I like community builders and games that I can keep a world for years and grow, watch it evolve. I enjoy Rimworld. ARK evolved series is good.
Bonus if it’s multiplayer capable LAN and not online.
Oxygen not included is nice but mentally taxing sometimes. I prefer laid back chill games with economy and farming. 2d or 3d doesn’t matter. I don’t mind trying indie games. Survival based games are nice. I’m not super pick and choose.
Give me your greatest joy in game form. I’ve heard Stardew Valley is good. I tried it, reminds me of a gameboy game. I could not get into the game. My character kept falling asleep like 14 times in a day.
OpenTTD!!!
Also Satisfactory.
X4 is an economy simulator masquerading as a flight simulator. It also goes on sale regularly!
Mindustry a defense strategy game, you collect minerals and conquer unexplored territories
huge shoutout to mindustry! it’s foss and technically free but you can buy it through steam to donate to the developers.
Tux Kart ! ftw
If you’re into strategy I can highly recommend some TBS Games (Turn Based Strategy) in no particular order:
- Heroes of Might and Magic 3, 5 and the new Olden Era
- Civilization 5 and 6
- Age of Wonders
- Battle Brothers
- Old World
- Songs of Conquest
All of them got something to do with building up and watching grow but in a more “laid back”, strategic way 😎
+1 for mindustry and luanti.
I’ll add Wesnoth, Widelands and OpenTTD too.
X-plane runs natively on Linux, and you have countless hour of simming. While not fully single-player, Elden ring works perfectly through steam/proton, and the ordinary interaction with other players is about letting message
Endless Sky is great.
Mewgenics! It’s weird, it’s funny, the music is top tier.
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Wrong post, sorry.
Vintage Story is a slowburn survival game with a Linux version from the developers, not a compat layer. It’s focused on realism.
Ranch Sim is a game in which you design your own ranch.
Starship Evo, formerly Sky Wanderers, is still in development but has reached a very playable stage. You build bases and ships out of predefined shapes but with highly variable scaling, as in ranging from 12.5cm grid up to 1m with all the standard slopes, panels, etc. It has logic systems, inventory and production systems, and control systems for space ships, hovercraft, mech walkers, and space stations, all using that heavily customisable building system. Then you can fly around doing little missions, trading, space ship combat, etc.
Archean is similar building but with more realism and programming but more sandboxy with no NPCs.
I’ve heard some good things about Steamworld Build.
I have heard someone say Icarus was like Ark but better.
7 Days to Die ticks much of those boxes as well.
Stationeers is another struggle, survive, thrive game with very realistic mechanisms.
Foundry is Factorio in 3D. Satisfactory is Foundry without a Gödel grid.
Timberborn is really nice and laid back.
Factorio.
What’s that about falling asleep 14 times in a day? What do you mean? That’s not how it works…
Anyway, here’s Wonderwall:
- Terraria, Minecraft in 2D.
- Dwarf Fortress. It’s chill. In a very, ah, neurospecific kind of way.
- Luanti, it’s basically open source Minecraft. Moddable in Lua, which is easy enough to pick up.
- Subnautica. Stranded alone on an underwater planet. Not ‘relaxing’ in the original sense, but there’s a sense of discovery few games can replicate. Aside from maybe…
- Outer Wilds. Explore a mini solar system in a rickety spaceship. Everything else would be a spoiler, but you owe it to yourself to play it someday.
I’m just going to plug here that Luanti is best referred to as “Luanti plus Mineclonia.”.
My aologies for the Stallman reference.
I find that whether folks enjoy their first outing in Luanti tends to highly correlate with whether they know to try Mineclonia inside of Luanti, first, before the other more esoteric games available.
True, Luanti is just the engine and OP, you’ll have to install a ‘proper’ game from within it. I’ve been messing with it for so long that this part has actually slipped my mind.
Thanks for the Stallman reference, appreciate it :)
Terraria really cannot be compared to minecraft honestly. Terraria is much more focused on bosses for progression, and it isn’t really a sandbox like minecraft is.
Absolutely fantastic though, and IMO much more enjoyable than Minecraft.
I agree, except I on the other hand prefer Minecraft for the sane reasons; it’s a sandbox with little focus on bosses or progression, and the ‘goals’ are only ones you decide for yourself :)
Not OP, but I’ve tried getting into Stardew multiple times and the fatigue mechanic absolutely ruins the game for me. “14 times” is an exaggeration but what it feels like.
People describe it as a cozy game but it is genuinely one of the most stressful games that I’ve played. As in I start clearing the land and then after a very short time my character is exhausted. Either I sleep it off and I’m worried I’ll plant late enough the crops will die in winter or I work through it and end up in the hospital with a bill. Sometimes I’ve used the time to explore the town (as it seems the game mechanics are telling you to do), whereupon I find the shops are closed and I collapse on the way back home.
The one or two times I’ve played long enough to harvest crops I end up eating all of it just to get to the end of the day. Most of the money I make is from selling actual literal garbage I’ve found lying around.
The result of that mechanic is that the game is basically telling me the most cozy part of the game (farming) I’m not allowed to play until I’ve invested enough time to stock up on energy drinks. I’m left with fishing, which just isn’t my thing, and mining, which is what I’ll mostly do until I get bored because it’s honestly kinda mediocre on it’s own. I just can’t get into this game.
(I’m aware that the main pull for the game is the characters, which if you enjoy that that’s good. I’ve just never had much of a reason to be invested in them)
I promise it gets better! Improving your farming skill increases your energy efficiency while farming, that helps a lot. There are other ways to raise your energy as well. But yeah, I’ve been playing it for so long that I actually forgot that the first start was a little rough. So, thanks for the reminder. :)
I guess the one reason why SDV is filed as ‘not stressful’ in my head is because I know that it’s impossible to permanently mess up in that game. Every little thing you do helps you, little by little.
Mods my friend
Multiple leviathan class creatures detected…are you sure what you’re doing is worth it?
See? It’s chill. The narrator even helps you. What can be more chill than that? :)
