Curious as to what people think has the most replay potential.
Rules:
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The “desert island” aspect here is just to create an isolated environment. You don’t have to worry about survival or anything along those lines, where playing the game would be problematic. This isn’t about min-maxing your situation on the island outside of the game, or the time after leaving.
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No live service games unless the live service aspect is complete and it can be played offline – that is, you can’t just rely on the developer churning out new material during your time on the island. The game you get has to be in its complete form when you go to the island.
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No multiplayer games – can’t rely on the outside world in the form of people out there being a source of new material. The island is isolated from the rest of the world.
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You get existing DLC/mods/etc for a game. You don’t get multiple games in a series, though.
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Cost isn’t a factor. If you want The Sims 4 and all its DLC (currently looks like it’s $1,300 on Steam, and I would guess that there’s probably a lot more stuff on EA’s store or whatever), DCS World and all DLC ($3,900), or something like that, you can have it as readily as a free game.
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No platform restrictions (within reason; you’re limited to something that would be fairly mainstream). PC, console, phone, etc games are all fine. No “I want a game that can only run on a 10,000 node parallel compute cluster”, though, even if you can find something like that.
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Accessories that would be reasonably within the mainstream are provided. If you’re playing a light gun game, you can have a light gun. You can have a game controller, a VR headset and controllers, something like that. No “I want a $20 million 4DOF suspended flight sim cockpit to play my flight sim properly”.
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You have available to you the tools to extend the game that an ordinary member of the public would have access to. If there are modding tools that exist, you have access to those, can spend time learning them. If it’s an open-source game and you want to learn how to modify the game at a source level, you can do that. You don’t have access to a video game studio’s internal-only tools, though.
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You have available to you existing documentation and material related to the game that is generally publicly-available. Fandom wikis, howtos and guides, etc.
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You get the game in its present-day form. No updates to the game or new DLC being made available to you while you’re on the island.
What three games do you choose to take with you?
I’m staying on dry land until the Factorio DLC is out.
Factorio
Dwarf Fortress
Rollercoaster Tycoon
It’s time to learn Dwarf Fortress.
I think the goal is probably to not get bored by the only 3 games available, so with that in mind :
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Skyrim would last long enough to provide entertainment within those 5 years, there’s tons of replayability with mods. Witcher 3, RDR2, BG3, are good options as well.
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Then something lighter to come back to, to unwind, like Trackmania (probably United for the multi environment, or 2020 for the latest features), because the editor mode allows for potentially infinite tracks to be made and played offline on top of the official campaign tracks. Kerbal Space Program could fit those criterias too.
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And lastly, probably a rogue like that feels fresh every new run, I’m not a fan of Hades, so I’ll pick Dead Cells, or Balatro, or Pyre, or… there’s so many choices in that category!
Those are not only some solid choices but I like and agree with your reasoning. One deep immersive game, one pure fun game and one endless replay ability game.
Personaly I would add a creative game like Planet Coaster or Cities skylines 2 to the list as well but I’m jot sure with game category it should replace
Civilization 6
Baldurs Gate 3
Stellaris
