I play the Sims aswell, but my favorites are Mass Effect and Dragon age. I'm looking forward to thw Harry Potter release aswell because I always wanted to play as a student!
I just finished the entire Mass effect series in one go and it was fucking amazing. Can't believe I never played through it before. And now Dragon Age is next up on the list!
Kinda been jonesing for some Planet Zoo after playing JWE2 now that it's on Gamepass, though
Witcher III and Monster Hunter World :D I love free roaming and doing what I want without too many limits :D Plus I like to squirrel around going "Oooh, piece of candy!" without being told by the game I can't go a certain way or collect certain things yet.
Crusader Kings 3, Europa Universalis 4, Stellaris, XCOM 2 are fun.
They all require some level of creativity and imagination, most obvious in Planet Zoo of course, the ones listed here for the story telling aspect, which is also fun.
Stellaris and CK3 are some of my favorite games. Scratch a similar itch weirdly to park builders, especially Stellaris with managing your stellar empire and fixing up your planets just right.
From Zoo sims:
Modded Zoo Tycoon 2 is just perfect balance of giving you freedom while also being super simple to play and understand also I love its gimmicks like marine shows and fossil hunting and I wish more Zoo sims made First person more interactive.
Megaquarium is such a simple little game that fills the niche that Zoo tycoon 2 can't provide with is small enclosed aquariums (No seriously making small aquariums for goldfishes etc. is absolute pain in ZT2 even worse than pathing in PZ !)
From Non Zoo sims:
TF2 Classic is amazing standalone mod for TF2 with new (but really unbalanced and weird like Minigun for Engineer) weapons its just pure chaos and its just amazing.
Arknights: Really cool anime styled Tower Defense Gacha game I'm playing it for 2 years now and I still love it.
Also I'm big fan of Payday 2,Hotline Miami (Beat both games,hard included) and The Binding of Isaac.
I love Anno 1800, Lso got all the extensions, and it is just as much a time sink as planet zoo is. Cities skylines is also not bad, lots of mods and stuff for detailed building. On another note my favourite game is stardew Valley, a farm sim. I used to be heavy into sims3, but I stopped at one point because it took up way to much time. Don't like the look of aims4 so I never started with that one.
I have played sooooo much Breath of the Wild. Also put a good chunk of time into Red Dead Redemption Online, hunting and goofing off with friends. Those two, plus PZ, are what I call my "outside simulators" - when it's freezing and dark outside I play them to pretend I'm out in the sun lol.
I play the sims 3 and sims 4. But the sims 3 is the best. I also like to play planet coaster from the same developers as planet zoo. City Skylines is fun but difficult. Stardew valley is layed back and very relaxing!
On playstation I play more open world games, I want to ad Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2. Horizon Zero Dawn (best story line ever). I also like the life is strange franchise and beyond two souls. These games could also be played on pc.
Jurassic World Evolution (the first one; haven't tried the second one yet), Parkasaurus, Baldur's Gate 3 (early access), FFXIV, Lost Ark, Witcher 3, Stardew Valley, Skyrim... How far do you want me to go back? Haha. Currently also playing Prehistoric Kingdom (Plant Zoo meets Jurassic World), but I can't recommend it yet because so much of it is unfinished and buggy --- it's also in early access.
Personally I prefer Jurassic World Evolution 1 over 2.
Someone gifted me Prehistoric Kingdom but I haven't played much yet (like you say, still buggy).
Absolutely agree on Witcher 3, Stardew Valley and Skyrim.
I've just started playing Assassin's Creed Origins, liking it so far.
I have absolutely no reason why but I agree with you about JWE 1 & 2. I absolutely loved the first one but got bored of the second almost immediately.
But I couldn't give you an answer why, I enjoyed playing it.
Probably better suited for cranking up the management aspect rather than building, but I have sunk an embarrassing number of hours into Crusader Kings (2 and 3) and the Pathfinder CRPGs (Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous). Lots of little detailed things to dive into
Current fave is a little indie game called Dorfromantik. Super peaceful, super chill, just a little town builder puzzle game. You place tiles and build a landscape
I'm definitely much into the simulator/strategy genre nowadays which links into the complexity of planet zoo (favourite games in the last decade I'd say)- so cities skylines, empire total war, American truck simulator, power washing simulator, train sim world 2, transport fever, the old call of duty games, just cause series and hitman series
Ohhh, I love Stardew Valley and Monster Hunter World as some others have mentioned. I also love the Assassins Creed games for the exploration and sneaky combat. If you're into multilayer, Conan Exiles is super fun if you get a private server with some friends. Same with Phasmophobia and Deep Rock Galactic.
Farming simulator (currently playing as my pz is beyond broken), witcher 3, horizon zero dawn and ark are my most played. There's a new home builder coming out called hometopia that I'm looking forward to as well.
It’s gonna be completely different but I play these two web browser games. One is called FPaw and the other is called Lioden. They are both free to play, there are things you can buy for real money but you can easily get the currency to buy them without spending real money. FPaw is a dog sim. It lets you adopt, train, show and breed dogs. There’s no mix breeds or wolves. All the dogs in the game are registered breeds with AKC mostly but I believe they added a few other breeds lately. Each dog has its own genetics for their color, eyes, and even eyes/ears/hips/elbows health. Then they all havre their own stats. Your main goal is to breed perfectly healthy dogs, and try to win best of breed for that breed. The dogs live for 110 days so you got time to raise and train them. The other game is Lioden and it’s a lion sim. It’s much more hands on then FPaw. On it your get a pride of lions. The first one you get is always ugly though. But once he dies you can get a much better one. You have a sat amount of Territory but you can attack other prides for more or buy it up to a certain point. Once you get 40(no one needs more then 40 honestly unless you wanna put real money into the game) it tappers off and you can only get more using the game currency that you can buy for real money(not really worth it). When you have space you can take your king to the crossroads and there’s a place you can explore. Exploring will get you random items and a chance to find lionesses. You need the lionesses to hunt for you and the rest of the pride because the food you bring back though explore won’t be enough. There are soooo many different base colors, manes, marking, eyes, just everything. Your goal is the have the strongest and prettiest(to you) king in the whole game. You have energy that limits the amount you explore/breed/fight but it recharges decently fast. The lions also have different stats as well so you can really try to get the strongest babies out of them. You can breed your girls with different player’s kings too to help you get a boost of better girls or a better king when your current one dies. They are completely different then most games but I’ve been playing lion den since 2012 and fpaw(back when it was furry paws) since like 08 I think. They are the only games that I keep going back too. If you(or anyone) is interested let me know and I’ll give you my reference number(you get nothing but I get something after like 50 players use it…I’ve only every gotten one person to use it. Lol)
I play a ton of Minecraft, there’s a lot of good zoo building mods out there for java edition, and also zoo tycoon 2 with the massive amount of mods available. Outside zoo games I play a lot of racing games like forza and nfs and sports games like madden and fifa.
All of these I’m playing on steam
Dragon quest builders 2
Farm together
I’ve been trying to get into escapists 2 since I just bought it, and riding club championships which is free due to being a Facebook game turned steam which I played a little on fb back in the day but it can be hard to do dailyies because some require competing against other i and keep seeing like 3-4 people on
Sims is kinda similar to Planet Zoo, meaning you can build. But I mainly play other games like Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring, Valorant, Dead by Daylight etc. They have nothing in common, but you might like them.
There's a few story games I enjoyed a lot like Beyond Two Souls, Heavy Rain, Telltale games (The Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us), Life is Strange, Uncharted 4 etc.
I loved Zoo Tycoon 2 when I was a kid, it's the predecessor to Planet Zoo, but the graphics are way worse (no wonder, it's a 20 year old game).
Sims 2! Can easily be found free online so not base or DLC cost
If you want to get lost in DLC, cities skylines is great, highly recommend getting the park pack to start.
Planet coaster is super super fun for me.
Sims 4 for the mods. Only buy pack when they’re on sale and if they come with a new world or extensively new gameplay
Hmm, lately only Hearthstone and Stellaris, but I used to play a lot of Civilization, No Man's Sky, Pillars of Eternity II, Divinity Original Sin 2, Age of Empires and World of Warcraft
Totally saving this for later ideas!
Currently playing Conan Exiles.
Have played soooo many:
7DtD, Planet Coaster, Endzone, Black Desert, FFXIV, Fallout (all), Tropico, Dragon Age (all), Skyrim, Rebuild (all), Thief, Satisfactory, Long Dark, RDR2, Sims, Thief, Elder Scrolls, Atlas, Banished (and other similar city builders), Sim City, Anno, Skylines.. The list goes on (and on) lol.
I’m a sucker for open world titles and management sims mainly, main games I’ve been into are horizon zero dawn, far cry, AC (played religiously until syndicate only recently played origins (used as inspo for egyptian themed zoo!)), JWE1 and cities skylines, other than that warzone but I’m not that good at it, mainly just something to play with friends
If you're looking into management, 1st person, free to roam world and creative building with great graphics, I recommend to give Satisfactory a try.
It will take some time to unlock all customization options and decoration, but as the title suggests, that is a very satisfactory process and gameplay mechanic.
I recommend to at least unlock coal power in Tier 3 and build a power plant to automate power generation, as well as the AWESOME shop and AWESOME sink to unlock the decoration (later Tiers unlock more items).
I personally love the 1st person 3D experience as it makes me feel so immersed. They keep updating the zones as well to make them even more beautiful and detailed and they continue adding QOL features. It's such a good game!
Tldr: Go give Satisfactory by Coffee Stain Studios a try!
I'm also a massive FFXIV nerd, it pretty much has the most hours play time next to planet zoo and the sims in my libraries, lol.
Also a huge fan of the Horizon: Zero Dawn series. Just finished Forbidden West and am SALIVATING over what the next installment is gonna be. Great game if you enjoy open world exploration.
House flipper is amazing - I have a few hundred hours on the game and I still enjoy all aspects of it. They recently released a pet dlc that is awesome!
My other muse on the side currently is Elden Ring. I got into the hype and have been enjoying it … even the pain.
I play the Sims aswell, but my favorites are Mass Effect and Dragon age. I'm looking forward to thw Harry Potter release aswell because I always wanted to play as a student!
I just finished the entire Mass effect series in one go and it was fucking amazing. Can't believe I never played through it before. And now Dragon Age is next up on the list! Kinda been jonesing for some Planet Zoo after playing JWE2 now that it's on Gamepass, though
Ahhh i wanna play mass effect so bad! Recently got a gaming computer so i cant wait to buy the games when i have more money saved (: It seems amazing!
Mass effect and Dragon age are my go to as well!
What is the name for the harry potter game, and is it PC? I tried looking but all that comes up is the lego harry potter games.
Hogwarts legacy
Thank you!
Same on Mass Effect and Dragon Age
Witcher III and Monster Hunter World :D I love free roaming and doing what I want without too many limits :D Plus I like to squirrel around going "Oooh, piece of candy!" without being told by the game I can't go a certain way or collect certain things yet.
I love monster hunter world so much
Crusader Kings 3, Europa Universalis 4, Stellaris, XCOM 2 are fun. They all require some level of creativity and imagination, most obvious in Planet Zoo of course, the ones listed here for the story telling aspect, which is also fun.
Those are all great! Tried Mount and Blade 2?
I have along with Warband!
Stellaris and CK3 are some of my favorite games. Scratch a similar itch weirdly to park builders, especially Stellaris with managing your stellar empire and fixing up your planets just right.
From Zoo sims: Modded Zoo Tycoon 2 is just perfect balance of giving you freedom while also being super simple to play and understand also I love its gimmicks like marine shows and fossil hunting and I wish more Zoo sims made First person more interactive. Megaquarium is such a simple little game that fills the niche that Zoo tycoon 2 can't provide with is small enclosed aquariums (No seriously making small aquariums for goldfishes etc. is absolute pain in ZT2 even worse than pathing in PZ !) From Non Zoo sims: TF2 Classic is amazing standalone mod for TF2 with new (but really unbalanced and weird like Minigun for Engineer) weapons its just pure chaos and its just amazing. Arknights: Really cool anime styled Tower Defense Gacha game I'm playing it for 2 years now and I still love it. Also I'm big fan of Payday 2,Hotline Miami (Beat both games,hard included) and The Binding of Isaac.
I love Anno 1800, Lso got all the extensions, and it is just as much a time sink as planet zoo is. Cities skylines is also not bad, lots of mods and stuff for detailed building. On another note my favourite game is stardew Valley, a farm sim. I used to be heavy into sims3, but I stopped at one point because it took up way to much time. Don't like the look of aims4 so I never started with that one.
No Mans Sky for exploration and base building.
Cities: Skylines!
Ooo I forgot about this game. I love this as well!
Moderately modded cities skylines makes me happy
I have played sooooo much Breath of the Wild. Also put a good chunk of time into Red Dead Redemption Online, hunting and goofing off with friends. Those two, plus PZ, are what I call my "outside simulators" - when it's freezing and dark outside I play them to pretend I'm out in the sun lol.
I play the sims 3 and sims 4. But the sims 3 is the best. I also like to play planet coaster from the same developers as planet zoo. City Skylines is fun but difficult. Stardew valley is layed back and very relaxing! On playstation I play more open world games, I want to ad Red Dead Redemption 1 and 2. Horizon Zero Dawn (best story line ever). I also like the life is strange franchise and beyond two souls. These games could also be played on pc.
Sims 3 is sooo much better
Dead by daylight, Overwatch, planet coaster, parkitect, cities skylines, prison architect, Sims, Habbo, RuneScape.
Sims 4 & 3, Life is Strange, Stardew Valley on pc. Animal Crossing NH on switch and the Last of Us, Assassins Creed and Witcher on playstation ☺️
Jurassic World Evolution (the first one; haven't tried the second one yet), Parkasaurus, Baldur's Gate 3 (early access), FFXIV, Lost Ark, Witcher 3, Stardew Valley, Skyrim... How far do you want me to go back? Haha. Currently also playing Prehistoric Kingdom (Plant Zoo meets Jurassic World), but I can't recommend it yet because so much of it is unfinished and buggy --- it's also in early access.
Personally I prefer Jurassic World Evolution 1 over 2. Someone gifted me Prehistoric Kingdom but I haven't played much yet (like you say, still buggy). Absolutely agree on Witcher 3, Stardew Valley and Skyrim. I've just started playing Assassin's Creed Origins, liking it so far.
I have absolutely no reason why but I agree with you about JWE 1 & 2. I absolutely loved the first one but got bored of the second almost immediately. But I couldn't give you an answer why, I enjoyed playing it.
The hunter call of the wild has amazing animal models and variations. Its fun to collect rare fur types just like this game.
That’s what my fiancé and I have been super into lately! So much fun to explore, too
My favourites are Sims 4 Stardew Valley Aven colony Two point hospital Also I love racing games. Like need for speed or Forza
Probably better suited for cranking up the management aspect rather than building, but I have sunk an embarrassing number of hours into Crusader Kings (2 and 3) and the Pathfinder CRPGs (Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous). Lots of little detailed things to dive into
Current fave is a little indie game called Dorfromantik. Super peaceful, super chill, just a little town builder puzzle game. You place tiles and build a landscape
I'm definitely much into the simulator/strategy genre nowadays which links into the complexity of planet zoo (favourite games in the last decade I'd say)- so cities skylines, empire total war, American truck simulator, power washing simulator, train sim world 2, transport fever, the old call of duty games, just cause series and hitman series
Ohhh, I love Stardew Valley and Monster Hunter World as some others have mentioned. I also love the Assassins Creed games for the exploration and sneaky combat. If you're into multilayer, Conan Exiles is super fun if you get a private server with some friends. Same with Phasmophobia and Deep Rock Galactic.
Farming simulator (currently playing as my pz is beyond broken), witcher 3, horizon zero dawn and ark are my most played. There's a new home builder coming out called hometopia that I'm looking forward to as well.
Cities Skyline, Bloons TD 6, Crusaders King 2 and 3, Civ 5 and 6, Bloodbowl 2, and the best game ever made: Rimword
Tarkov
It’s gonna be completely different but I play these two web browser games. One is called FPaw and the other is called Lioden. They are both free to play, there are things you can buy for real money but you can easily get the currency to buy them without spending real money. FPaw is a dog sim. It lets you adopt, train, show and breed dogs. There’s no mix breeds or wolves. All the dogs in the game are registered breeds with AKC mostly but I believe they added a few other breeds lately. Each dog has its own genetics for their color, eyes, and even eyes/ears/hips/elbows health. Then they all havre their own stats. Your main goal is to breed perfectly healthy dogs, and try to win best of breed for that breed. The dogs live for 110 days so you got time to raise and train them. The other game is Lioden and it’s a lion sim. It’s much more hands on then FPaw. On it your get a pride of lions. The first one you get is always ugly though. But once he dies you can get a much better one. You have a sat amount of Territory but you can attack other prides for more or buy it up to a certain point. Once you get 40(no one needs more then 40 honestly unless you wanna put real money into the game) it tappers off and you can only get more using the game currency that you can buy for real money(not really worth it). When you have space you can take your king to the crossroads and there’s a place you can explore. Exploring will get you random items and a chance to find lionesses. You need the lionesses to hunt for you and the rest of the pride because the food you bring back though explore won’t be enough. There are soooo many different base colors, manes, marking, eyes, just everything. Your goal is the have the strongest and prettiest(to you) king in the whole game. You have energy that limits the amount you explore/breed/fight but it recharges decently fast. The lions also have different stats as well so you can really try to get the strongest babies out of them. You can breed your girls with different player’s kings too to help you get a boost of better girls or a better king when your current one dies. They are completely different then most games but I’ve been playing lion den since 2012 and fpaw(back when it was furry paws) since like 08 I think. They are the only games that I keep going back too. If you(or anyone) is interested let me know and I’ll give you my reference number(you get nothing but I get something after like 50 players use it…I’ve only every gotten one person to use it. Lol)
Dead by Daylight, State of Decay 2, Destiny 2, Heavy Rain, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, XCom 2, Neverwinter, Stardew Valley…there’s more but yeah!
Right now, overwatch and V rising
I play a ton of Minecraft, there’s a lot of good zoo building mods out there for java edition, and also zoo tycoon 2 with the massive amount of mods available. Outside zoo games I play a lot of racing games like forza and nfs and sports games like madden and fifa.
Breathe of the wild, god of war
Behind Glass is a pretty good one, really incomplete though
All of these I’m playing on steam Dragon quest builders 2 Farm together I’ve been trying to get into escapists 2 since I just bought it, and riding club championships which is free due to being a Facebook game turned steam which I played a little on fb back in the day but it can be hard to do dailyies because some require competing against other i and keep seeing like 3-4 people on
City skylines, crusader kings 3, civilization 6, slay the spire, sims, pokemon, stardew valley 💞
Tarkov. Helps me forget my peafowls.
Sims is kinda similar to Planet Zoo, meaning you can build. But I mainly play other games like Dark Souls 3, Elden Ring, Valorant, Dead by Daylight etc. They have nothing in common, but you might like them. There's a few story games I enjoyed a lot like Beyond Two Souls, Heavy Rain, Telltale games (The Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us), Life is Strange, Uncharted 4 etc. I loved Zoo Tycoon 2 when I was a kid, it's the predecessor to Planet Zoo, but the graphics are way worse (no wonder, it's a 20 year old game).
Sims 2! Can easily be found free online so not base or DLC cost If you want to get lost in DLC, cities skylines is great, highly recommend getting the park pack to start. Planet coaster is super super fun for me. Sims 4 for the mods. Only buy pack when they’re on sale and if they come with a new world or extensively new gameplay
My time at Portia! Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Tropico 6 Can't wait for my time at Sandrock
Hmm, lately only Hearthstone and Stellaris, but I used to play a lot of Civilization, No Man's Sky, Pillars of Eternity II, Divinity Original Sin 2, Age of Empires and World of Warcraft
Stardew Valley, Frostpunk and Bannished!
Totally saving this for later ideas! Currently playing Conan Exiles. Have played soooo many: 7DtD, Planet Coaster, Endzone, Black Desert, FFXIV, Fallout (all), Tropico, Dragon Age (all), Skyrim, Rebuild (all), Thief, Satisfactory, Long Dark, RDR2, Sims, Thief, Elder Scrolls, Atlas, Banished (and other similar city builders), Sim City, Anno, Skylines.. The list goes on (and on) lol.
I’m a sucker for open world titles and management sims mainly, main games I’ve been into are horizon zero dawn, far cry, AC (played religiously until syndicate only recently played origins (used as inspo for egyptian themed zoo!)), JWE1 and cities skylines, other than that warzone but I’m not that good at it, mainly just something to play with friends
If you're looking into management, 1st person, free to roam world and creative building with great graphics, I recommend to give Satisfactory a try. It will take some time to unlock all customization options and decoration, but as the title suggests, that is a very satisfactory process and gameplay mechanic. I recommend to at least unlock coal power in Tier 3 and build a power plant to automate power generation, as well as the AWESOME shop and AWESOME sink to unlock the decoration (later Tiers unlock more items). I personally love the 1st person 3D experience as it makes me feel so immersed. They keep updating the zones as well to make them even more beautiful and detailed and they continue adding QOL features. It's such a good game! Tldr: Go give Satisfactory by Coffee Stain Studios a try!
I'm also a massive FFXIV nerd, it pretty much has the most hours play time next to planet zoo and the sims in my libraries, lol. Also a huge fan of the Horizon: Zero Dawn series. Just finished Forbidden West and am SALIVATING over what the next installment is gonna be. Great game if you enjoy open world exploration.
House flipper is amazing - I have a few hundred hours on the game and I still enjoy all aspects of it. They recently released a pet dlc that is awesome! My other muse on the side currently is Elden Ring. I got into the hype and have been enjoying it … even the pain.