I should add that it isn’t perfect, it’s early access so expect some weirdness albeit a whole lot less than you’d think.
My favourite, for example: if you’re hiding behind cover make sure it is THICK, else a body part might clip through the model making it able to be shot. Mostly happens when prone making legs and feet stick out.
Have you heard of The Longing? It doesn’t tick all your boxes but it is definitely a long term game that has you make slow, real-time progress while the real time clock of 400 days is ticking down. Not really management sim progress though.
On the more managy side, I’ve had some fun with Factory Idle. Essentially mini-Factorio as an idle game.
I don’t think it’s fair to call it a cult classic just yet since the game is rather recent, but eventually i think Kenshi. It’s a really fun game although very grindy and i’m not even sure which genre it belongs to. Also it’s very moddable to fit even more to your preferences. It’s been quite a while since i played it, but i’ll share a little story: I started the game for the first time and i wanted to make a “waifu squad” consisting of only women so i did. Worked my ass of mining copper and selling it in order to hire more ladies. Eventually my two ladies started to build a base near where i was mining copper and then one day, the “prayer day” (or whatever it was called) came and an army of crusaders came to spread the word of god. The bishop asked my main lady if there was any men in this settlement and of course i answered no there is none. To them it was blasphemy to not have any men in a settlement and the army slaughter my two ladies like it was nothing. Too bad i lost this save since i’ve gotten a new PC because i would’ve wanted to go on with my vengeance story, but maybe i’ll fire it up again.
I don’t know if Gothic 1 and 2 qualify as true cult classics or not, but clunky controls and interface aside, these are two of the best games I have played in my life. Gothic 2 especially. The games offer an atmosphere like nothing I’ve ever played. The soundtrack, themes, and overall color pallete provide this rich and stirring ambience that always manages to make me feel as though I’m exploring an ancient pine forest on a dark, rainy day. See for yourself.
You can feel the spirit of the entire franchise contained within the first two minutes of that audio track, perfectly encapsulated. It was an entire world apart and years ahead of its time. If it resonates with you, then these games are absolutely worth the initial difficulty of figuring out those ridiculous keyboard controls. But if you’re really struggling with them, just read up on the Gothic 1 storyline and then skip straight to Gothic 2. It picks up right where the first leaves off. You won’t miss a tremendous amount, and the controls and gameplay are infinitely improved. However, sticking G1 out long enough to figure out what you’re doing will make G2 far more rewarding when you reunite with various characters and revisit previously explored areas.
A studio is remaking Gothic 1, but everything I’ve seen of it so far is about as faithful to Gothic 1 as The Dark Tower movie was to the books. They’ve massacred it. So stick with the originals.
To latch on to this: the first Elex, a game by the same studio as the Gothic series, is, despite the average reception by critics, THE definition of a flawed masterpiece! So many things to criticize (too difficult early in the game, bad cut scenes, flawed combat) but the main focus of the game, the open world filled with tons of monster and people to interact with, is just great! I loved how exploration is encouraged and rewarded, how there are meaningful desicions and characters that can be killed off. The world is huge and all though the general atmosphere is post apocalyptic, the developer somehow managed to fit a middle age type fraction and a science fiction type (Clerics) fraction in to the game. Also smaller groups you can’t join.
Elex has a very special place in my gamer heart and all though I can’t flat out recommend it to everyone I would say if you have a soft spot for open world games that do not play like the average Ubi game and don’t hold your hand the whole time, I say: check it out, it’s pretty cheap in most places!
The Age of Decadence is CRPG set in a post-apocalypse ish, in which an analogue to the Roman Empire ruled most of the world until the collapse of civilisation, now it’s mostly city states struggling to survive and reclaim the old magitek of the empire.
Underrail: Life on earth’s surface has been made inhospitable ages ago, and the remains of humanity now live in the metro system called underrail and the caverns around it.
Both are isometric, turn based games that focus on combat and exploration. And they are hard. Builds are incredibly important, almost min maxing but they have a wide range of viable builds, especially the first one where you can play the entire game without fighting a single battle, all through alternative solutions and skill checks.
Have you played Colony Ship, by the same devs as Age of Decadence? I’ve been keeping an eye on it for a while and looks to be real close to its 1.0 release, but I’ve not heard or read a lot about it.
Love the game, but playing a few times a week isn’t enough investment for me to build up the necessary skill to complete it. Got to a point now where I literally spend the entire gaming session refreshing my fingers from last week, and decided to take a break until I can commit enough time to it. Maybe if I lose my kids or legs or go to prison or something.
Silksong was great, but it really has an issue with approachability.
Most of the quality of life upgrades come after challenges that prove you don’t need them. I didn’t really feel at home with what the game was asking of me until I fought the cogwork dancers. I totally understand why people bounce off the game when they encounter Last Judge.
$10 clip + a used xbox controller + your phone and you have a gyro capable (your phone) mobile gaming system with probably the best gamepad ever.
I don’t think this takes the place of a gadget like the Brick Hammer but I do HEAVILY recommend going this route first as you likely already have an adequate phone and xbox controllers are cheap and plentiful on the used market (and their only real achilles heel is they don’t have gyro… which your phone solves).
notethis clip uses the model 1914 xbox controller to be precise, xbox controller names are so stupid… but also this clip is $10, who cares, fold some post-it notes/cardstock up a bunch and jam em in there and you can make a different controller work if it is a similar shape and size
Agreed but battery life is clutch with mobile devices. Dead phone batteries don’t facilitate travel. Or waiting for your car to get fixed and having this in the glove box … I mean your argument is basically against all retro handheld devices.
Yeah it depends on how much you’d use it I guess. I remember playing some old titles on a GBA emulator app back during highschool breaks, but it kinda got old quickly. Would be pointless to buy something specifically for it unless you’re really into it, but if so something like this that’s well integrated would be pretty neat to have.
I can get immersed in incredibly simple games, like Baba Is You. I have simple rules to follow and a world that conforms to those rules. I can tune out reality and immerse fully in the game.
The main thing is that I don’t need hi-res realistic 120 fps graphics for this to work, I don’t know if this is because the way my brain is wired or because I was raised in the 8 bit era and imagination was a significant part of that immersion.
All of my systems are Linux, launching Windows games on Linux is not trivial, Steam takes away almost all of that complication. It also provides an excellent ten foot interface for me to use on my TV and buy/install/launch games from my couch without any hassle. Speaking of controller usage, Steam provides excellent support to remap controllers even if a game doesn’t support it, and provide amazing features at that (for example multiple layers, gyroscopic mouse)
Games getting updated automatically is a great feature, I still remember having to download patches and applying them one by one after a fresh install. Similarly Steam also provides a workshop that allows you to install mods and keep them synced across different systems automatically.
Finally, the convenience of cloud saves for someone with multiple systems or who uninstalls a game and reinstalls it later is not easy to achieve without a launcher (I still have a saves folder backed up somewhere from before).
Besides all of that Achievement and other social features are important for some people. And for some games being able to easily play online with friends is amazing (if you’re not old enough to know what GameSpy is you don’t know what it was back then), although I don’t play too many online games so this one is not that important for me, but when I need that feature it is very handy.
In short there are many reasons, but if you’re playing old single-player games with mouse+keyboard on only one windows PC, then none of my reasons apply to you. Still I would argue that buying games on steam is easier than pirating them, so there’s the convenience factor still (e.g. at a friend’s house and they mention a game, open my phone, and in 5 min with a very intuitive flow I have the game downloading on my home PC so when I come back it’s ready to play).
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