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?
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
I have 247 hours on record. But because it’s really slow, I stopped playing it.
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.
The KSA team keeps showing off incredibly impressive demos. I have no doubt they will be able to achieve a worthy KSP successor.
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.
Stardew if you want a comfy game to play Timberborn for colony sim
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!
Railway Empire 2 hard to put down once you get going.
Wasteland 3 is awesome and akin to DOS2 and BG3!
Thanks, will check them out! Railway empire 2 doesn’t look like something I’d like but I have 2 hours to try before refund and if you say it’s good, I’ll go check it out :)
With Railway it’s the typical anticipation of strategy games that gets you. Just one more expansion of your network, one more resource to connect to a town, one more logistical puzzle to solve. It’s way more intricate (in a good way) than just managing the budget and I’ve sunk hours and hours into some of those missions to figure them out.
Have you tried persona 5? Great jrpg I think the new clair obscur expedition 33 looks really good for single player too
Based on your enjoyment of management and strategy, Paradox’s grand strategy games might be something you enjoy. Same publisher as Cities Skylines. There are four main series of them, each with their own mechanics but enough broad-scale similarities that knowing one helps with the others. They are:
- Crusader Kings, set in medieval Europe, North Africa, and about half of Asia. This one is the most roleplay-heavy, as you play as a succession of characters within a feudal dynasty rather than a country
- Europa Universalis, set from the European Renaissance up to the end of the Napoleonic wars. The whole world is playable, and exploration is a big mechanic
- Victoria, which covers the world through the rise of industrialism. This one is the most simulation-heavy, focusing gameplay around economic development and the diplomatic manoeuvring of great powers
- Hearts of Iron, which is the Second World War game. This is the one to go for if you want to play the military side of things
What distinguishes them from strategy games like Civ and Age of Empires is the greatly-reduced abstraction. There’s no expectation of every starting point or playable country being balanced; if you start as Belgium in Hearts of Iron, you’re going to have to do something clever to not get steamrolled by Germany. There’s also no win condition beyond what you set for yourself. When I start a game of Crusader Kings, I’m not trying to win the game, I’m saying to myself “let’s see if I can unite all of Britain and Ireland under a Gaelic ruler”
All Paradox games have quite a lot of DLC, but the base games are solid (often now including several of the earlier DLCs for free, in the case of older games) and they go on steep sales pretty often. If there’s not a specific time period or mechanic that sways you towards one of the games, I recommend Crusader Kings 3 for the best new player experience
I played almost all of them. I like them, kinda, but they are games which are hard to master and I get frustrated when suddenly everything goes wrong and I can’t find out why. Like with HOI4, my logistics are perfect, my army hyper modern and trained, mixed infantry, special units and armor. Yet they fail battle against a few weak infantry. I spend hours and hours on YouTube tutorials but in the end it’s just a bit too much for me.
Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2.
Often when I am sick of all the things I’ve been playing or feeling uninspired I go for a genre switch. To that end I will always recommend Neir: Replicant and Neir: Automata—I feel like a failure and a fool to have sat on them for so many years. Those are both games that feature very approachable gameplay with the whole deep story and cross genre mechanics that the split fiction devs seem to be good at (and are both single player), just be sure to continue playing after the first (and second and third, etc) credits roll.
Other random suggestions:
Bellwright is a really good colony sim / survival craft combo (although I’ve not played it single player so not sure how great it is in that mode).
Cyberpunk 2077 is just fucking great if you haven’t played that.
Disco Elysium if you’re really looking for some Get Stick Bugged content. (and a fantastic drunk cop RPG)
Just don’t buy Disco Elesium, the thieves that stole it don’t deserve that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Thanks I’ll try that!
If you don’t mind Early access games, try “Escape the mad empire”. It’s a nice RPG with tactical pause and some nice looting in it.
Factorio. If you like satisfactory and w&r then cracktorio is right up your alley.
There is also a free demo on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/427520/Factorio/If you enjoy the base game I would 100% recommend the expansion called Space Age with adds 4 more planets and space flight between them.
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.
I couldn’t get into it either, but I loved mindustry (that someone else mentioned)
I’ll go with some classics if you haven’t tried them yet. Planescape: torment is a really engaging crpg if you don’t mind old graphics and dig lots of lore and dialogue. Morrowind if you prefer first person for another old school rpg with lots of stuff to discover in a weird surreal environment. Dwarf fortress sounds like another older one you might be into too.
Dyson Sphere Program is great, never played satisfactory but I hear they are similar.
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!
Dyson Sphere Program is a great factory game. Check it out.
256 hours on record. Loved it, don’t want to start a 3rd game.
I see no mention of Starsector, there should be mention of Starsector.
Try Starsector.
Not on steam, early 2000’s website, gameplay looks nice. This is a win for me. Thanks!






