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This (sandbox games that are all about “pure” gameplay, where the narrative is made by the pseudo-random events) is my bag!
In no particular order except for #1, these are my top-10:
- Kenshi Post-apocalyptic alien planet sandbox that can be a colony simulator, a faction-combat game, an exploration and boss-fighting game, and so much more. This is by far and away my TOP recommendation.
- Rimworld Dwarf Fortress-like colony simulator set on proc-gen alien planets. Supremely mod-able.
- Starsector Sandbox space game with a bit of everything. You can play it in so many ways, and there are so many encounters and missions and things to do. Tons of mods.
- Mount and Blade: Warband A medieval-combat “simulator” where you lead a… Warband of soldiers around a faux medieval world. First-person combat with a lot of great complexity. Supports mods.
- Derail Valley A train-driving simulator, where you just take contracts to haul stuff between towns/stations/etc. Multiple engines to drive, and a lot of cool physics to contend with.
- Project Zomboid Zombie apocalypse survival simulator, with multiplayer. Lots of mods.
- Spore A sandbox classic, where you usher a species as it evolves from protozoa to being an interstellar species.
- The Sims 3 Playing house for adults (and kids). Build a house, decorate it, get a good job, have kids and pets. The unattainable Millennial fantasy.
- Starbound Universe exploration sandbox, with a bunch of humanoid aliens you have to ally with to defeat a big monster thing. Moddable.
- X4: Foundations Economic simulation sandbox set in space. Build stations, ships, influence wars between empires using economic sway… Very very slow, but fulfilling.
Rimworld is number 1, hands down. I guess this is my answer, but I’m going to include more games
- Factorio - enough said
- Minecraft/7 Days to Die/Valheim - I can create my own world and story
- OpenTTD - so much rail transport
- Civ4 - so many mods (Fall From Heaven makes it a great fantasy game)
- X-COM 2 - difficult tactical decisions
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead. It’s the Dwarf Fortress of zombie survival games.
Dwarf fortress
So like, yes, I totally agree.
I want to take a second to tell a story though, about the graphics in this game. I hope to explain why this game actually has the best graphics ever.
Context for some folks: the game is entirely rendered using ASCII characters (for the purpose of this story. I know, I’m leaving out detail, it’s okay). So the goblins in Dwarf Fortress look roughly like this
g
A dog looks like this
d
And a dragon looks like this
D
Learning to play Dwarf Fortress can be tough at first because there’s a soup of letters and other typing characters on the screen and your brain needs to convert that into a scene that makes sense. But here’s the thing … eventually that’s exactly what your brain does! You stop seeing the semicolons and hyphens, the letters and the strange formatting characters like “╥”. You start to see rivers and grass, tiny people working hard, a bustling metropolis, an invading horde.
And the creator of this game hasn’t simply cut corners on making the game look good by using ASCII tilesets. The grass (made of commas or single quotes) sways in the breeze. Running water shimmers. Cherry trees gently rain cherry blossom petals during certain seasons. There’s actually a ton of little details there for your brain to pick up and immediately upscale into high def for you. It’s delightful. And sometimes terrifying.
Sometimes something new will happen. A creature you’ve never seen before will approach your little community. It will be represented by some letter and your brain will render that for you in the way it has been taught to do. Your eyes see a d and you see a dog. Your eyes see a D and you see a dragon. It’s bigger than a dog. Most things are, no big deal. But you’ve been deceived.
You watch as a band of dwarfs approach the dragon. The creature is quite still, right next to the round trunk of a tree that looks like this O. The brave warriors are still far from the creature. You’ve built whole dinning halls, with wooden chairs and stone mugs and carvings decorating the walls, that could fit within the space separating the warriors from the capital D dragon. One canny dwarf let’s loose an arrow at the beast. It zips through the air like this -
As it approaches the Dragon, which is surely just to Iike a dog but a bit larger and green right, time begins the slow. It ticks. And ticks. And hell is unleashed. Flames jet from the Dragon. Unending flames pouring like red ink in billows that quickly fill the vast space and enrobe the dwarven warriors in a superheated death that pushes in and flows past and even through the band until flickering flames fill virtually all space to one side of a capital D that you will never, ever, mistake the size of again.
My scalp tingled and it felt like my skull was over heating when my brain spontaneously supplied all the extra graphical details for that particular scene. I’ll never forget it.
Can you share screenshots of what you’re describing? It’s send awesome and I’m very curious about it, but I can’t find anything similar on search engines.
Took me ages to find anything, but here’s a dragon encounter in adventure mode. It’s a bit slow because it’s turn based, but at least it has dragon fire in it, albeit not as great as described above:
Wow! It does take some brain training to start seeing something more, but after watching a couple of minutes i can totally relate!
Rimworld
The Dwarf Fortress model. Losing is fun!
Idk… RimWorld feels less genuine when they anthropomorphize the RNG, so it feels like it’s doing shit to you on purpose (because it kinda is).
Fuck you, Randy! I bet you thought that destroying my colony with 137 manhunting Boomalopes was pretty fuckin’ funny, you sick son of a bitch.
Rimworld definitely makes it harder when you’re doing well. You can control the parameters a bit though in the storyteller settings. It depends on your colony’s wealth, number of people, how long it’s been since something ‘bad’ happens (colonist dies or gets injured), etc.
This is advice I’ve given to new Rimworld players, and I hope it was helpful. The game (on most difficulties) is itching to give you the next “scenario.”
Building your wealth in valuable equipment is not very good at the start of the game, because your town’s silver value will go up much faster than its defensive/offensive capabilities. You end up putting a target on your back for raids.
Better to build a surrounding wall and set up trap corridors than to worry about getting everyone a gun.
I’ve had success doing that too. Buttload of traps. The raids that will circumvent your traps are definitely a problem though. Also the raids that just have a bunch of grenadiers can destroy your defenses in no time.
Yeah, definitely can’t rely on it for too long. Double granite walls can hold off basic enemies for a ridiculous amount of time, though.
Na na na na na na na na Katamari Damacy
Garry’s Mod…. what a rabbit hole that was…
Factorio.
He said game, not crack sir.
Cackles in 5700 hours worth
Okay, then Cities Skylines 2.
I feel like I’m missing something, what does the title mean?
Games that maybe don’t look the best or maybe older, but it doesn’t matter because the gameplay runs deep
Master of Magic. It’s basically the Civilization gameplay loop, but adds fantasy creatures, magic spells, hero units and loot. There’s a recent remake but it just doesn’t capture the same vibes as the original, at least for me.
Been looking for a spiritual successor for 25 years but nothing scratches that itch.
With that said the game is widely unbalanced and full of totally broken strategies, which somehow doesn’t make it less fun.
Endless Lege—naw, forget about it.
Has been on my to-try list. The old one I mean, I don’t have the new.
Lemmings. Always Lemmings. !lemmings@lemmings.world
I always hated it as a kid. All hundred iterations of it, despite always playing with them a little.
Abiotic Factor. Looks like it should have come out in the early 2000s, but so tight.
X4. Come for the arcadey spaceflight simulator, stay for the galactic-scale empire building, leave for another save file once the Xenon start sending multiple I-class battleships against your Teladi allies but they cannot muster the strength to repel them and the entire gate network falls because you were too busy solving the Paranid Civil War.
arcadey
Only from the perspective of Orbiter and Elite Dangerous maybe.
I’ve been chasing the high from Elite Dangerous on my HOSAS setup for years. Thankfully, the recent updates have breathed some new life into the game.
Man roller coaster tycoon was LIT
Found out a year ago OpenRCT adds multiplayer support. Started a campaign with my sister as we’ve played it a lot as kids. Great fun for a Sunday every once in a while.
Medieval 2: Total War
Also, Backpack Hero
