Mods - I am not sure how to read the rule against game suggestions. If it means no asking for suggestions please just wipe the post. No harm, no foul.
–
Fall is usually my busiest time of year preparing for winter in our little forest home. But I have been given orders from the doctors to basically take bedrest for up to 3 months, but I’m allowed to be sitting up… So books and games are basically all that is on the menu.
I enjoy automation games, tower defense, survival/building games, and exploration games.
I dislike ‘souls-like’ experiences where combat is tight and requires perfect timing. In fact in most games where combat can be disabled I usually do that.
My top games of all time would be factorio, minecraft, WoW/FFXIV (yeah… i know. But they count as one), Dyson sphere program, vampire survivors (and many of that type), and gemcraft type TD games.
–
Some games that have been recommended and tried, but don’t work for me right now or I have already finished:
mindustry, satisfactory, valheim, no man’s sky, alchemy factory, luanti, terraria.
Thanks in advance for your time. Much appreciated.
You must log in or register to comment.
I’m really into souls games so I’m going to focus my recommendations to games with little combat and also tailor the list based on what you tried and didn’t like so far.
Optional or minimal combat
- Green Hell
- My Summer Car [AI generated paintings]
- Potion Craft
- Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
- Subnautica [controversy with dev buyout and lawsuit, but a solid game]
Combat required but easy
- Yakuza Kiwami (the other yakuza and like a dragon games are great too but some of them might have kernel level rootkits, and some are available on GOG without rootkits)
- Final Fantasy 12 The Zodiac Age
Exploration focused
Story focused games (non exploration)
Worth trying
Wow that is a great reply. I will look into all of these that I have not tried yet.
I really enjoyed dave the diver and stray. Disliked disco elysium (I know. that is on me, not the game). And for some reason subnautica seems daunting/dangerous to me but I’ll check it out a bit more.
Subnautica can be considered to have some horror elements. Especially for beginners. However, as you play it and unlock technology you realize it’s not actually too bad.
You can play it at your own pace, just do the minimum yo unlock the next thing and so forth.
Exo Rally Championship: Probably the best rally game out there right now. Rewards carefulness and planning ahead.
Outbrk: Storm chasing simulator.
DinoSystem: Very deep survival simulation with dinosaurs.
Stationeers: Build and automate your own space station. Also features gas simulation.
Brainfuck Challenge: Brainfuck is a esoteric programming language with very few instructions you can learn in a few minutes. And this game is just a collection of puzzles/challenges made to be solved with this language.
shapez 2: Factorio but with shapes and colors
Beton Brutal/White Knuckle/Idols of Ash/Lorn’s Lure: A bunch of precision platformers with no combat whose sole goal is go up/down as fast as you can. Lorn’s Lure would be my favorite of the bunch but they’re all unique in their own ways.
Nubby’s Number Factory: Plinko meets neuron activation
Other than shapez (love that series) I had never heard of any of these. I have aded them to my list.
You rock! Thanks.
You’re welcome. If you ever need more just hit me up
If you’ve never tried it before, Dot Age is a fun little time sink made by an Indie dev. It’s a city builder people/resource management type game where you’re trying to build a successful village to survive a coming apocalypse. You have to plan ahead and deal with upcoming ‘bad events.’ A run is like 5-6 hours long and there is a lot of variety between runs thanks to building variants, etc.
That sounds perfect. Snagged!
I loved minmaxing and grinding around in Grim Dawn and Timberborn. You might too. 👌
Both solid recs. Added Grim Dawn to the list!
+1 for Timberborn
Halls of Torment is a lot like vampire survivors and done extremely well
Emberward is a great tower defense game where you also design the track the enemies use with little Tetris prices
Shape of Dreams is a isometric top down roguelike with optional co-op that is reminiscent in league of legend’s character design but is fully PVE with encounters where you clear rooms and boss challenges.
Thanks! Checking out all three.
One exploration / sim game that can soak up a lot of hours if you get into it is Elite Dangerous. I see No Man’s Sky in didn’t work or ‘finished’, if it didn’t work Elite may not be for you, similar but with better combat and ‘realism’ and a lot less life (as in biomes). Very much a choose (/make) your own adventure but they keep adding gameplay loops…
Thanks. A friend mentioned this one as well. On the list it goes!
GregTech New Horizons mod pack for Minecraft. There’s thousands of hours of automation entertainment there.
Hmm I have been out of MC for a while. I’ll definitely check this out. Thanks.
Don’t be discouraged by the starting difficulty and ridiculous crafting chains (laugh at how ridiculous they are instead). There’s plenty of quality of life in there to make it less painful.
I would suggest to start with the 2.9 beta instead of 2.8.4, they improved a lot of the painful things at the start of the game.
Btw if you don’t like combat absolutely play in peaceful and change configs to make it less dark or straight up cheat items in if it becomes too grindy for you.
It’s a 2000 hour journey not a sprint and there’s plenty of content even if you cheat in resources or (tier-appropriate) items.
A similar modpack I am playing and I can reccommend is Star technology. It’s a gregtech-based skyblock mod. It’s very nice if you think GTNH is too painful.
Hell yeah! It will be one of the firsdt ones I try today. I like a grind. I don’t like a rush. This sounds perfect.
I’ve been having a really fun time with vintage story, a.minecraft alternative that goes for detail. It has stuff like crop rotation, a realistic (compared to minecraft at least) steel making process. I think it offers a lot richer and more varied experience than vanilla minecraft, and is surprisingly good about not forcing you to grind.
Hmm I think I may actually own this one already. Putting it near the top of the list!
Since you have played Luanti and Vintage Story I think it is worth throwing the open source game Veloren in here too. It has a very fun gliding mechanic.
nifty! thanks.
Emberward would be right up your alley. It’s a rogue-like TD with tetrimono you customize during your run. It just went 1.0 last week and has 96% positive ratings on Steam with almost 4,000 reviews. It’s also currently on launch sale.
I installed the demo and did one level. This is really promising!
These might not be for you but I want to provide a couple of options that aren’t exactly what you’re asking for but are pretty close. No offense taken if you think they are terrible.
Lonestar - Top down space rogue-like where you place modules in your ship to synergize damage output. Also known as ‘space math’.
Sunless Skies - Steam punk space train set in the Fallen London universe. Emphasis on exploration and the setting just oozes style. Also the soundtrack is awesome.
Halcyon 6 - Take control of a space station and try to put together a fleet to replace the one that gets nuked at the start of the game.
These all sound very much worth a look. Thank you for the recs.
You’re very welcome.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Game about cutting up spaceships with lasers and gravity tools with a bit of a narrative.
It’s not a great alignment for the types you identified, but I like all the things you mentioned and found this quite nice.
Thanks! I’ll check it out.
If you are open to anything, try Wingspan.
It is a bird based card game you gain points for playing birds based on the number on the card, but it becomes an engine building game.
Each turn you choose one: play a bird, gather food, lay eggs, add a bird card to your hand.
Birds have certain “powers” such as each time your opponent lays eggs place an egg on your bird, or each turn used collect food from the birdfeeder.
The game is limited turns so you have to develop a hand of cards that you can play that will be high points, plus give you extra bonus actions to try to accelerate birds played, eggs laid, extra birds captured by predator birds etc.
As cards are laid down into food, eggs, collect cards sections it increases the reward of that section.
You can play online, with friends or against the computer. It becomes addicting in my opinion, because filling each section is difficult and just as you are collecting a good way to build a good reward engine the turns are ending, so you have to plan properly.
Thanks a ton. This sounds neat. I will definitely check it out.
By default they show you your habitats separate, but its easier to understand by clicking the brown button that shows the full card layout at once. To play against computer choose custom game and chose how many opponents. The separate Automata menu option is not really a computer player its a different mechanic
A very fun exploration and puzzle game would be Tunic. It has combat which can be pretty tricky at times but in the game’s settings you can make yourself invincible so you can just get through the combat if you’d like. If you try Outer Wilds and like it, I would try Tunic as well.
Both of these games are so interesting because they can be completed at any point, but it’s completely dependent of everything you the player learn while playing the game. But for that reason I would not look into the games more than what’s on the Steam store page, you gotta go in blind.
Thank you kindly. Tunic looks quite unique. On the list!
Tunic is very good, just note that it does cross into soulslike a bit. The combat is reminiscent at minimum.
Ahh thanks for that warning. I’ll skip that for now then.
I’ve been having a blast playing Pikmin 3 using the Eden switch emulator.
Hrm no idea what that is. I’ll check it out. Thanks.
You’d love space engineers.
Ooh this does look great. No demo so it goes at the end of the list, but I will get to it!
Honestly though the game could use more of a campaign, right now its hard to find a goal beyond basic survival.
Space engineers 2 seems to be stepping up to the task, but still needs a couple more years before I’d reccomend it.
Me and my friend did modded se (getting a server running on anything that isn’t windows is really fucking annoying) and we did have fun. Problem is that he is Australian and I’m on basically the other side of the globe so timing stopped working out. Also coupled with him also getting a job.
