I guess no cuteness / anime excludes the rune factory series so I’d go with the following recommendations:
Stardew Valley is an all time favorite .
Kynseed feels like the fever dream of someone who once heard of these kind of games. But you can decide for yourself if you want to focus on questing, farming, becoming a business mogul or whatever. Time is not really relevant in this game since you character doesn’t have to sleep and you can just get kids or adopt them and continue you game with them if your character gets old.
Graveyard Keeper has a very different spin on the whole genre, it has a dark sense of humor and not knowing what to do, when the bodies pile up can be stressful but I enjoyed it a lot.
Travelers Rest is a game where you build your own tavern. I only played it for a few hours in early access but it felt relaxing and looked nice so far. It’s out for a while now but I haven’t returned yet (stupid sexy Hades II… )
There are also cross overs with other genres like Moonstone Island which combines building your own home and collecting pets and discovering new islands with their help.
Many thanks for the tips! Graveyard Keeper and Traveler’s Rest look interesting. The rest is pretty much exactly what I don’t want in terms of style haha.
Not who you asked, but I’m in the middle of a playthrough right now and yes that’s exactly it. The deck building doesn’t feel grindy like Pokémon though.
I haven’t played since they added a bunch of updates and features but a while back it lacked the deep bonds you can forge in Stardew Valley but they added more content to this part of the game so I guess it became better in this regard. Collecting pets is likely still the main focus.
You start in a base island where you can forage building material and start collecting pets. You then build flying objects (I think you start with a kite?) to leave and discover other islands with different pets and different difficulties (finding out the difficulty is through fuck around and find out afaik).
The building is besides some very basic objects entirely optional but having a barn fit your pets it’s very important. But then you can go out, discover islands and collect pets.
What felt a bit annoying was that there are specific items needed to open dungeons on some of these islands and these items may only appear during a specific season. I was a bit frustrated when I finally found the summer dungeon and it just became fall.
Writing this made me want to replay it since they added a bunch of interesting stuff. But even in it’s unfinished state I would have recommended it.
I second travelers rest. I’m not too far in it despite owning it for years. It’s very chill. I don’t think there’s any real time limits. The only real issue I’ve had with it was accidentally opening my inn and not realizing a crowd has developed with no one to serve them.
Graveyard keeper is pretty good too but I stopped playing after needing extra kinds of materials. It’s been a while but the farming of the resources was just a little too much for the type of experience I was after. I’ll get back to it eventually. I liked the idea of the game a lot.
I had the same experience with Graveyard Keeper but gave it another try a few years later. Either they balanced it more or it bothered me less, but the second time I was able to complete it without ending up hating it :D
Raft was kind of interesting, and chill if you turn off "sharks keep attacking for some reason" mode.
I watched someone play Satisfactory and they had a blast.
Dinkum was fun and not stressful, but the characters have big heads and it's got some typical farming life sim elements that were inspired by harvest moon and animal crossing.
I would also like to recommend Schedule I. It’s not exactly a farming game, but there is farming, and it has a similar chill vibe.
Farming Simulator 25 is surprisingly very fun, but the time it takes to complete work can be draining.
Palia is free, and the actual farming portion is super neat with the way crops interact with each other based on placement, though it might be too cute.
Apico is bee farming, so slightly different. The creator is making a similar game with frogs.
Staxel isn’t exactly anime but might not be your style either, I adored it, but it makes me motion sick to play.
But in those you CAN most definately change the FoV. Usually you need to just try out your optimal in regard to monitor-size and resolution. Staxel had no option for that as far as i remember. When you found your FoV your nausea/motion-sickness should be gone for good. At least this is the culprit in most of the cases and some devs still haven’t learned :-)
FF16 is not an incredible game. But it sure is easy to button mash your way to a win, especially considering how good some of the trinkets are (acquired at start of the game). The music is solid, the writing is interesting enough, and the visuals are great, provided you can run it well.
I did not like it at all. I thought the writing was bad, the cut scenes dragged on for way too long, and the characters and the world were uninteresting
If you liked Skyrim, check out Enderal - it’s a total conversion mod, but in Steam as it’s own game. It’s much more linear than Skyrim - the world still feels open, but it’s much more dense, and it’s scaled more like a traditional RPG, so if you wander off the intended path too far, you’ll get your ass beat by mobs that are much higher level than you.
Side quests are meh, with a notable exception of the Rhalata line, which is kind of like a combo of thieves guild and dark brotherhood. Main quest line is fucking wild.
If you skip the vast majority of side quests, you might have an issue with scaling, since you’ll be missing out on all that xp. If you run into that and don’t want to do the quests, just use the command console to cheat some in.
So this is a very on-the-nose one but Farming Simulator 22 definitely fits your description. I’ve played it a lot despite being a city slick. It’s very calming in a way and satisfying once you have a decent production line going. I don’t love how much the story can get in the way with more whimsical farming sims so this (no story whatsoever) was a very welcome change. Oh and there’s a ton of high quality mods on Steam workshop.
Perhaps Eco. It’s a bit like Minecraft but much more farming, if you choose the farming profession, and no combat whatsoever. Mainly a multiplayer game through public servers but it’s doable solo as well through settings.
Honestly, I’m absolutely happy with my Steam Deck, I think it ticks most of your boxes (it even runs Linux, so it’s essentially a portable Linux computer designed for gaming), so I think it’s the better option that you’re looking gor. To your points specifically:
it’s really geared towards family/party gaming
There are plenty of party games on Steam.
it’s Nintendo, so you get the whole usual games (Mario Kart, Zelda, etc.)
This is the only reason to get a switch, if you want a Nintendo console and Nintendo games this is the way. Everyone who gets a switch understand this is the reason they’re getting it. If this is as strong a point to you that it makes you overlook everything else, then get the switch.
like most consoles, it’s plug and play and can be enjoyed in the living room (I kind of gave up trying to set up a proper gaming experience with my Linux PCs, given that I don’t have the hardware for it)
Steam Deck also has a Dock that you can plug to your TV, you’ll need controllers but even so it should be much cheaper in the long run since games are extremely affordable compared to Nintendo.
the battery life is not great to say the least (2.5 hours takes me back of the Game Gear in early 90s!)
Haven’t seen many benchmarks of the switch to be honest, but that does sound bad, the Deck only gets that bad battery life if you’re playing Cyberpunk or something, for more casual games it can get upwards of 6h. Plus you can get power banks that fast large it while playing, which I assume is also possible on the switch although the switch 1 used to have some issues with power banks.
the screen seems to be pretty bad too (at least it’s a step back from the OLED one of the Switch)
All but the cheapest Deck models now use a 90Hz OLED panel
the joycons are still not using a Hall effect sensor, meaning they might still be prone to drifting
While the Deck’s default sticks are not hall effect, they are easily replaceable and Valve sells hall effect replacements on ifixit, so if you ever get drift in your sticks it’s fixable.
most of the games will not be sold as proper cartridges but as download codes
If you’re going down this rote Steam sells download codes for much cheaper
the whole thing (console, additional gamepads, games) is quite pricey
The Deck is about the same price, but like I said you’ll end up saving in games since you start with your whole Steam Library and can get more games much cheaper.
it’s Nintendo, famous for their anti-everything (anti-homebrew, anti-emulation, anti-piracy)
The Deck is by far the most open console you can get, you can even replace the entire OS if you want to, but StramOS is great and you shouldn’t need to.
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