Stardew Valley. I was a big fan of Harvest Moon FOMT and kept hearing that I should play it and when I did was I blown away. It felt incredibly similar and 90% of the time I thought “It would be nice if this is a feature” it was
Factorio.
Everything—the gameplay, the music, the art style—feels like I hand selected it. There’s not a single decision the devs made that I wouldn’t have made too.
I’ve been watching for a sale, if that ever happens. I just picked up Satisfactory on sale and had a similar conversation with a friend. I said I’m definitely the target demographic for it and Factorio is the other on radar.
I don’t think Factorio ever goes on sale but imo it’s worth full price.
If you like Satisfactory, there’s an extremely high chance you’ll like Factorio. The main differences are the obvious 2D top-down vs 3D 1st person and Factorio has a robust military/combat system with base defense while Satisfactory is mostly peaceful unless you’re exploring.
Oh I don’t doubt that I’d enjoy it, I just rarely pay full price for games anymore. It gives me StarCraft vibes.
Perhaps when I’ve tired myself of Satisfactory, I’ll pick it up, if it still hasn’t gone on sale by then.
In the meantime though, I also have Mindustry.
Factorio never ever goes on sale, out of principle. The devs have stated on multiple occasions. They know what their game is worth and they’re upfront about asking every player to pay the same price for it.
If you’re interested in Factorio at full price, no harm in buying now. If you will never buy it at full price, you will never buy it.
That’s fair, though if it never goes on sale, then there’s no rush either. I’ll get my fill of Satisfactory first and then probably reconsider it then.
Project Zomboid, even though I’m not into zombie lore.
- Isometric perspective graphics, one of my favorite game perspectives
- Open world, open-ended, sandbox play with enough of a game objective to not be boring
- Hardcore survival with deep, often surprising mechanics
- Amazing multiplayer experiences
- Loads of suspense and tension
- Constant development from a small, totally independent team
- Incredible array of community mods
I would love to see other games in the same vein using other scenarios besides zombies, like maybe warzone survival, etc.
Thief: The Dark Project.
It’s everything I could ever want.
- Excellent story perfectly meshed with the gameplay.
- A strange high-technology medieval world.
- Incredible level design combined with realistic roughly drawn maps, forcing you to take in your surroundings and build your own map.
- Variety of gameplay, ranging from infiltrating a rich baron’s mansion to rob them blind, to delving into ancient crypts filled with odd creatures and an alien culture for some adventurous tomb raiding, to some of the most terrifying pants filling survival horror I’ve yet encountered.
It is, in my opinion, perfection.
Outer Wilds, it has exactly everything I love. I wish I could play it again for the first time, though being unable to do that is one of the reasons I love it
I highly recommend it, it’s great, just don’t spoil yourself by watching things, even the trailers honestly