That’s a tough question. There’s a handful of 3D space combat games like Everspace, Starlink, or Manticore: Galaxy on Fire. There’s also bullet hell games like Galacide and AstroWings: Space War. But none of those are quite like the more open top down games above. Your best bet to find something might be to ask on a larger Nintendo forum. I hope you find something!
Star Valor does look great. If you’re on Mac or Linux you can play Endless Sky or Naev, which are both free. Or outside Steam try Starsector, which might be the best 2D space game on the market, or The Ur-Quan Masters; a continuation of Star Control 2 and also free.
I almost included Lingo on my list because I’m playing it right now and loving it. But I’m only 6 hours in so I didn’t want to make presumptions about anything I’ve not experienced in it yet. What I’ve played though has been fantastic. I like it quite a bit more than The Witness.
I’ve seen Tametsi, Hexcells, and Bombe continually recommended online as hidden gems but I’ve put off buying any because I’m not much of a Minesweeper fan. I should really give them a try sometime though, since I think the luck aspect is my least favorite part of Minesweeper. Thanks for sharing!
The Ascent is a longer game and leans harder into RPG elements than Ruiner ever does. For me, Ruiner ran better and like @Catastrophic235 says, the music is incredible. Blows The Ascent’s soundtrack out of the water. Ruiner might have slightly tighter controls too, but I’d have to replay to confirm since I played it with a mouse/keyboard while I played The Ascent with a controller.
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.
To be honest I only just stumbled across it when writing up my original response. Made a quick check on steampeek.hu to see if there was any game I didn’t know about or was forgetting and it popped up.
Oh wow, I missed it early on! The Eternal Cylinder is good, but some occasionally clunky gameplay alongside the very unique alien designs might turn some people away. It crashed twice on me and once you figure out all the systems of play it can feel simple (although there’s a lot of complexity under the hood), so I could see some people giving up on it due to frustration or boredom - especially if the aliens or story don’t hook them.
I loved the environments and alien concept (plus the fun stress of the cylinders approaching) which kept me hooked. Plus it’s much more mechanically involved than Spore was. Spent about 13 hours with the game and left satisfied. If I had to numerically rate it, it’s maybe around 8/10?
Just in case you weren’t aware, The Oregon Trail is on Steam as a remake now, but I haven’t read much about it. I like the colorful style they chose for it though. There’s also the still unreleased Journey Express which looks very similar. Anyway, here’s some other stuff:
Organ Trail is the closest to Oregon Trail I think you can get on Steam. Players control a group in the zombie apocalypse instead of journeying to the western frontier.
Death Road to Canada captures the same sort of travel with small events interspersed that Oregon Trail had, but plays quite a bit differently…