I recently booted up Half-Life 2 to replay it. I have played the absolute shit out of this game before, so 60% of it just feels like a drag to me now. It was such an amazing game but it’s sort of spoiled for me after I’ve played it too much.
I also discovered ULTRAKILL a few months ago. I feel like I could play that game forever. It has tons of content, weapon combinations and higher difficulties with different enemy behaviour.
Do any of you have more game suggestions like Ultrakill? A really replayable singleplayer game.
!!BTW I don’t mean online multiplayer games or games similar to candy crush!!
Tons. There’s an entire roguelike genre built around this; some of my favorites are Vagante and Streets of Rogue. There are games with procedurally generated worlds like Terraria, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, and Factorio. There are RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 that have so many ways to spec your characters and so many permutations of how events could unfold based on what you did that you’re unlikely to see them all.
Another great roguelike is Hades, which may or may not have dominated my video game attention for the last 8 months.
I didn’t personally care for it, but I know I’m in the minority. In fact, one of the reasons I didn’t care for it is because it felt far less replayable than many of its peers. Even Zagreus will call out “the butterfly room”, because there are so few permutations to see.
Hrm, you’re not wrong but Hades also exemplifies why quality wins over quantity when in replayability.
I’m sure it would if I thought more highly of it.
Lmao I love Hades but this is such a sick burn, I’m stealing it for next time someone tries to convince me some shlocky k-drama is peak kino.
I do hope Hades 2 ups the variability of the encounters more, you’re absolutely right about endgame being a bit weak for a roguelike, even with the different weapons.
Tossing Song of Syx onto the pile of games. Even if you don’t care for the art style, the game is immensely deep, and quite frankly, addictive.
Any good tutorial videos you’d recommend?
If you don’t mind his particular style, the SsethTzeentach video is what convinced me to give it a fair shake. The in-game tutorial and tooltips are pretty good though, and will get you started. Overtime you’ll discover more and more systems. Oh and just so you know, the demo is the full game, but a version behind.
If I had to choose a single game to play for the rest of time, it would be Dwarf Fortress. There’s just so much variety in its world generation and how the game can be played that if I was limited to just that one game, I would still have things to do.
And the awesome part of DF is that each time you start over (on the same world) you just add more to its history and the story continues. Losing is definitely fun when keeping that in mind.
Back in the day I played Hack until I noticed the sun had risen many times.
+1 for Factorio.
At one point I was playing so much Factorio that I started seeing conveyor belts and assembly machines in my sleep
Three of my favorite roguelikes are cataclysm dda, caves of qud and cogmind, recommend them to everyone
Have you checked out Tales of Maj’Eyal (tome)? Very highly praised roguelike, and lots of reviews consider it the roguelike.
What’s the hook to each one? I hear people mention Caves of Qud a lot, but the low-fi graphics aren’t grabbing my attention on their own.
All of these are classic roguelikes, a genre of games which frequently aren’t much to look at. The tradeoff for the looks is that they offer vast depth and complexity… and (usually) permadeath and a learning curve that’s more of a cliff. I recommend watching some yt videos about any roguelike you want to learn more about, just so a fan can explain the appeal and show off all the basics.
That said:
Caves of Qud - actually one of the prettier classic roguelikes, if you can belive it. You’re a traveller in a strange and unique world of vast salt deserts, jungles, and the titular caves. There is a ton of flavorful, semi-randomly generated history (especially the ever-important tales of the sultans) and cultures, so every run feels different. There is technically a main plot, but you can just ignore it and go exploring - it’s a sandbox experience. The best parts, to me, are the aforementioned flavour, the tactical combat (that can get incredibly chaotic, with screen-warping effects going off every turn), the build diversity, and delving too greedily and too deeply into the caves.
Cogmind - haven’t played this one, but it’s on a list. You’re a robot. You’re building yourself from parts as you go, fighting other robots and stealing their parts.
CDDA - one of my faves, but definitely not something I’d recommend as an intro to this genre. You’re a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. Go do things and don’t get bitten. It’s a sandbox - survive as long as you can, achieve a self-set goal. The distinguishing feature of CDDA is how realistic it tries to be - crafting is very complex, you need to track your thirst, nutrition, and sleep, you can easily get sick or get your arm broken, the zombies can track you by sight, noise, and lingering scent… My favourite part is surviving long enough to build elaborate apocalypse death mobiles, Mad Max style.
Traditional roguelikes may frequently pair with bad graphics, but it’s not a requirement. There are games like Tangledeep and Jupiter Hell, for instance. But thanks, these sound interesting.
If you want a bit better graphics I’d recommend you check out Tales of Maj’Eyal (ToME for short). It is on steam but the game is open-source and can be downloaded for free on its website.
Minecraft?
Hard to do better than the OG endless sandbox.
Definitely was my first thought. I think that I’ve spent way more time on that game than I’d like to admit.
Even if one gets bored of the game itself, there’s a practically infinite number of mods and community content out there. New game modes like skyblock, mods that turn it into an RPG with magic systems, mods that make it an in-depth factory building game, mods that take you to new realms and thousands of items to discover… There’s a lot to enjoy.
Adventure maps are also fairly underrated. There are tons of community-made maps that can turn it into a different game. Notably, there was a huge Hogwarts campaign with quests and spells that turns it into a harry potter game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKcsoE5X4fc
OG endless sandbox is Dwarf Fortress.
slowly retracts into bushes
FTL. It’s a simple fun cheap game. Steam says I’ve played this for over 3,000 hours!
FTL is so much fun. Finally beating by first run felt amazing.
Rimworld, Terraria, Minecraft, Satisfactory, basically sandbox games, where each playthrough is different.
Not sure about satisfactory, considering the map is always the same. So the only sources of randomness are starting at another location in the same map or playing differently yourself
Then just go for factorio. Randomly generated map and recources. Highly adjustable for dificulty and a LOT of mods that add to the game. Concidering that the dlc , that seems to be as complex as the Base Game, comes out in Oktober you have a good Kandidaten for infinite replayability
I also recommend folks check out Dyson Sphere Program, I’ve sunk many hundreds of hours into it at this point
Obligatory Rimworld shout out.
I’ve dumped more hours into this game than the rest of my game library combined.
Edit: typo
A significant number of comments have mentioned Rimworld, guess I’ll install it. Thanks for your recommendations!
Dwarf Fortress, if you like rimworld but prefer gigantic learning curves
Rimworld is a great answer. Every game us different, and you can take it different places with mods as well.
Rimworld would be my top suggestion, as others have noted.
I picked up Old World (excellent native Linux support BTW) during this summer sale and have not been able to put it down. If you’re a fan of Civilization style strategy games I’d highly recommend checking it out. I haven’t really enjoyed a Civ game since Civ 4, and Old World feels very similar but fresher and with less jank. it’s got a Crusader Kings style dynasty system with randomized events that adds a layer of role playing your leader and securing their dynasty through heirs you can train/influence.
As for the repeatability, Old World has tons. Each culture plays significantly differently, and each leader has different bonuses that encourage an interesting style of play. Games don’t play the same because of the mentioned event system, but also because learning new technologies is “randomized” as well. New techs are researched based off a selection of 4 drawn tech cards once you finish a previous technology. The card system makes it so you can’t just rush straight to archers and dominate the early game to snowball into a power house every game, but its not truly random so you can “game” the system in your favor to get the techs you want with the tools the game gives you through either unique leader powers, or specific governor roles for example.
The game is super deep while not being off puttingly complex.
I almost exclusively play single player games and honestly Elden Ring has been a huge time sink. There’s just something about mastering it that is satisfying. It has online features but they’re not required.
Combat also varies heavily between weapon types and equipment weight. You have to approach combat completely differently with different gear, so you can play it again with less of a feel of exploration (probably not none; it’s huge), but completely different battles.
I wish I could run it on my PC, though.
(｡╯︵╰｡)
Maybe someday when I can afford a better device.
Ah yes it is rather poorly optimized. Before it I was playing Against the Storm which doesn’t have such high requirements.
Also Mount and Blade provides some amazing single player experiences that are hard to find elsewhere. Get into a battle with hundreds of units, command a cavalry charge in first person while you personally lead a flank from the other side.
Minecraft, Hades, Solitaire, Civ, Gunfire Reborn, Vampire Survivor, Vampire Hunters, and Placid Plastic Duck Simulator,
My top ones I constantly replay are Factorio, rimworld and modded Minecraft java version, mainly because there’s a incredible amount of mods For all of them, make themed runs for each one. Sometimes action adventure sometimes just pure automation.
Nearly 8k in Factorio and probably Minecraft, not as much in rimworld but only because I bought it about a year ago
I’m seeing Rimworld and Factorio in a lot of the comments here. I have played Factorio already, great game. Guess I’ll try Rimworld now.
Dwarf Fortress!
I’m a huge fan of Rimworld! Very excited to hear you’re giving it a try. It really can become whatever you want. There is an abundance of Quality of Life mods too. I definitely have recommendations if you’d like.
I would tatoo modded Minecraft on my body, I love it so much
so I looked into modded minecraft via curse… seems awfully clunky - and so many mods are really compilations of others… can you recommend top few mods?
The only one that seems interesting from a player perspective is trees falling when cut.
The real juice of modded minecraft is in the modpacks - curated sets of mods that were configured to work well with each other, frequently with some custom recipes added by the pack developer, and sometimes some kind of a quest line to guide you through the pack and provide a more structured experience. There are many different types of modpacks - kitchen sinks (large collections of mods, frequently without a lot of balance tweaks or changes, for a more sandbox experience), questing packs (with the aforementioned quest books to guide you through the mods), vanilla+ packs that intend to expand on the vanilla minecraft experience and not change the gameplay loop significantly, packs focused exclusively on magic or technology mods (or both), expert packs (questing packs with heavily reworked recipes, where you need to build elaborate machines and automate stuff Factorio-style)…
I’m not up to date with the modpack scene, so can’t really make you a definitive list - back on reddit (sigh) there is a r/feedthebeast community that specializes in modded play.
That said:
- FTB Academy seems to be a pack specifically meant to teach the basics of modded play.
- Project Ozone 3 comes up quite often as a pack with a good quest book that guides you through everything.
- Cottage Witch is what I’m currently starting, it’s (so far) a chill magic vanilla+ pack. New creatures, new plants, some new mechanics, tons of new decorations for building.
- Peace of Mind is an older pack made specifically for playing on Peaceful, if mobs are stressing you out. It’s got a good questbook too.
- and if you want to jump straight into the deep end… Enigmatica 2 (or 6) Expert, Gregtech New Horizons. Expert packs in which you need to automate everything to progress. Gregtech in particular is infamous for its complexity, difficulty, and length, but if you enjoy solving hard problems it might be for you.
You’ll also need a launcher to install these packs - FTB have their own if you want FTB Academy, otherwise there are some options such as Curseforge (do not recommend, eats resources just by existing), Prism (seems to come up a lot as a recommendation), or GDLauncher (what I’m using).
Thank you very much, I look forward to exploring this!
Yeah what the other guy said, modpacks and give FTB academy a start. Generally the mods add a shitload of new content (like lots more ores). Better automation and electricity is, imo, the best stuff added, and there’s tons of that. I find the magic and adventure mods don’t quite work as well. My biggest tip for modded mc is: Spread out! Make big ass bases and rooms, you’ll love the space.
After that it’s your call what’s next. A kitchen sink pack is one that sorta rams in a ton of mods with no theme and it’s fun! FTB infinity was a lot of fun, or FTB Ultimate re whatever too.
There’s StoneBlock which is the opposite of Skyblock which was a different style
Create: Above and Beyond is my favorite. It is hard though and requires that you understand the Create mod.
By the way you’ll find that Create is the best mod. It’s really fucking well done and no other mod really comes close in quality. Gears and belts!
Anyways here’s some old creations of mine:
Big bridge that runs off trees and wheat https://imgur.com/gallery/HeIl4vk
Storage room (before I got the ME computer block) https://imgur.com/gallery/U0qhf
Create wheat farm in the snow https://imgur.com/gallery/x71winR
This last pack I played was all about big multi block structures to process ore, so it became a sprawling base https://imgur.com/gallery/873rZT5
TY!
There’s a few different styles of experiences:
Adds a dimension in the sky with its own progression of ores, and a system of a progression of dungeons. Lots of new enemies. It has a kinda similar progression to playing vanilla survival minecraft, but it’s harder and the things you have to worry about are very different.
It’s one of the most polished mods out there and is intended for a standalone experience.
Mine & Slash this is a big modpack intended to change the game into a more combat oriented and fantasy themed game.
There are some that are designed to make the progression be a system of automating resource production, similar to games like Factorio or Satisfactory. Create is an example.
Ones like Blightfall are a complete curated experience with a story, a custom map, and a modpack.
Thanks!
Hades
RimWorld. shit can go crazy with the mods a available or just vanilla.
I dunno, I only have 3417 hours played in Rimworld, I’m not sure that qualifies as infinitely replayable. /s
Don’t give up! You’re close to finishing the tutorial!
Xcom, xcom2
Welcome back, commander.
X-COM with the Long War mod.
Minecraft, Hoplite, Shattered Pixel Dungeon. You probably want a good roguelike.
Balatro
I’ve played a lot of RimWorld, and I don’t feel anywhere near done
Rimworld, especially with mods is a game I can always come back to. Such an amazing game.
