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, 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?
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Stellaris is a great realtime 4x strategy game. They have a lot of paid DLC, but you can pick and choose which modules you want. Some are purely cosmetic options while others make gameplay changes, and they go on sale pretty often. Worst comes to worst, you can usually find the DLC on key sites as well for pretty cheap. Paradox also started a subscription based service that gives you access to the DLCs, maybe you can subscribe for a month and try out which DLCs you like.
Project Zomboid is an incredibly hard resource management survival game. It is also very detailed, meaning you need to maintain everything about your character from their hydration, to their weight and fitness. Its a slow burner type game, but when the action picks up, it gets tense. Its also a “forever” game, in that theoretically, if your character never dies, the game never ends. The map is huge, big enough to feel different pretty much every time you play. Its also multiplayer, which is pretty fun.
Farming Simulator can be a fun, chill game to play. Its not as resource management intensive as a game like Project Zomboid, but it can be a good game to relax with.
Ragnarok Online is an older (2003) MMORPG that I recently discovered, and while I am not much of an MMO Enjoyer (I hathe the “Disneyland” or theme park feeling most have where I have to wait in line at NPCs and bosses), Ragnarok Online’s player population is consistently low enough to not feel like that while also being high enough to feel like the game is not dead. Just don’t play on the official servers from the Steam client. Use a client that connects to private servers, the economy is really bad in the official servers.
King Arthur: Knights Tale is a pretty fun Strategy RPG. I haven’t been able to play that much of it, but what I have been able to play was pretty fun. Check it out, it might be interesting to you if you liked Divinity and games with combat like XCOM or Fire Emblem.
Railway Empire 2 hard to put down once you get going.
Wasteland 3 is awesome and akin to DOS2 and BG3!
Thanks, will check them out! Railway empire 2 doesn’t look like something I’d like but I have 2 hours to try before refund and if you say it’s good, I’ll go check it out :)
With Railway it’s the typical anticipation of strategy games that gets you. Just one more expansion of your network, one more resource to connect to a town, one more logistical puzzle to solve. It’s way more intricate (in a good way) than just managing the budget and I’ve sunk hours and hours into some of those missions to figure them out.
Oblivion remaster looks pretty good. Have you played through that game before?
I played all elder scroll games (except online) and fallout games but Bethesda lost me. They scammed me with fallout 76 (I have the special edition with power armor helmet) and their games after Skyrim just flatline imo. Fallout 4 got fixed somewhat, but that’s it. They won’t get my money anymore. Screw Todd Howard.
Original is on GOG for 1/10th of the price too, tons of great mods to improve both graphics and gameplay.
https://www.nexusmods.com/games/oblivion/mods?sort=downloads
A must have for me is the All Plus 5 mod so I don’t feel forced to power game my starting skills.Nooo! Don’t do that. The initial leveling is my favorite part of every RPG. It really gets my dopamine receptors running.
It only changes it so that you get your +5 choices if you have even one skill up in the category.
Without it the best way to play is to choose your main skills as Minor Skills and skills that are easy to avoid leveling up (and preferably easy to level up when you want to) as Major Skills to always get 3x +5 every level up.
With it you can let your character have major skills that you actively use during gameplay without gimping yourself.
Stardew if you want a comfy game to play Timberborn for colony sim
Timberborn I played, was nice but don’t feel like playing that anymore.
Stardew I’ve heard great stories about, but doesn’t look like something for me. But I’ll for sure check it out!
Have you considered Rimworld or 4x games? Stellaris, in particular, might be up your alley.
I played Stellaris, also HOI4 but those games were hard to learn, even harder to master.
I’ll go check Rimworld, thanks!
++++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.
+1 to RimWorld suggestion.
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.
I don’t see Bioware titles on the list. Dragon Age series for fantasy, Mass Effect for sci fi. Since BG3 is on the list, I wanted to mention in case you haven’t gotten to them yet.
I loved dragon age games and mass effect 1. Even 2, but 3 was shit.
I’ll second Dragon Age since it’s less action oriented than Mass Effect (which is great but OP seems pore interested in strategy/management than shooting)
Mass Effect has a “tactical pause” feature though, but it feels less Baldur-like :)
Look into Drova - Forsaken Kin. It’s been great so far.
Have you tried Oxygen not included? I’m usually not into management games, but it pulled me in.
Outer Wilds
Often when I am sick of all the things I’ve been playing or feeling uninspired I go for a genre switch. To that end I will always recommend Neir: Replicant and Neir: Automata—I feel like a failure and a fool to have sat on them for so many years. Those are both games that feature very approachable gameplay with the whole deep story and cross genre mechanics that the split fiction devs seem to be good at (and are both single player), just be sure to continue playing after the first (and second and third, etc) credits roll.
Other random suggestions:
Bellwright is a really good colony sim / survival craft combo (although I’ve not played it single player so not sure how great it is in that mode).
Cyberpunk 2077 is just fucking great if you haven’t played that.
Disco Elysium if you’re really looking for some Get Stick Bugged content. (and a fantastic drunk cop RPG)
Just don’t buy Disco Elesium, the thieves that stole it don’t deserve that.
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).
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.
Some further suggestions I haven’t seen mentioned in all these comments yet, surprisingly:
- Foundation
- Manor Lords
- 0 A.D. (FOSS and impossible to get ripped off, AoE clone)
- shapez / shapez 2 (the first one is only $2)
And maybe a little more casual, but still similar vein as city management:
Out of all of these, I think I’ve played Mini Motorways three times as much as the rest, combined. I dunno why, I just love it.
This thread is actually huge, so apologies if this has already been recommended, but take a look at Against the Storm. It’s an indie city-builder with a bit of a rogue-like spin. You can usually get it on fairly deep sales, and the rogue-like elements combined with some meta-progression gives it a real play length, even though a single city-building session is a ~45-60 minute experience.
Obligatory FromSoft lineup suggestion.
Not my cup of tea. I tried darksouls, sekiro and elden ring but is just not for me. Thanks though :)
Absolutely. For science and curiosity did you try them using a keyboard+mouse or a controller?
Darksouls and sekiro keyboard and mouse, elden ring controller
