this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
80 points (83.3% liked)

Games

38082 readers
1120 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Weekly Threads:

What Are You Playing?

The Weekly Discussion Topic

Rules:

  1. Submissions have to be related to games

  2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

  3. No excessive self-promotion

  4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

  5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

  6. No linking to piracy

More information about the community rules can be found here and here.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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 ksp~~2~~ 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!

(page 4) 28 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

At the thrift store today I picked up an original disk copy of Prey (2006) and the thief trilogy.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Going Medieval is a pretty great building/management type game! It gets updated often with new content too

You build your castle and manage the sims in their daily jobs. There's a great building system, farming, defense against raiders, mining, a good crafting pipeline. It's a lot of fun

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Check out Elin.

Basebuilding/dungeon crawling/pixel art/roguelike. Kinda like ADOM meets stardew, but weirder and more Japanese. Weirder how? Here's the wiki entry on the chaos shape race, which you can play as.

VERY in depth systems in the game. Mutations, crafting, prayer, it's a deep game.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

As far as management goes x4 foundations is an awesome space game! I have hundreds of hours in that game spent just messing around with an industrial empire, buying mining ships, setting trade routes, all that fun stuff. You don't even have to fight anything if you don't want to.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 days ago (2 children)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The first Witcher game is quite old but you could like the gameplay (it's not action oriented, unlike the 2 following Witcher games)

It's honestly not great looking but the story is great, and who knows, you might fall in love with a great franchise :)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

management / factory games like workers and resources

Maybe Frostpunk would be up your alley?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (4 children)

A classic one would be to go for BG1 and BG2
Then either play the enhanced editions with EET or play the originals with Baldur's Gate Trilogy to allow you to play all three games as a singular campaign (as well as running BG1 in the same engine as BG2 if you go for the originals)

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Oblivion remaster looks pretty good. Have you played through that game before?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Nooo! Don’t do that. The initial leveling is my favorite part of every RPG. It really gets my dopamine receptors running.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

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.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You might enjoy Sid Meier's Civilization games. I'm partial to Civ 6, but they're pretty much all in the same vein of management games.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Also Barotrauma

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'll second Dragon Age since it's less action oriented than Mass Effect (which is great but OP seems more interested in strategy/management than shooting)

Mass Effect has a "tactical pause" feature though, but it feels less Baldur-like :)

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago

Aviassembly.

Its fun in the way that building airplanes in KSP is fun. The game is small, and the physics are simple, but for $10 its a good value.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Stardew if you want a comfy game to play Timberborn for colony sim

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Railway Empire 2 hard to put down once you get going.

Wasteland 3 is awesome and akin to DOS2 and BG3!

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Have you considered Rimworld or 4x games? Stellaris, in particular, might be up your alley.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

++++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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I almost religiously play games without modding, but Rimworld is the major exception - it is simply too good to ignore.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

+1 to RimWorld suggestion.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›