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!

  • burntrealm@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    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

  • neidu3@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 months ago

      The KSA team keeps showing off incredibly impressive demos. I have no doubt they will be able to achieve a worthy KSP successor.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

  • teft@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    Have you tried Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? It’s really good and difficult. It’s a history simulator with a really kick ass story and the hero is just a guy. I really like it a lot.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 months ago

      Yeah but I’m stuck after 2 hours. I got into a battle through a quest I stumbled upon, but there’s an enemy I fail to win from. I seem to be unable to get out of the quest. I played 1, which was really nice although I didn’t completely finished it due to bugs.

      • teft@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 months ago

        I would suggest to load up an earlier save. The beginning is the hardest part of the game (like brutally hard combat sometimes) and if you don’t train Henry up (either find Tomcat or Captain Gnarly, they are trainers) you’ll just die. Or you can do what i did and just brute force the fight with save scumming. The combat is not intuitive until you practice for a bit.

        • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          2 months ago

          Thanks, yeah I should give it another try! I really liked 1 up to the moment the game got stuck during a loading screen from the main quest.

          • teft@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            2 months ago

            One tip i would give you so you don’t get overly frustrated is if you see what appears to be a combat situation (anyone hanging out on the road or beside it at camps) save the game by exiting. This makes an exit save which will be overwritten by the next exit save but it doesn’t cost you a saviour schnapps to save. This way you aren’t drunk in combat nor are you limited to saving only via schnapps. If you do that right as you see a combat encounter you should be able to try it a few times and if you can’t win just run or sneak past them.

            • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              2 months ago

              Thanks, I’ll try that. With 1 I added a mod so I could save any time. I don’t like the snapps mechanic.

              This time I saw a guy in a tree with wolves under it. I easily killed the wolves, but then had to carry the guy really far. In the end I had to kill some guys at an emcampment so I could bring this dude to his place, but I couldn’t kill the more heavily armored camp leader. So I played an annoying side quest by slowly carrying a guy really far, then to end up being stuck. So rage quit haha

              • teft@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                2 months ago

                Lol Vostatek is great. If you can’t get Pepik back, try going at night and sneak in and kill the camp leader with a knife to the throat while he’s sleeping. If you’re lucky you can kill two or three before the others notice. Also at night they don’t wear armor or weapons except the guy on guard.

                Alternatively you can just run in and grab Pepik and get back to Vostatek post haste. The mission is to get the horse, the guys are just extra loot.

                KCD2 is a game which rewards you for thinking outside the box. Frontal assaults don’t work unless you’re a sword god and henry ain’t that in the early game.

  • linkinkampf19 🖤🩶🤍💜🇺🇦@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    2 months ago

    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.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • linkinkampf19 🖤🩶🤍💜🇺🇦@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          2 months ago

          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.

    • tal@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      2 months ago

      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…

      • 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.

      • The character builds. Project Zomboid has a lot of perks and such. Cataclysm’s got vastly more, plus mutations, bionics, all that stuff.

      • 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.

      • 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.

      • linkinkampf19 🖤🩶🤍💜🇺🇦@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        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.

        • snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          2 months ago

          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.

  • Zahille7@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    I mean Oblivion Remastered just came out.

    It’s weird replaying Oblivion but it looks like a modern game. All the original audio is there (along with a few new voices to break up the monotony of hearing the same handful of voices over and over again), and all the locations and gear, but it all feels different. Like it’s very familiar, but it’s still very different from what we remember. Leveling is a bit different this time around as you have seven or so points to divide among your attributes, rather than picking a couple that would get increased by random numbers. I’d recommend trying it if nothing else than to try out the new polished version yourself.

    Although some of the jank has been removed from this version, like there are no more items duplication glitches, but the Bound Armor/Weapon glitch works.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      Yeah but fuck Bethesda these days. I won’t give them my money. They screwed me too often with their money grab junk. I’ll wait for a cracked version.

      • gamer@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        2 months ago

        I’ll wait for a cracked version.

        Piracy is bad! But just so you know there are already people downloading a cracked version of the game illegally today! Can you believe it?!

        • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Being scammed by Bethesda is bad. I buy indie games, I pirate triple A games to see if it’s worth my money. Usually it’s roughly 3 hours before I remove the junk. Fuck that, they don’t deserve my money. Empty shells, unbalanced bs, bug simulators, dlc hoarding, microtransactions. But if it’s actually good, I buy the game. I just have no more trust in big developers. Maybe except for Rockstar. Blizzard, Bethesda, Ubisoft, EA, they all suck. When they screw me over again and again, they deserve to be pirated. But even for free their games aren’t worth my time. Prove your product is worth it’s money and I’ll happily pay full price. Like Larian studios. Shut up and take my money.

          • gamer@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 months ago

            I was being sarcastic, fuck big publishers and big tech (Bethesda is both now), pirate all their shit, and shit on the game online so other people don’t buy it.

            Although I’ll admit I couldn’t wait, and bought the remaster as soon as I saw it. Oblivion is a special game for me, and this remaster definitely does not disappoint.

            • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              2 months ago

              Ah, I expected as much after reading your comment a second time after I already replied.

              I spent soooo much time playing Oblivion. I’ve never experienced anything like that before. It was the first game I played on my first self-built pc, the pc my parents had was shit, only for work, no proper gpu. I must have spent at least over a thousand hours playing Oblivion.

              But noooooo, Todd Howard won’t get my money!

              I don’t know much about pirated games these days, other than that there’s a lot of junk out there. Malware etc. So far I have a great experience with fitgirl repacks so I’m going to wait for a fitgirl release.

              I don’t want to pirate but I feel like I have no choice. I stopped downloading games because of Steam. I stopped downloading music because of Spotify. I stopped downloading movies and shows because of Netflix. I feel scammed on Steam, Spotify is a horrible nazi company and Netflix is so fragmented into other streaming platforms that it’s financially not viable to continue watching everything. So back comes the pirate hat. No one provides more service than piracy. I have more rights by pirating because I don’t have to sign any terms of service. Services just limit their customers while making them pay, while forcing them to give up their rights and ownership. Why would I pay for YouTube premium with less rights, freedom and functions than Grayjay or Vanced? I don’t want a car with functions locked behind a paywall and with ads, I’ll boycott the car brand. Fuck big tech.

              That was my rant. Thanks for listening :)

  • pno2nr@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 months ago

    Dyson Sphere Program is great, never played satisfactory but I hear they are similar.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      Satisfactory is nice, but first person with huge machines. So travel time is a downside for me. Dyson sphere program is much better in that aspect, I played 2 games, with both finishing the tech tree. I played the second game when the first combat implementations were added but I haven’t checked them out yet. I don’t feel like restarting again and my old saves are a mess to pick it back up (can’t remember what is where etc with all the planets). But it’s an amazing game!

  • Denjin@lemmings.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    6
    ·
    2 months ago

    Factorio. If you enjoyed Satisfactory you should check out the game that created the genre. They have an excellent demo and although it’s relatively expensive compared to similar games, it’s the best one and runs like an absolute dream even when things get huge where a lot of similar games slow down.

  • t_berium@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    I think you might like ‘Rogue Trader’, even if you don’t know anything about the 40K universe. Cool story, choices and fights.

    Don’t worry too much about not knowing the background lore. The game contextualizes a lot in dialogues and even little mouseovers. But be careful, if you like SciFi, you might fall into the awesomely rich and grim rabbit hole, that is Warhammer 40K.

    The Emperor protects.

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      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!

      • snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Yeah similar here, I could never get into stardew and I played timberborn a while ago but haven’t felt like picking it up again since

    • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.worldOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      2 months ago

      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.

      • Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        2 months ago

        I couldn’t get into it either, but I loved mindustry (that someone else mentioned)

    • fistac0rpse@fedia.io
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      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

  • Digitalprimate@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    2 months ago

    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).