RPG. Its got a free demo. Its just a really tight story that has good characters and a simple mechanic that you learn to exploit the hell out of.

 

LUFTRAUSERS - Luftrausers is an airplane-based shoot 'em up. Unlike traditional shoot 'em ups, where the direction of the player craft is fixed, Luftrausers allows 360 degrees of motion, more akin to a multidirectional shooter. It's an incredibly fun game.

Metal Slug Franchise THE classic, the pinnacle of 2D action-shooting games, the arcade God in the 90s. I love this shit.

BROForce BRO.FORCE. is another awesome 2D action-shooting game, as awesome and fun as Metal Slug, and with very clever jokes and gameplay for such a simple game.

Castle Crashers A fantastic hack and slash 2D game, gorgeous, and pretty awesome. It can go only with up to four, and trust me, its better with friends.

The Binding of Isaac Hands down the best Indie game I've played, thanks to DLP Secret Santa to boot! Loved it, but its too crazy to able to summarize it here.

Banner Saga Another gorgeous, well made game with a fantastic story and great soundtrack. Might be too heavy for you, can't say.

 

FTL is the first new game I've actually bought in ages. It's actually surprisingly fun, not taxing and has a huge amount of replay value. Definitely worth a try. Only $10 as well.

 

Most top down diablo-esque games have spell effect sliders and options that significantly reduce load.

Path of Exile immediately comes to mind.

 

If you liked Skyrim perhaps you could try Morrowind?