Looking for game rec for extended downtime due to illness

Caves of Qud is one of the best exploration games I've ever played. It's a traditional roguelike where the overworld map is the same each time but the world history, factions, and most individual zones are procedurally generated each time you start over.

You play as either a mutated human with strange bonuses like extra arms, the ability to mind control, wings, etc. or a Truekin that starts with higher base stats and the ability to use implant tech to do things like replace your legs with tank treads or your eyes with night-vision goggles.

It's a deep simulation; all of the NPCs in the game are as fully modeled as the player character, the NPCs you meet are a result of the generated history, and the best choice is often to run away.

It's turn-based with multiple difficulty levels. I recommend playing on classic, but the other ways are just as valid.

If you enjoy automation, tower defense, survival/building games Rimworld might be of interest to you. Enjoying committing war crimes is optional but a nice bonus!

My favorite game to play when I am sick is Banished, a medieval city building game that was the labor of love of a solo dev. It starts off quite brutally difficult until you learn the best ways to handle the first winters and then it becomes a cozy opportunity for optimization, and a challenge to balance expanding the city as much as you can while supporting the population with agricultural and forestry goods. It's inspired some other games to follow in its footsteps, and it has a modding community still making content for it.

I'm really into souls games so I'm going to focus my recommendations to games with little combat and also tailor the list based on what you tried and didn't like so far.

Optional or minimal combat

• Green Hell
• My Summer Car [AI generated paintings]
• Potion Craft
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
• Subnautica [controversy with dev buyout and lawsuit, but a solid game]

Combat required but easy

• Yakuza Kiwami (the other yakuza and like a dragon games are great too but some of them might have kernel level rootkits, and some are available on GOG without rootkits)
• Final Fantasy 12 The Zodiac Age

Exploration focused

• Dave the Diver
• A Short Hike
• Disco Elysium
• The Stanley Parable
• The Talos Principle (1 and 2)
• Stray

Story focused games (non exploration)

• Unpacking
• Venba

Worth trying

• Tropico 6

If you are open to anything, try Wingspan.

It is a bird based card game you gain points for playing birds based on the number on the card, but it becomes an engine building game.

Each turn you choose one: play a bird, gather food, lay eggs, add a bird card to your hand.

Birds have certain "powers" such as each time your opponent lays eggs place an egg on your bird, or each turn used collect food from the birdfeeder.

The game is limited turns so you have to develop a hand of cards that you can play that will be high points, plus give you extra bonus actions to try to accelerate birds played, eggs laid, extra birds captured by predator birds etc.

As cards are laid down into food, eggs, collect cards sections it increases the reward of that section.

You can play online, with friends or against the computer. It becomes addicting in my opinion, because filling each section is difficult and just as you are collecting a good way to build a good reward engine the turns are ending, so you have to plan properly.

Something small: Len's Island. I had fun with that. It's pretty light, but has some depth in resource management and exploration

I loved minmaxing and grinding around in Grim Dawn and Timberborn. You might too. 👌

If you want to sink countless hours into it and are looking for automation, building and exploration.. maybe X4: Foundations is something for you? It's basically a giant, fully simulated space sandbox. (And you'd also be supporting a small independent studio, writing their own engine etc.)

Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Game about cutting up spaceships with lasers and gravity tools with a bit of a narrative.

It's not a great alignment for the types you identified, but I like all the things you mentioned and found this quite nice.

If you've never tried it before, Dot Age is a fun little time sink made by an Indie dev. It's a city builder people/resource management type game where you're trying to build a successful village to survive a coming apocalypse. You have to plan ahead and deal with upcoming 'bad events.' A run is like 5-6 hours long and there is a lot of variety between runs thanks to building variants, etc.

Mars First Logistics is a fairly tricky building/exploration game where you make and operate robots from parts to explore the world to get more parts. What you get out of it depends a lot on how you play it.

Designing a new vehicle for each task makes it more of a building game.

Trying to reuse/modify the same vehicle for every task makes it more of a driving/operating game.

Choosing tasks based on what you can already do makes it more of an exploration/road trip game.

If you build infrastructure to get everywhere it's more of an expand/exploit/city building game.

A very fun exploration and puzzle game would be Tunic. It has combat which can be pretty tricky at times but in the game's settings you can make yourself invincible so you can just get through the combat if you'd like. If you try Outer Wilds and like it, I would try Tunic as well.

Both of these games are so interesting because they can be completed at any point, but it's completely dependent of everything you the player learn while playing the game. But for that reason I would not look into the games more than what's on the Steam store page, you gotta go in blind.

I’ve been having a blast playing Pikmin 3 using the Eden switch emulator.

I've been having a really fun time with vintage story, a.minecraft alternative that goes for detail. It has stuff like crop rotation, a realistic (compared to minecraft at least) steel making process. I think it offers a lot richer and more varied experience than vanilla minecraft, and is surprisingly good about not forcing you to grind.

GregTech New Horizons mod pack for Minecraft. There’s thousands of hours of automation entertainment there.

sandustry is pretty cool, it’s a 2d falling sand based factory builder. early access now iirc, and still new enough that there’s not a lot of guides or tutorials available.

i really dug it bc it REALLY appealed to the min/max part of my brain. every little efficiency boost felt like a discovery lol

I know you've said Satisfactory and Mindustry... but I can't believe no one has suggested Factorio...

That game is good at keeping me up at night til 2am wanting to expand and remake my factory.

You can think of it like 2D satisfactory, but there's much more of a base defense mechanic because you get periodically rushed at by groups of bugs annoyed at your pollution.

Satisfactory: you land on a planet and have to build a massive factory to make parts to build machines to make other parts to build things to send back to earth to save it.

As someone who loves automation and building, and design. This game just dominated my brain for almost two months.

You are welcome, and I am so sorry...

[edit: also check out Timberborn. I'm currently addicted to it. A very streamlined city builder where you control cities of beavers that work with/exploit the poisoned landscape hoomans left behind to survive.]

If you want a fresh jaunt in an mmorpg I highly recommend Guild Wars 2. Starter accounts are free so no cost in trying it. Amazing story, plenty of content, and the best community of any multiplayer game I've ever played. Hope you give it a try!

One exploration / sim game that can soak up a lot of hours if you get into it is Elite Dangerous. I see No Man's Sky in didn't work or 'finished', if it didn't work Elite may not be for you, similar but with better combat and 'realism' and a lot less life (as in biomes). Very much a choose (/make) your own adventure but they keep adding gameplay loops...

I found Journey to a Savage Planet and it's sequel enjoyable, FPS puzzle platformer where you explore and document the local flora and fauna.

The Isle is a nice time sink, you play as a dinosaur and have to grow and survive, maybe live long enough to start a little dino family. You want to change the game version to Envirma (sic) as that is the version currently getting developed.

These might not be for you but I want to provide a couple of options that aren't exactly what you're asking for but are pretty close. No offense taken if you think they are terrible.

Lonestar - Top down space rogue-like where you place modules in your ship to synergize damage output. Also known as 'space math'.

Sunless Skies - Steam punk space train set in the Fallen London universe. Emphasis on exploration and the setting just oozes style. Also the soundtrack is awesome.

Halcyon 6 - Take control of a space station and try to put together a fleet to replace the one that gets nuked at the start of the game.

Exo Rally Championship: Probably the best rally game out there right now. Rewards carefulness and planning ahead.

Outbrk: Storm chasing simulator.

DinoSystem: Very deep survival simulation with dinosaurs.

Stationeers: Build and automate your own space station. Also features gas simulation.

Brainfuck Challenge: Brainfuck is a esoteric programming language with very few instructions you can learn in a few minutes. And this game is just a collection of puzzles/challenges made to be solved with this language.

shapez 2: Factorio but with shapes and colors

Beton Brutal/White Knuckle/Idols of Ash/Lorn's Lure: A bunch of precision platformers with no combat whose sole goal is go up/down as fast as you can. Lorn's Lure would be my favorite of the bunch but they're all unique in their own ways.

Nubby's Number Factory: Plinko meets neuron activation

Emberward would be right up your alley. It's a rogue-like TD with tetrimono you customize during your run. It just went 1.0 last week and has 96% positive ratings on Steam with almost 4,000 reviews. It's also currently on launch sale.

Outerwilds for s-tier exploration/puzzling. Best to go in blind on this one.

You'd love space engineers.

Timberborn definitely. Also, Factorio, which has a better balance of simplicity, complexity, and interface automation than Satisfactory or Mindustry, as well as a different goal. Also mods lmao

A Vampire Survivors-like game I really enjoyed was Death Must Die. Its cheap, the systems and character types are really fleshed out, and progression feels good. It is still in Early Access as the Dev is still adding more zones but I've put about 40 hrs into it so far and I have been totally satisfied

The Planet Crafter might be your jam.

The Alters: This is a survival base building game, with some automation. You and yourself and your other selves are stuck on an asteroid and are trying to keep your base out of the Sun's path while collecting materials and resources to keep going. Minimal 'combat', mostly avoiding anomalies.

---

The Long Dark: A survival game where you are in the frozen northern Canadian wilderness and you need to hunt/gather and stay warm. There's a storymode to play through, challenges to go for, or just try the survival mode. Minimal combat, avoid wolves, and bears.

---

Graveyard Keeper: Base building game with a bit of automation if you have one of the DLCs. Build up a graveyard, while trying to figure out how you got here and how to return home. A lot of tongue and cheek humor. It's similar to Stardew Valley but instead of making friends you help them out to help yourself. There is combat in the game but it is very basic.

---

Kerbal Space Program is a great time sink

Creeper World 4 is a fun mix of tower defence and rts.

Dome Keeper is a rogue-light bunker defence and resource gathering game.

Noita is dungeon diving game set in a world built on a falling sand/powder toy engine.

Astroneer is a spaceman game where you explore and exploit alien planets for resources and to not die

Uncle Chops Rocket Shop is a game about maintaining other people’s space ships, each system is a mini game, the faster you go the more money you make

Campaign for North Africa

You might enjoy SteamWorld Dig. Get well soon!

You could give Sanctum and Sanctum 2 a try. They are “FPS Tower Defense” games where after the tower building phase you go in and blast the enemies by hand alongside the towers.

The FPS combat is not particularly hard because it is still a tower defense at its core, but there are some enemies that are easier to kill by hand than with towers because they have armor and take much more damage at their weakpoints and the towers aren’t very good at aiming at the weakpoints. Also there are some interesting build crafting options, especially in Sanctum 2.

It’s the earlier work by the team who made Satisfactory.

Halls of Torment is a lot like vampire survivors and done extremely well

Emberward is a great tower defense game where you also design the track the enemies use with little Tetris prices

Shape of Dreams is a isometric top down roguelike with optional co-op that is reminiscent in league of legend's character design but is fully PVE with encounters where you clear rooms and boss challenges.

You should try the OG automation game. Factorio. Also Dyson Sphere Program is pretty good, and extremely pretty to look at

Two games I will suggest:

"Captain of Industry" is a colony sim/automation game, in addition to production you also must care for a population of workers. Production is more complicated than, say, Factorio because most thing have a waste product.

"The Last Caretaker" is a bit different, you're a robot, on a boat, after the end of the world. You run around fixing machines, fixing your boat, and you sail to locations to find resources to do whatever it is you were built for. There are things that will attack you but that isn't what the game is about.

Now Im going to lurk your thread for more suggestions.

Oxygen Not Included

Its a colony management sim with plenty of depth. Design plumbing and electricity systems. Farm and ranch. Make oxygen because ... its not included. Disease management. Expand your base. Adorable art style. I love the game and was my go to when I was bed-ridden. Hope you enjoy your time off even though your sick.

Humanity is a great Civ alternative. Much more responsible and responsive developer and publisher. They also do the endless legend and endless space strategy games.

Fantastic soundtracks and art style. Very well polished games.

Rimworld, the best war crimes simulator.

Open transport tycoon, open source remake of the best transport simulator ever.

Genshin Impact

I'd love to recommend Warframe to you, but the only thing matching is "I have a lot of free time"

Factorio. KeeperFX

Wurm online. It's like like RuneScape mixed with Minecraft and just as old. Great for spending hours on.

A pretty chaotic mix but I tried to imagine games that would deeply reward close engagement over long stretches, a game like Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is a game you can come back to again and again for the rest of your life!

::: spoiler long list

---

Farm Together 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2418520/Farm_Together_2/

Survivalist Invisible Strain

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054510/Survivalist_Invisible_Strain/

Chronicon

https://store.steampowered.com/app/375480/Chronicon/

Apico

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1390190/APICO/

Wayward

https://store.steampowered.com/app/379210/Wayward/

Ships At Sea

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1266540/Ships_At_Sea/

Zero Sievert

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1782120/ZERO_Sievert/

Pimantle

https://semantle.pimanrul.es/

Brigador

https://www.gog.com/en/game/brigador_deluxe_edition

Saga Of Ryzom <- free and open source

https://www.ryzom.com/

Veloren <- free and open source

https://veloren.net/

Timberborn

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1062090/Timberborn

Star Of Providence

https://store.steampowered.com/app/603960/Star_of_Providence

Songs Of Styx

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1162750/Songs_of_Syx

Airborne Empire

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2438680/Airborne_Empire

Barotrauma

https://store.steampowered.com/app/602960/Barotrauma/

Duskers

https://store.steampowered.com/app/254320/Duskers/

Easy Red 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1324780/Easy_Red_2/

The Sea Will Claim Everything

https://store.steampowered.com/app/337720/The_Lands_of_Dream/

Wobbly Life

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1211020/Wobbly_Life

Atomicrops

https://store.steampowered.com/app/757320/Atomicrops/

Old Market Simulator

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2878420/Old_Market_Simulator

Pathologic 3

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3199650/Pathologic_3/

Beyond All Reason <- free and open source

https://www.beyondallreason.info/

Hero Siege

https://store.steampowered.com/app/269210/Hero_Siege

Zeus & Poseidon

https://www.gog.com/en/game/zeus_poseidon

Panzer Marshal

https://openpanzer.itch.io/panzermarshal

Slay The Spire 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2868840/Slay_the_Spire_2

Legends Of Runeterra

https://playruneterra.com/en-us/

Zombasite

https://store.steampowered.com/app/408960/Zombasite/

The Wandering Village

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1121640/The_Wandering_Village

Avorion

https://store.steampowered.com/app/445220/Avorion/

Citizen Sleeper 2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2442460/Citizen_Sleeper_2_Starward_Vector/

Let's School

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1937500/Lets_School

Roadwarden

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1155970/Roadwarden/

Necesse

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1169040/Necesse/

Corsair Cove or really ANYTHING from Hooded Horse

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1368140/Corsair_Cove

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead <- free and open source

https://cataclysmdda.org/

Mutazione

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1080750/Mutazione/

Wingspan

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054490/Wingspan/

Star Traders Frontiers

https://store.steampowered.com/app/335620/Star_Traders_Frontiers/

Heart Of The Machine

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/

Battle For Wesnoth <- free and open source

https://www.wesnoth.org/

Vintage Story

https://www.vintagestory.at/

7 Days To Die

https://store.steampowered.com/app/251570/7_Days_to_Die/

Endgame Road To Salvation

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1264920/Endgame_Road_To_Salvation/

Shredders

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1874170/Shredders

Out Of Ore

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2009350/Out_of_Ore/

Motor Town Behind The Wheel

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369670/Motor_Town_Behind_The_Wheel/

Intergalactic Fishing

https://store.steampowered.com/app/949600/Intergalactic_Fishing/

Sailwind

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1764530/Sailwind/

Flashpoint Campaigns Southern Storm

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2366530/Flashpoint_Campaigns_Southern_Storm

Rainworld

https://store.steampowered.com/app/312520/Rain_World/

Alba

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1337010/Alba_A_Wildlife_Adventure/

Against The Storm

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1336490/Against_the_Storm/

Deep Rock Galactic

https://store.steampowered.com/app/548430/Deep_Rock_Galactic/

Monster Hunter series!

:::

Being a big fan of powerleveling, I'd say trying to do that on Final Fantasy II and XII would count for exploration, both because you can find a lot gradually but consistently simply by exploring past the obvious path. FFI maybe if you consider progressing on the story requires paying attention (and often taking note) of what NPCs say throughout the game.

Starbound also fits nicely on exploration, and Stardew Valley on exploration and a bit of automation.

About your opening paragraph, if it concerns you, there's !videogamesuggestions@lemmy.zip as well as other generalist, gaming-oriented communities in the fediverse besides here. There's also other generalist, gaming-oriented forums outside of the fediverse too if you'd want to broaden your search.

The Planet Crafter is an exploration/survival/automation game that scratches that itch for a hundred hours or two.

Edit; It's also an optionally multiplayer game that you can play with your friends/family. It's very fun thst way. If you do, expect deaths at the beginning because the starting survival resources don't scale well with number of players, which either pushes you apart from other players to not overlap on resource scavenging or forces you to accept that there will be some deaths. You can choose the difficulty so that nothing is permanently lost on death, which I think is the default.

First thing that comes to mind is stardew valley, very chill, you can sink hundreds hour without noticing, best farm sim out there.

About automation and roguelike, I'd suggest plateup, it's a cooking roguelike where you manage a restaurant, but there are some automation elements to it, one of the things I like doing is building fully automated restaurants to beat a run.

Still on roguelike, I sunk a few hours on backpack hero, where backpack management is the most important thing and battles are turn focused instead of action focused, position and items you have will be the difference.

All of these are very fun and hooked me for hours for different reasons, hope you'll enjoy them.

If you haven't played it yet, give a try to Astroneer, a space automation/exploration game with no combat and light survival elements (basically oxygen). Above Snakes is also fairly cool, is an isometric survival game where you build the world piece by piece. I have also had fun playing As We Descend it's a roguelite deck-builder of sorts, but with some turn-based tactics RPG mixed in. Because you like mmos, I'd take a look at Bitcraft.

I recommend Starrupture, a 3D base building game that includes combat.

Yesterday I bought "Ball x Pit" (Vampire Survivors meets Pinball) and "No Man's Sky" (Space Exploration/Survival). And Last week I've played around 12h of one of my favourite survival games "Valheim" that just came out of Early access.

I hope you get well soon. m

Last Caretaker is an exploration/fabrication game where you're the last robot on earth, tasked with launching little human embryos into space. It involves a lot of slow travel (literally, slow boating for 5-10 minutes) between locations with nothing to do but look at the beautifully rendered environment. I've found it strangely compelling.

Wow what a thread. You all rock! Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I have grabbed demos for most of these and will write a follow-up post at some point with my thoughts on some of them.

But for now... The Last Caretaker grabbed me almost instantly. Highly recommend even after only playing the demo.

I've always been a fan of Civ 5 as a way to kill absurd amounts of time. Stardew Valley is pretty good too.

I would also suggest trying something productive, like learning/practicing a language, or learning to paint/draw, or learning/practicing an instrument.