So, I’ve spent over 2 hours on Steam searching for a nice game to play. But it’s all junk, as far as I’m fed with Steam recommendations. I liked ksp2 1, cities skylines 1, age of empires 2, baldurs gate 3 a lot, I just finished Divinity original sin 2. I like rpgs and management / factory games like workers and resources, satisfactory etc. I’m having a lot of fun with split fiction when I play with a friend, but I need a proper singplayer game. Anything I could get which isn’t a total ripoff due to lack of gameplay or it being a bug simulator or dlc purchase mania?
EDIT: I’m a bit overwhelmed by all reactions. Thank you all so much! I have a lot of amazing recommendations to check out!
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Factorio. If you like satisfactory and w&r then cracktorio is right up your alley.
There is also a free demo on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/Factorio/If you enjoy the base game I would 100% recommend the expansion called Space Age with adds 4 more planets and space flight between them.
I played several factory games which is right up my alley. I know Factorio is the best of all by far, but I couldn’t get in to it somehow.
I couldn’t get into it either, but I loved mindustry (that someone else mentioned)
Have you considered Rimworld or 4x games? Stellaris, in particular, might be up your alley.
++++1 for Rimworld. The first time I really committed to learning to play that game, I lost almost 100 hours in ~3 weeks (which is a ton for me, since I have kids and a job… I lost a lot of sleep). The best part of Rimworld, is if there’s a vanilla mechanic you don’t like or wish was fleshed out more, there’s a 98% chance someone has made a mod for it.
But yeah, it isn’t for the faint of heart. It definitely has a learning curve and it isn’t super easy to just pick up and play for small amounts here and there. It’s a game that you really need at least 1-2 hours per session.
I’d recommend watching a quick start tutorial video before you start playing, as that’ll also give you an idea on whether or not you’ll like it.
I almost religiously play games without modding, but Rimworld is the major exception - it is simply too good to ignore.
It’s fairly playable without mods these days, I’d recommend new players at least try that to find out what they’d want to tweak before diving in. But yeah at 3k+ hours on steam it’s definitely one of the games that’s given a bunch for me. Very moddable but I’d suggest trying to keep your list light (not that that really stops me), use rimpy for mod management and grab the performance mods like rocketman and performance fish.
Stellaris, in particular, might be up your alley.
I like Stellaris quite a bit, but I should note that OP mentioned how he didn’t like spending money on DLC. Stellaris follows the typical Paradox approach of creating a lot of DLC to expand and extend the game and its gameplay as long as people are interested in buying it, and winding up with a large game that’ll cost you a lot if you want all the DLC. It may be worthwhile, but if one wants to get all the DLC, it’s gonna add a fair bit to the price.
(checks Steam)
The base game is $40. Buying every available piece of DLC (and it looks like they’re still coming out with more stuff) is another $429.
That being said, I’ve also got a lot of hours of gameplay out of Stellaris, so that does bring the cost-per-hour down quite a lot. But it depends on how much someone is going to play the thing.
+1 to RimWorld suggestion.
I played Stellaris, also HOI4 but those games were hard to learn, even harder to master.
I’ll go check Rimworld, thanks!
Always gonna recommend Project Zomboid. Yeah it may look like the Sims (which oddly is where TIS got their art influence from), but it’s pretty darn unforgiving. Hell, I lost my last character without realizing how, chalking it up to some strange drug interaction (aka don’t drink and take sleeping pills, kids). Resource management, while not a direct focal point for PZ, is still important as you are watching every aspect of your character’s health and wellbeing.
The latest beta build 42 has incorporated some new mechanics and a nicer lighting system so things feel proper spooky when slinking around in the darkness. And don’t even get me started on the modding community. Infinite possibilities and a constant influx of new content, some which gets so popular it’s adding into the base gameplay. Look up Week One if you want more than just a zed simulator.
I also second Stardew if you are also looking to scratch that cozy gaming itch.
Always gonna recommend Project Zomboid.
It does have a sandbox aspect, but much as I want to like the game, I always find myself dropping it and playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead instead, which is a similar “zombie survival” genre game, but has vastly more stuff and game mechanics. The big selling point for Project Zomboid, in my book, is the far gentler learning curve and lower barrier to entry; it’s got an adorable tutorial racoon, and doesn’t hit you with too much at once, but…
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The combat in Project Zomboid frustrates me. It’s very simple, not a lot going on, but because a zombie infection is incurable, a single mistake in timing can have catastrophic effects, so it requires no errors.
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The character builds. Project Zomboid has a lot of perks and such. Cataclysm’s got vastly more, plus mutations, bionics, all that stuff.
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I prefer the Cataclysm turn-based play to the Project Zomboid real-time play. I don’t have to wait in the real world for actions to complete, and I can stop and think about what my next move is.
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To try to illustrate the game complexity difference, take firearms as an example. Project Zomboid has six handguns, four shotguns, and four rifles. Each has one type of ammunition. There are ten weapon mods, each of which can be placed on some of those weapons. There is a firearms skill.
Cataclysm has, to look at just one firearm class and caliber category, 41 rifle-class weapons chambered in .223 (and that’s by default, as chambering can be modified). Each of these can take something like six different classes of weapon mods (replacing the stock, sticking things on the barrel, adding secondary weapons like underbarrel grenade launchers or flamethrowers, etc), multiple fire modes. There are 18 sight mods alone, and it’s possible to have multiple sights on a weapon. Recoil is modeled. Firearms can fit in various types of back/ankle/hip holsters, and draw time and encumbrance is a factor; these also have volume and longest-dimension characteristics, so that a large revolver can’t fit in a small holdout holster. For those .223-caliber rifles alone, there are 13 types of ammunition, including handloads, tracer rounds, armor-piercing rounds, etc. There are 63 different calibers of weapons. Energy weapons, flamethrower/incendiary weapons, chemical weapons, explosive projectile weapons, flechette weapons, illumination rounds, EMP weapons. There are multiple-barrel weapons, including some with barrels in different calibers. You can load specialized ammunition in a specified order. Different types of reloading mechanisms (revolver, tube magazine, detachable magazine, belt) are modeled. Some weapons use compatible magazines, and high-capacity and drum magazines exist. Speedloaders for revolvers exist. Weapons can be installed mounted on vehicles (fired manually from a mount position, or with an automated weapons targeting system installed, set up to fire automatically). NPCs (friendly, and hostile) can be armed with them. Bore fouling is modeled. When you fire a weapon without hearing protection, you’re temporarily deafened to some degree. There are multiple stances one can take when firing those weapons. Some of the game’s martial arts forms permit use of firearms. There are firearm melee modifications, like bayonets. There are skills for different types of weapons. The game has all sorts of exotic real-world firearms (e.g. to pick a random one, the American-180, a submachine gun firing .22 rounds with a 180-round pan magazine); the game probably has more real-world firearms than any other video game out there; my current source tree says that there are 555 in total.
And that’s before getting into stuff like sandbox vehicle design and construction (land, water, air, amphibious), power generation and storage, nutrition (weight and its various effects on physical capabilities, body fat, vitamins, calcium intake), artifacts, magic (if you turn on some of the various magic or psionic mods), bionics, mutations, local weather systems, temperature (air and body; you can set up heaters and air conditioners in vehicles), vision in various spectra, monsters tracking scent/vision/noise, fires and building structural failures, brewing, the ability to recruit NPCs and create faction camps, quests, aliens, disease modeling, various types of parasites, fungal infections, various types of poisonings and envenomings, various types of lights, devices with removable batteries, internal-batteries, USB-style (UPS) charging and power that can run off static, vehicle, bionic, or power stations. Solar/wind/gasoline/diesel/jet fuel/nuclear power generation. Multi-fuel engines. Multiple-engine vehicles (or, with appropriate electronic systems, hybrid vehicles that can automatically toggle an ICE engine to charge a battery to run electric motors). Seatbelts and harnesses (and being ejected from vehicles in crashes). Folding, portable vehicles. Bike and motorcycle racks on cars. Stimulants, depressants, alcohol. Acetylene and electrical welding. Tons of types of food to cook (looks 547 recipes currently available). The thing is just huge.
I will say that CDDA has piqued my interest, but I’m not a huge fan of turn based anything, although weirdly I will get into some of them. May have to give this a shot myself… once I have time.
I think I’ve been spoiled by the massive modding community with PZ, as I feel there’s always something that’s added that feel right within the game world. Sure, there are plenty of non-lore friendly mods, but stuff like adding all the classic consoles into the loot pile, or real world foods keep the immersion up quite well.
Cdda is a pretty steep learning curve but I keep coming back to it. One of the nice things about the project is that anyone can work on it, I’ve submitted a couple of minor fixes in the past. It changes pretty drastically over the months if you’re playing the latest build. It’s also a huge timesink when you actually get into it.
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Also Barotrauma
Project zomboid was a lot of fun, but single-player it gets boring after a while. I don’t feel like playing on a public server and I don’t have friends willing to play it.
You aren’t wrong about the SP getting boring at times. I’ll usually find myself kitted out after a week in game and bored and then asking “what next?”, and then I’ll either create a new character in that same world but on the other side of the map, and see how far they can get. Still waiting for mods like RV Interiors to be released, as they are holding out until a proper stable beta of B42 is released… so that could be some time. Granted I’ve also been using Week One as a baseline mod for PZ, as it revitalizes the baseline start to be more in line with “how does this apocalypse truly go down?”. Is it perfect, far from it, but it adds just enough plausibility to make you feel immersed even further. As for MP, I’m not a fan at all. I tend to play most all games SP, as I’m a very patient gamer and usually jump onto the MP bandwagon too late to feel included.
Yeah I feel the same about MP. Although I do like to play with friends, but that’s different than random people online. I believe I had a mod for rv interiors. Like, half a year ago or something.
Mindustry is basically Factorio with more focus on tower defense.
And there’s Shapez (and Shapez 2) for a more “pure” factory experience (operate on shapes and colors).
Played them all already :)
Seconding Yakuza. There’s about 10 games in the series, all are pretty great to amazing. The older ones are all dirt cheap and often go on sale by 50%
Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami or Like a Dragon are all good starting points
dwarf fortress?
I would like to recommend Dave the Diver, Inscryption and Curious Expedition (first one). All of them are superb indie games. It might not be the genres you’re asking for but I would still highly recommend them if you want to try something new.
I loved Dave the diver. Holy shit what an amazing game! I will check out the other titles, Thank you!
Seems like we have similar taste in games—I loved Dave the diver and can second Inscryption!
If you like Inscryption, check out other games by the same dev. They don’t have replayability, but they are unique experiences IMO.
I will scream from the mountaintops that The Hex is his best game. I loved Inscryption so much and thought there was no idea I’d like any of his older games better. Inscryption has better replayability for sure, but I think overall The Hex is a better game. I love it sooooo much and people just get turned off by the graphics, because they don’t understand that there’s a reason they look like that in the previews… and why they can’t show other things.
Anyone reading this, please go play The Hex.
I see no mention of Starsector, there should be mention of Starsector.
Try Starsector.
Not on steam, early 2000’s website, gameplay looks nice. This is a win for me. Thanks!
Hmm, how about mindustry (its open source and free outside of steam)? It’s like factorio with tower defense. Note: after playing for few hours you might get access to many more stuff in game which might feel overwhelming
Nice thanks, will try!
Factorio. Aka cracktorio.
I liked ksp2
If you’re saying that you liked the (unfinished, abandoned, poorly-rated) Kerbal Space Program 2, you might play the original, which is better-regarded.
On the “factory” side, maybe some colony simulators? Someone else mentioned Rimworld. That’s got a bit of DLC, but I think that even the base game has pretty good value for money. Oxygen Not Included is another colony sim that focuses more on the building/automation/physics side; I think that you’ll get a lot of hours out of that.
Dwarf Fortress is another colony sim, has a freely-available classic version or a commercial graphical build on Steam. Steep learning curve, but lots of mechanics to explore.
I like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, though it has a pretty punishing learning curve. Open-world roguelike. It touches on both the RPG (well, not much by way of plot, but in terms of building a character) and the factory (build buildings, faction camps with NPCs, and vehicles) side. You aren’t going to run out of gameplay complexity to explore any time soon on that. Open source and freely-available, though there’s also a commercial build on Steam.
I have not played Elin, the successor to Elona, but it might be worth a look too if you are looking for a game with both a sandbox aspect and RPG aspect.
Wups, that was a typo. I liked ksp1, 2 was a massive disappointment and shitshow and they scammed me out of my 40 euros.
Dyson Sphere Program is a great factory game. Check it out.
256 hours on record. Loved it, don’t want to start a 3rd game.
Ksp2 was severely botched by Take2… but if you’re into the genre you might want to check out Juno.
In addition you might want to keep an eye out for KSA which is currently in early stages of development. As there’s no official website yet, I try to keep on top of any dev updates and nuggets of information so I can update the lemmy community.
Ksp2 was a typo, I meant ksp1. Juno I didn’t like that much, I can’t want for ksa release! Watching closely the development.
The KSA team keeps showing off incredibly impressive demos. I have no doubt they will be able to achieve a worthy KSP successor.
Yeah I hope they do, ksp1 is a very important game. I’m still mildly concerned about their choice to avoid steam though.
Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox’s grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:
- Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
- Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
- Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
- Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things
What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There’s no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you’re going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There’s also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I’m not trying to win the game, I’m saying to myself “let’s see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler”
All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there’s not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience
I played almost all of them. I like them, kinda, but they are games which are hard to master and I get frustrated when suddenly everything goes wrong and I can’t find out why. Like with HOI4, my logistics are perfect, my army hyper modern and trained, mixed infantry, special units and armor. Yet they fail battle against a few weak infantry. I spend hours and hours on YouTube tutorials but in the end it’s just a bit too much for me.
Endless Sky. Open source and crowd developed. Its story lines, assets, and general size have only increased with age. Active Discord server as well (but it’s only single player, for now anyway).
