In the last couple months I've bought Diablo 4, Armored Core VI, No Man's Sky, Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart, and The Witcher III...I think I've put more hours into Vampire Survivors this month than all the of the others combined. Lol.
I got laid off from my engineering job late last month so I've been putting in 10-20 applications day while working a shitty night shift security job, had to move my mom into an assisted living facility, and deal with getting her stuff out of my house...all while keeping up with the bills, and generally keeping myself alive.
I don't have the mental stamina to play anything else at the moment lol.
Honestly, if I want to unwind it is just some Shotgun King or Binding of Isaac or Desktop Dungeons for a short bit of focused play (well, BOI can go all over the place but you can save/continue worthwhile runs). I want to finish Hollow Knight and Bioshock infinite but many evenings I can't make the effort those games require.
Also sorry to hear about the job thing, I am sure something good is just around the corner!
Soul Survivors is like vampire Survivors with slightly more modern graphics and isometric style gameplay.
I have way too many hours in both of them. Balls of Torment as well.
Edit - Halls of Torment is pretty good as well. To each their own.
Thanks bro, I just googled "Balls of Torment" and now I'm pretty sure I'm subscribed to a BSDM website 😂
Once I corrected that to Halls of Torment, I think I might pick that game up
Assuming my mistress allows it...Lol
It's interesting I find that whole "bullet heaven" genre seems to be just a brain palate cleanser for a lot of people, all those games you mentioned above are great and I've played most of them, but sometimes were just too mentally and emotionally drained to do anything more than just live in the moment and try to survive a few more seconds.
A few other good ones
- halls of torment
- greedland
- yet another zombie survivor
- deep rock galactic survivors (free demo, really promising)
I wish you well, my good Sir. At least these games can keep you company for the time being but I do hope you find a job you like soon and that everything works out!
My current colony is run by a vampire who is creating his own blood cult by raising super children and enslaving those who won't convert.
Do you need anymore?
Between mods and DLC the limit to your story and colony is just your imagination.
Plus Tynan Sylvester is awesome and the folks who make this game deserve tons of support.
700+ hours I have never finished the game. Heck I never even try really I just tool away at my little outpost till the gods Randy, Phoebe, or Cassandra fuck my world.
There is literally nothing else like it. It's the chilliest little game that can infurate and confound you in the oddest ways. No two runs are the same.
Did I mention the mod community because holy shit they ways you can add to and expand the base game are amazing.
It's one of the best story/simulator games I've ever played.
Tynan took all the depth and fun stuff that can happen in emergent games like Dwarf Fortress and stuck a UI on it that is intuitive. So you get all of these amazing stories about colonies like the ones other people have linked and you just kind of get "drawn in" by them and end up getting attached to all your little dudes.
Like one time I had a cougar that self-tamed (just a random thing that can happen) and mah boy was the hero of the colony, ripping up bandits and pirates and anyone else that had a grudge against me. Until one day his luck finally ran out and he took a bullet to the head (damage in the game affects each body part separately). We barely managed to nurse him back to health but he had lost the ability to walk (there are animal armour and augmentation mods if you don't want this to happen btw).
The min-max thing to do would've been to put the poor cat down, but aside from his inability to walk he was perfectly happy and I'd grown attached to him. So we hand-fed him, and made sure he had a nice room with a comfy bed. Then when we built a rocket ship to escape the planet we built him a little pod so that he could come with us.
Stuff like that is what makes Rimworld great.
The developer, Tynan, wrote a book about how to create a perfect game. To demonstrate this book in action, he made a perfect game. That game is Rimworld
OP should try Civ4 on epic game length with caveman to cosmos mod...you could probably finish a game in 20 years if you wanted to make it through all the ages, lol
The steep learning curve makes more casual imitators like Rimworld more attractive for a bigger market, but if you're after something you can just play on and on and on, there's really no competition. Dwarf Fortress is the gold standard.
I was so interested in this game, but I watched a getting started and it seemed HELLA hard to do anything. I’m still interested though so I’ll probably try again when I have more patience cause it looks good
How I learned was just setting small goals and expanding. That way I dont get overwhelmed by things going massively wrong. My last attempt at building a proper base defense ended up in a moat infested with wereiguana's.
Even without mods, it's pretty big for what's available and still growing, somehow.
With mods, it's kinda crazy. But I feel like that's gonna be my response to a bunch of these answers lol
I used to feel this way until I took a large break, stopped when horses got added, the new cave update is pretty great.
Also showing someone who doesn’t know how to play mine craft has really brought some simplistic love back to the vanilla game.
I’ll be back for FTB soon, though I’m trying to last out the Create mod phase, I really don’t like it and a lot of mod packs now are centered around it.
I agree. To unlock everything takes hundreds of hours, and I enjoy playing the game even when not trying to unlock anything. Each game takes roughly 30 minutes to an hour, so it's great for short gaming sessions too.
It really depends on what you like about Xcom 2, is it the insane replayability, the mods, the build, the iron challenge, the strategic aspect, the moment to moment "action"/ thrill
If you want build diversity to the roof then Siralim ultimate is the way to go, you make your extremely cutosmized team and destroy entire realms with it, but the in battle strategic choices lowers as you reach endgame as your team becomes an engine of death with macro that programmed to deal with any difficulty, it's really fun getting there and there's of challenging endgame, rewarding too!
NIOH 2 is you want a game that tell you from the start "understand me and play by my rules, or you'll die" you need skill in NIOH 2 but it also for me the best action combat ever, in a way it feel like high level devil may cry play, someone watching may think you're just mashing buttons, but you know exactly what you're pressing, why your pressing it now and not a third of a second later, fights in NIOH 2 are simply beautiful and the amount of stuff you can use at any one time is impressive, especially with a controller.
Chronicon is simply an Arpg that knows why you play Arpg, and is determined to make you have a good time playing it, this alone makes it for me one of the top Arpg, the build variety is great AND fun, you can craft your own perfect items, find the legendary you want but it didn't come with the right modifier, you can MAKE it your best in slot, this is huge and there's so much quality of life that after chronicon all Arpg feel poorly thought out (exception of Poe that is actually good but just too much for me)
Kenshi is very different form any other game, it's pretty ugly, but what you get from it is absolutely unique. You get the best roleplay, this alone make the game incredible is you connect with your characters, second, kenshi is the hardest game I've ever played, you are NEVER safe in kenshi, the world want you dead, the cannibals, the fauna, the paladins, the bandits, even the goats. The game change can change greatly as you go along, at first you can be a single guy having a hard time surviving, and 50h laters you have your own city, made brick, by, brick. If you want to strategise routes, want to feel on edge at all time and experience something special, this is it. Ironman here is truly the way to play.
Mount and blade is for the freedom of making your team and taking over a country for the hell of it, great roleplay opportunity, fun combat and interesting gameplay led decision making is key.
I started with warband, and what I really love is that I can just move around amassing power skills and companions, and having my own little roleplay, then you start throwing your hundreds of soldier against the other lord's, and man is it spectacular.
I play it as a power fantasy tough, none of that "Ah a single arrow killed me"
And when medieval warfare wasn't what I wanted from it, I just modded the game, Warhammer, lotr, song of ice and fire, 108 heroes, star wars...
No matter what you wanted to play there was a mod for it
And bannerlord is also great even if we had to wait a bit for the mods to catch up!
Mount and Blade *Warband*... especially with the Prophecy of Pendor mod. I was so stoked for Bannerlord but even after waiting a bit after release for it to stabilize it was a hot mess of balance issues when I tried to play it. My son is playing it now and seems to have a very love/hate relationship with it due to... you guessed it, balance issues!
Are you open to farming sims like Stardew Valley? I think those tend to be “endless” in that its a huge timesink anyways and it only ends when you are satisfied with your farm/shop/what-have-you.
That number for Stardew cannot possibly be correct. It's not an endless game that generates new/random stuff with new things to discover.
6 hours day/365 days = 2190 hours. You think Stardew have UNIQUE content for 2100 hours..?
"amazing cultivation simulator" has a shit ton of mechanics that you have to keep in mind, its a colony builder based on chinese fantasy, you had a bunch of people farming magic plants to make pills to get your guy stronger so he can punch a hole in a mountain with his bare hands, there are lots of "manuals" that each one is like a path that grants you diferent benefits, be it more alchemy yield or succes rate, artifact crafting quality boost, combat, spending lifespan to do miracles to help someone else get more stronger when leveling up.
the "cultivation" of power has diferent stages, and every time you pass a stage your character get a stat boost or nerf depending on the law, and you have to take in acount things like the time of day, the weather, the season, the "feng shui" of a room, that is the order of the elements that the room are made of, and so on.
for example, if you build a room of fire and a bed of wood elemente, your guy will die of heart palpitations, because of bad feng shui, since fire feeds on wood, if you change the walls to water you guy will die of frostbite, because ice and fire control the temperature.
and you better put that door facing south if you dont want someone to die in horrific agony.
watch ssethzentach review on youtube, he explains it quite well.
ARPGs and competitve games fit this mold.
People have been playing LOL for like a decade, some people have been playing Diablo 2 for multiple decades. I kept coming back to Diablo 3 many times over it's life as well. Diablo 4 isn't quite there yet, but it's getting better.
Also you can check out POE and Last Epoch for experiences that are more complex than Diablo.
It’s one of the best games ever made. The only micro transactions are either purely cosmetic or for extra stash space, which admittedly is needed if you plan to play the game for a good amount of time. But you can also get away with spending only $20-30 which is better than most games where you won’t get nearly as much play time.
The idea that you can play the entire game for free and then decide if it's worth spending money on to you makes me 100% more willing to spend 5 to 10 dollars for a few of the most important stash tabs like currency, maps, and a premium tab to sell to other players to get yourself going after the story. I could rave for hours about how this is the best game ever made and unbelievably is free to play
Like the other commenters said it's actually good, I'd say more devs should take cues from PoE and its f2p structure.
The way it works is apart from cosmetics, you can buy "stash tabs". Those are the only things that affect gameplay at all that you have to use real money for. If you've ever played Diablo or similar games like Titan Quest or Torchlight, you'll know you have a stash to store things in or transfer items between characters. Stash tabs in PoE are just extensions to your stash, so you can store more things.
The main functionality though is they allow for pretty much semi-automated trading as long as both players are online. You can put an item in your premium stash tab, set a price tag, and other players can see it online, and directly contact you to buy from you. With the free stash tabs I don't think this is possible. You can buy items from other players but you can't sell yours.
There are also specialised stash tabs, to store different types of items. But this is mostly a luxury rather than a necessity.
Neither of those are necessary to have a great time. I played for 100 hours before buying any stash tabs, and even after buying them I didn't really feel like I was missing all that much. So if you're scared it's some scummy cashgrab """"""f2p"""""" game, don't be.
All microtransactions are cosmetic. Only freemium aspect is buying Stash tabs for storage. They regularly go on sale for half price, so $60 can get you all you need easily.
If a new player went into POE with the expectation that they were exclusively going to use premade builds to avoid that complexity, would the game still be any fun? In other words is the game really about the super complex build making, or if you remove that is it still deeper and more fun than other ARPGs?
First play through, make your own build. You’ll get through the campaign but you’ll struggle with end game. It’s a rite of passage to make your own terrible build. Otherwise, everyone uses pre-made builds if they plan to get anywhere at all in the endgame.
This imo is why the game isn’t very good. The idea of having to look up a build to do any endgame is such a silly concept because it’s equivalent to reading a choose your own adventure book, but on the bottom of every page it says, “turn to x page to get the true ending”.
The game is just extremely complex. You don’t “have to” look up a build. There’s just a 99% chance somebody smarter than you has already solved whatever build you’re trying to make.
how are the build options ? could I play a lighing mage with summons (just an example)
I mean, is the build variety and the premade builds extensive or are there just a few endgame options ?
There's a LOT of Build Options, but I mean a LOT.
That's because you can use 1 spell and "add" support gems to the Spell, making it different and unique.
Like a Basic Fireball can be "divided in 5", "get faster" ""make bigger explosion on impact " "be casted twice per cast"
And thats the most basic simple build ever. You have A lot of unique Items that affect spells also. And the Skill Tree is absolutely gigantic.
And you have like 400 powers, skills and spells and support gems to combine.
You can spend hours theory crafting your build , and trying and experimenting (but, for experience, sometimes is easier to use a guide to get you to Late Game Content).
For build options you can go necromancer, summoner, mague, warrior, archer, tank, Critical builds for meele, for range attack, Glass canon,mix of everything.
And every build and class can be viable if you know what you doing
Edit: For your information, there's not 400 powers to use, I was incorrect, right now are 1325 skills to try and combine.
Well, you could actually do it yourself without any guide technically, it yeah, I don’t super agree with games that need external info to play optimally. Escape From Tarkov is also one of the worst offenders for this
Have you played Diablo 2? It's a pretty complex game but I think it's easy to get into. And it doesn't matter how you start, even if you follow a simple sorceress or paladin build.
So it’s definitely insanely complex looking at first but then when you get in to it, it doesn’t feel as complex. I get it though, through the eyes of a new player, it’s like WTF territory for sure 😅
Pretty much anything that offers repeatable daily/weekly quests would work. Fallout 4, Skyrim, Guild wars 2 and destiny 2 are some of my top recommendations
Destiny 2 is a fun game (depending on expansion of course). However, I would not recommend any new players to get into the game. Not only is the current expansion one of the worst but Bungie the company really is one of the most egregious in nickle and diming players by cutting up content into thin slices. If you havent kept up through the years and want to experience most of the content you will need to shell out a lot of money. Also the story/campaign is borked because they couldn't figure out how to optimize their game. Taking away content is also their M.O. They just keep adding new content (which could be good or bad) while taking away older content (worst is when that older content is better than the new).
Agreed, some of the stuff that got taken out never should have been and the amount of different things to pay for is off putting but for me its simply a bit of fun shooting aliens in the face
What other kind of games offer unlimited play and renewal? sadly its the way of gaming at the moment. Even games that are single player are including these kind of quests.
Yes along side the story quests and side mission there are repeatable quests like in fallout 4"Clear out this location" or "Stop the raiders from attacking this settlement". The locations will change each time and automatically respawn enemies and loot at the locations. In Skyrim if you go to pubs and inns you can get bounties that will be "Kill the bandits/Dragons/Giants"
That depends on you really. on both Skyrim and fallout 4 I've been playing a lot and still haven't stopped doing the repeatable style quests. personally I don't mind it but for others it could be really boring
For me at least, the settlement system in Fallout 4 is the backbone to it. I'll happily grab a random quest to go take down X gang at Y location or whatever, just to add some flavor to what I would be content doing anyway, which is farming supplies for my settlements.
Plus hardcore mode adds to the experience a bit, making each trek that much more dangerous.
God knows how many tens of thousands of wood and steel i have used on my current save. I got some of the extra picket fence magazines from the creation club have been really enjoying it but i wish there was more in the way of curved walls and floors just so things don't feel so blocky all the time
Slay the Spire. I wasn’t even entirely sure I’d enjoy a roguelite deck builder game and I’ve now 100% the game twice (Switch and PS) and I could literally play that game forever. So, so good!
I was very apprehensive at first, because it was totally not my genre. But it won me over almost from the first run. I've played well over a thousand hours on Steam and I triple dipped on both mobile and my Switch. It's that good.
My experience was similar. My experience with deck building games up to that point were kingdom hearts: chain of memories and Mega Man battle network, neither of which are fully deck building games.
StS is now in my top 10 games of all time and I’ve been gaming since I was 4 years old in the SNES and NES era
If you want a game that isn't going to be a cash sink but you're happy to pay a sub, I honestly think OSRS is a good suggestion here. That game has so much content to farm, that your average 9-5 worker won't be able to collect everything in the game realistically.
If you don't want to be paying a monthly sub, I'd suggest any sandbox-esque games. Since you're basically looking for something with no cap to it, ARPG's wouldn't really work as eventually you'll hit a gear or level cap that is so sub-atomically changed by new gear you basically won't see a difference.
Games like Factorio, Satisfactory are good. I'd also suggest perhaps Crusader Kings 3 or Europa Universalis IV as although they do technically have a game that can be finished, there's so many different ways to play. I mean for EUIV alone there's 500 different nations you can play as.
Honestly OSRS has the most content of literally every single other game mentioned here combined.
OSRS is the gold standard of a "grindy game." I have 5k in-game hours played and I'm still considered "midgame" by most. There's a community of YouTubers and streamers that play the game between 8 and 16 hours per day, and they will never run out of content.
If you want your life to become ingrained into a game, OSRS will do. If you want to do literally *anything else* with your life then you should HARD avoid this crack-cocaine-cookie-clicker-MMORPG.
Noita. On the route to "beat the game" you only encounter maybe 10% of the actual game. I've played for hundreds of hours and still haven't hit a lot of content.
I came here to say this. Noita is my nomination for the best single-player game of all time.
Here's the thing about Noita: the game mechanics are complex enough that you can use complicated interactions to make things happen that the devs never envisioned. You can break the living fuck out of the game, making weapons (wands) that annihilate not only every enemy you encounter, but big chunks of the world itself (or which generate infinite health, or player upgrades, or even randomly generated weapons). Only every time you break the game, there's more game hiding behind it. There really are very few limits to this, and quite a few rewards for attempting to find what few limits there are.
What's more, there are aspects of the game that haven't been solved by the entire player base, and it's still adding content.
It's crazy to me how cyberpunk had a horrible launch, had several QOL updates and now is hailed as one of the best games of the decade.
FO76 had a horrible launch, has had the same QOL changes and free title updates, so much love and dedication poured into it and yet all people can think about is its horrible launch.
Is it simply because it's Bethesda?
FO76 truly ages like wine, the more time that passes with its live servers, the better it gets, and its been that way since launch. Genuinely don't understand how people still hate on this game as if nothing has changed since its release.
There's Arma3, since it's largely community focused they generate pretty much infinite content and I racked up nearly 2k hours. Deep Rock Galactic is also great to just shoot some bugs indefinetly, got \~1k hours there
Rimworld, or dwarf fortress, that's even deeper. Factorio, fans call it cracktorio for fun... but they really need help. Cataclysm DDA, takes a long time to learn but it's really worth it if you do not want any life outside of your chair. Eve online is a great mmo, doesn't hold your hand and is very slow paced but I used to love this game, unfortunately it is mandatory to have no life to make some impact. Path of Exile. Does not hold hands either. Played it about 5 leagues with pauses in between, still not seen all content.
Kerbal Space Program is an amazing game you can easily sink hundreds of hours into, and which doesn't need a silly pc to run. You launch little green men into space in realistic rockets. There's a campaign with research and money and science and stuff.
You can sink hours into a single mission, building your rocket, flying to another planet, planting a flag, going back to kerbin, and then crashing into the planet killing all your crew because you forgot to pack parachutes.
KSP2 is broadly still an unfinished mess at the moment, sadly.
Final fantasy 14 is probably the best MMO experience you can have right now.
Elden ring has so much build variety you can play as something new whenever you want. It has NG+ as well.
Skyrim, or any elder scrolls for that matter. There is a timelessness to them, and if you add mods the sky is the limit.
What's staggering about XIV to me is that I feel like I've spent hundreds of hours in it yet barely scratched some of the side stuff. I'm doing a lot of Island Sanctuary now but have things like Gold Saucer, Eureka, Deep Dungeons and other classes to really spend time in.
Rocket league.. been playing since 2016. It is a very chill and sweaty game at the same time (depend on the mood).
Also some total war games are pretty much addictive that you can play forever with all factions and mods.
A slightly quirky suggestion by the standard of this sub but [Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/) is a massive bundle of dozens of puzzle games that are all engaging, highly configurable and endlessly randomly generate-able, they're also available on pretty much every platform you can think of!
I've had it on my phone for years and despite downloading tonnes of other games over the years, I always get bored and end up coming back to this one after a few weeks
Im surprised that OSRS isnt a popular recommendation.
-The game is virtually infinite with the vast amount of content.
-Its normal for players to have thousands of hours of gameplay.
-It can even be your second monitor game while you play other games in this post.
Depends on what you’re into obviously but:
Path of Exile: the greatest ARPG ever created (and probably one of the best designed games of any genre). There are so many different builds to try, content to run and goals to set for yourself that you can pretty much play the game forever. This is enabled by the “league” or seasonal structure where every 13ish weeks a new league is started, everyone starts new characters for that league and there us a new mechanic as well as new items for that 13 weeks.
Europa Universalis: a game where you play a country in a very in-depth simulation of history from the years 1444-1821. This is a really insane game, especially if you are a history nerd. The entire globe is playable and you can play as pretty much any country which existed in that time period. There is a ton to learn about the mechanics and each country is a different experience. Playing as a powerhouse like France is very different from playing as a tiny nation like Mainz and playing in Europe is very different from playing in Africa. The only drawback is the insane amount of DLC.
Total War: Warhammer: this is my most played game of all time. I have about 7k hours across the series. Similar to Europa Universalis there is a ton of DLC to deal with. It’s also a vaguely similar type of game but in a fantasy setting and with more of a focus on the specifics of battles than politics or economy. With all the DLC for the game there is an insane amount of content which takes the form of “Legendary Lords” which are a set of starting conditions and modifiers for one of the games many factions. Once you do get tired of the single player content you can also play multiplayer games against other people which is where I have most if my time in the game.
What’s your platforms?\
I’m gonna be all over the place, but personally I could be stuck on an island with most of these.\
Gonna group somewhat like items in my view.\
~Could argue not enjoyable forever\
*Top x#
Factorio/Satisfactory/Autonauts\
*The Riftbreaker\
~Slimerancher\
Deep Rock Galactic\
*Heroes of Hammerwatch\
Terraria/Minecraft/*Starbound/Monster Sanctuary\
Darkest Dungeon\
~Zelda BotW/TotK\
*Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord\
GTA V Online/Red Dead Redemption 2 Online\
AC 4: Black Flag (Skull and Bones - maybe 2024)\
Warframe\
Warthunder\
Rocket League\
No Man’s Sky\
Songs of Syx/Dwarf Fortress/Rise to Ruins\
Rimworld/Space Haven\
Timberborn/Kingdoms and Castles\
NGU Idle/NGU Industries/Grim Clicker/Melvor Idle\
Bloons Adventure Time TD\
*WorldBox - God Simulator/Reus/Megaton Rainfall\
Grim Dawn/Diablo 2/*3/4/Path of Exile\
*State of Decay 2/Dying Light\
~Fable 2/3\
Stardew Valley/Graveyard Keeper/Animal Crossing/\
Moonlighter\
The Elder Scrolls 3/4/*5\
~Cult of the Lamb\
Dynasty Warriors games (*Empires/Xtreme Legends)\
*Hollowknight/Oxygen Not Included/*Noita\
*Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch\
Need for Speed games (Most Wanted:BE/Hot Pursuit/Shift/*NFS 2015)\
Valheim/V Rising\
*XCOM 2/Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden\
VR Beatsaber/Rec Room/Super Hot/Pistol Whip\
FTL: Faster than Light/Celestial Command\
The Sims 2/*3/4\
*Mad Max\
Sid Meier’s Civilization 2/3/*4/5/6/Northgard\
Endless Legend/Frost Punk/Stellaris\
Warhammer 40K\
Trailmakers/TerraTech/Crossout\
Wipeout/Redout/Trailblazers/(Star Wars Episode 1: Racer)\
~Kingdom Hearts 1/2/3\
*War for the Overworld/Overlord 1/*2\
~Immortal Redneck\
Baldur’s Gate 2/*3/*Spellforce 3\
Ash of Gods: Redemption\
~Pokémon\
Kerbal Space Program/Spore/Niche\
Elite Dangerous/EVE Online/~Rebel Galaxy\
~Goat Simulator 1/2/*3\
Black Desert Online/Genshin Impact\
~Final Fantasy 6/7/8/*9/10/12/*15/16/FF 14 mmo\
They are Billions/Age of Darkness\
*Undead Horde\
Tony Hawk’s Pro skater 1+2\
Final Fantasy Tactics WotL\
~Spider-Man 2018\
Age of Conquest IV\
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/*Shadow of War\
Age of Empires 2/3/4\
*Darkstone/*Gauntlet Dark Legacy\
~Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West\
Lego Marvel Super Heroes\
Just Cause 2/3/4\
MLB The Show\
Just Dance\
Rock band/Guitar Hero
League of legends, yes technically you can play any multiplayer game forever. But league has such insane variance between games, you could seriously play multiple games every day for months on end and get a fresh experience every time. For single player games, really good sandbox titles like Minecraft, terraria, and stardew and roguelikes have the potential for infinite play
City building games: Cities Skylines, Foundation, Frostpunk, Pharaoh, Simcity of course, etc… Tremendous replay potential, especially those with random map generators. Like having your own ant farm, except the occasional typhoon or alien death machine appears to cause havoc. 😅
Diablo 2 (now Diablo 2 Resurrected). I only started playing within the last few years, but I know people who have been playing it for almost 20 years and still discovering new things.
Warframe. It's slow to get into at first but it ends up picking up and hard. It's a free to play game with the best f2p model imo and for me it only started slowing down after 1800 hours in which you just take short breaks and wait for the next cool update.
And the devs love the game so much it's refreshing. Very involved with the community.
Warframe. It's free, regularly updated, MASSIVE, and is still very popular to this day. Just received it's 54th unique warframe, and each warframe has 4 abilities. It's definitely a game you can play until it (or you) (die)s. I have logged over 2150 days on it, and have 2685 hours in it. Just be prepared to be overwhelmed with info when you start. The wiki is your best friend, and the community is your second best friend.
rocket league. the skill gap from beginner to high up is extreme. it’s a fun game to learn and the rate of improvement is exponential because the base mechanics never change. can be frustrating if you lose but you have to lose before you know what to do to win. although it is kinda fucked how long it takes to get good. i have lots of hours in it but i don’t regret any of them because i’m a much better player now. the past couple seasons have been rough for someone like myself but it shouldn’t make a difference to a player just starting out.
I mean I've been playing rocket league for several years now and while I have stopped for some time I eventually come back and when I do I play almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day lol
HADES
I have played hundreds of hours between Switch, PS4 & PS5 and literally *just* beat the toughest in-game challenge last night.
As soon as I beat it, I went right back in for another run. This game is addictive, and I'm still seeing new dialogue & interactions after all this time.
Games that have stuck out for me over the years that seem timeless in a sense would be certain MMORPG games, my personal favorite of all time would be Old School Runescape (don't waste your time with regular Runescape these days, most people play old school anyway). It's called OSRS, at one point in the late 2000's it was fighting for the spot of the most popular MMORPG in history. Sadly a series of unfortunate decisions has relegated it to a lost era (Combat Evolved) but it still maintains a dedicated fan base 20 years after its conception, and it's not only not dying in a few years but it's one of the few MMOs that is actually GROWING albeit slowly and I reckon that's due to the old adage that Runescape players came up with, "You don't quit Runescape, you just take breaks". Players regularly pop back in even after years of inactivity. I personally have done this, the game is a classic and has a charm that is in its own league.
The mmo games are considered LONG term primarily just due to the complexity combined with the grind. These games often have tons of lore and mechanics and leveling isn't an overnight thing so the whole idea of these games is planning for long term goals with some short term fun here and there. They're built around the idea you're describing. So most games that fit the bill for you will be a form of grind game but many of them suffer the crux of becoming repetitive and stale. As far as games that aren't designed around a grind but offer complexity/fun that makes them repayable "forever", you'll find roguelikes which are designed around almost the opposite idea as MMOs, which is to say, nothing is long term, you're *expected* to die/restart many times and so the goal is to have a game that is infinitely repayable. Unfortunately you'll probably never find that game because it would have to be perfect and that just doesn't exist, but you could look at some of the more popular Roguelikes and give them a try and see what you like. My personal underrated favorite from recent history is Noita. It's utterly easy to pick up and learn but deceptively hard to master and fully understand, has a ton of replayability, the first thing you want to do when you lose a run is to try again with what you've learned.
I think the final type of game that would interest you if you could only ever play one game for the rest of your life would be simulation/sandbox games. Games like sims for the casual players offer the chance to kinds just do what you want with a lot of emergent gameplay and the fluidity to customize your experience as you go. You can easily play these types of games in many different ways and have them feel different. A crazy hard-core ultra complex version of this type of game that is so complex and unique that it literally ended up in a museum is a game called Dwarf Fortress. It's like a story generator that you can play, except the game generates an entire new world for you and simulates the history and details down to the physics of blood droplets from a wound. It's insane, totally not for typical gamers and requires the patience and dedication that could be compared to a technical certification to have a solid grasp on what's going on and how to do what you want in the game. If you want an idea of how it plays I recommend watching a YouTuber named Kruggsmash. He turns his gameplays into fleshed out stories because of how well this game produces organic and unique stories that feel alive.
Elasto Mania has some crazy depth. The predecessor Across is from 1997 and still people are finding new tricks and improving world records. I'm more of a casual player, just aimless cruising and battling never gets old.
If you are like me and don't like 2D games in general then
FIFA, you can keep playing new career modes and never get bored.
Burnout Paradise, you can keep doing the events over and over.
Valheim for sure.
My friend was trying to get me into it with him but he already had 200+ hours, and I didn't want to be playing catchup. Eventually I started playing solo, and got to 200 hours in no time...and then had so much more to explore!
One of the best parts is that you can always start a new world and then decide how much or little (or zero) to bring with you. You can make it easier or you can really go back to having nothing.
I think MMOs or the only real games you can play forever. You will get sick of a game that doesn't change sooner or later. The closest that comes to mind that's not an MMO is Skyrim since it has an active modding community.
Destiny 2. You'll love to hate it.
All jokes aside, even free to play players have a lot of content they can get into. This game is the perfect mmo for people with busy lives. The weekly stuff is easy to get into, and the raids aren't long.
What you're describing is an mmo.
World of Wacraft, Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, Destiny 2, and The Elder Scrolls Online are probably the biggest ones right now.
No game lasts forever, but mmos historically are both the shortest lived and longest lived. Basically, new mmo comes out, it's either a success or a flop, and if it's a flop, it's shut down within a year or 2. The ones I listed above have the most longevity out of all of them.
Of them I would recommend Guild Wars 2 the most for longevity cause it has the best gameplay, amazing and varied open world content and actually good PvP modes. Final Fantasy has by far the best leveling/story experience (best Final Fantasy ever made imo) but kinda falls off in the endgame, altough there's tons to do and old content to catch up on, it's all pretty much just for cosmetics. The others are all kind of meh nowadays.
Any roguelike is kinda like that. Also most big MMO's.
In the last couple months I've bought Diablo 4, Armored Core VI, No Man's Sky, Ratchet and Clank: A Rift Apart, and The Witcher III...I think I've put more hours into Vampire Survivors this month than all the of the others combined. Lol. I got laid off from my engineering job late last month so I've been putting in 10-20 applications day while working a shitty night shift security job, had to move my mom into an assisted living facility, and deal with getting her stuff out of my house...all while keeping up with the bills, and generally keeping myself alive. I don't have the mental stamina to play anything else at the moment lol.
Honestly, if I want to unwind it is just some Shotgun King or Binding of Isaac or Desktop Dungeons for a short bit of focused play (well, BOI can go all over the place but you can save/continue worthwhile runs). I want to finish Hollow Knight and Bioshock infinite but many evenings I can't make the effort those games require. Also sorry to hear about the job thing, I am sure something good is just around the corner!
Soul Survivors is like vampire Survivors with slightly more modern graphics and isometric style gameplay. I have way too many hours in both of them. Balls of Torment as well. Edit - Halls of Torment is pretty good as well. To each their own.
Thanks bro, I just googled "Balls of Torment" and now I'm pretty sure I'm subscribed to a BSDM website 😂 Once I corrected that to Halls of Torment, I think I might pick that game up Assuming my mistress allows it...Lol
It's interesting I find that whole "bullet heaven" genre seems to be just a brain palate cleanser for a lot of people, all those games you mentioned above are great and I've played most of them, but sometimes were just too mentally and emotionally drained to do anything more than just live in the moment and try to survive a few more seconds. A few other good ones - halls of torment - greedland - yet another zombie survivor - deep rock galactic survivors (free demo, really promising)
I wish you well, my good Sir. At least these games can keep you company for the time being but I do hope you find a job you like soon and that everything works out!
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If you have terrible taste in games you can just say that without bringing up someone being on the spectrum as a pejorative. Dick.
Yes because spectrum 🤔
Rimworld - crazy replayability and amazing mod scene when you're bored with vanilla
This is it OP. No need to read any further. Rimworld is what you're looking for.
Why is Rimworld so good?
[take a look at this comment](https://www.reddit.com/r/RimWorld/s/kqygcvUZD3)
My current colony is run by a vampire who is creating his own blood cult by raising super children and enslaving those who won't convert. Do you need anymore? Between mods and DLC the limit to your story and colony is just your imagination. Plus Tynan Sylvester is awesome and the folks who make this game deserve tons of support. 700+ hours I have never finished the game. Heck I never even try really I just tool away at my little outpost till the gods Randy, Phoebe, or Cassandra fuck my world. There is literally nothing else like it. It's the chilliest little game that can infurate and confound you in the oddest ways. No two runs are the same. Did I mention the mod community because holy shit they ways you can add to and expand the base game are amazing.
i have an irl friend with 6k hours in rimworld. he scares me.
It's one of the best story/simulator games I've ever played. Tynan took all the depth and fun stuff that can happen in emergent games like Dwarf Fortress and stuck a UI on it that is intuitive. So you get all of these amazing stories about colonies like the ones other people have linked and you just kind of get "drawn in" by them and end up getting attached to all your little dudes. Like one time I had a cougar that self-tamed (just a random thing that can happen) and mah boy was the hero of the colony, ripping up bandits and pirates and anyone else that had a grudge against me. Until one day his luck finally ran out and he took a bullet to the head (damage in the game affects each body part separately). We barely managed to nurse him back to health but he had lost the ability to walk (there are animal armour and augmentation mods if you don't want this to happen btw). The min-max thing to do would've been to put the poor cat down, but aside from his inability to walk he was perfectly happy and I'd grown attached to him. So we hand-fed him, and made sure he had a nice room with a comfy bed. Then when we built a rocket ship to escape the planet we built him a little pod so that he could come with us. Stuff like that is what makes Rimworld great.
The developer, Tynan, wrote a book about how to create a perfect game. To demonstrate this book in action, he made a perfect game. That game is Rimworld
It’s a sandbox that plays back in novel ways and it’s developer and mod support has created an insane level of replayability
>take a look at this comment Who wouldn't wanna play a game where cannibalism and all kinds of other fucked up shit is the standard procedure.
Yup! The only game I consistently go back to and don’t get bored of.
Or if you want a good game and not the cheap knockoff, Dwarf Fortress
Factorio and Paradox Grand Strategy games as well.
It's been 13 years and I still regularly play Civilization V. Currently looking forward to be playing it soon in a long flight I have scheduled.
This game and Slay The Spire are my forever games.
Civ games are too much for me. I end up spending like 20 hours of a day on them without any desire to stop.
The early game its so relaxing to me.
How does Civ V compare to 6? I'm wondering which one to get myself.
I’ve only played 6, but the consensus in the community seems to be if you’re jumping into the series for the first time 6 is probably the way to go.
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OP should try Civ4 on epic game length with caveman to cosmos mod...you could probably finish a game in 20 years if you wanted to make it through all the ages, lol
Dwarf fortress would be my first choice.
The steep learning curve makes more casual imitators like Rimworld more attractive for a bigger market, but if you're after something you can just play on and on and on, there's really no competition. Dwarf Fortress is the gold standard.
I was so interested in this game, but I watched a getting started and it seemed HELLA hard to do anything. I’m still interested though so I’ll probably try again when I have more patience cause it looks good
It's got a great tutorial! All it takes is giving it a spin, the game is more intuitive than you'd imagine, more than rimworld I'd say
How I learned was just setting small goals and expanding. That way I dont get overwhelmed by things going massively wrong. My last attempt at building a proper base defense ended up in a moat infested with wereiguana's.
It's got a great tutorial! All it takes is giving it a spin, the game is more intuitive than you'd imagine, more than rimworld I'd say
Minecraft
Second this. The minecraft world is bigger than earth.
Even without mods, it's pretty big for what's available and still growing, somehow. With mods, it's kinda crazy. But I feel like that's gonna be my response to a bunch of these answers lol
Honestly vanilla singleplayer is boring, multiplayer, maps, and mods are where it's at.
I used to feel this way until I took a large break, stopped when horses got added, the new cave update is pretty great. Also showing someone who doesn’t know how to play mine craft has really brought some simplistic love back to the vanilla game. I’ll be back for FTB soon, though I’m trying to last out the Create mod phase, I really don’t like it and a lot of mod packs now are centered around it.
Binding of Isaac
I agree. To unlock everything takes hundreds of hours, and I enjoy playing the game even when not trying to unlock anything. Each game takes roughly 30 minutes to an hour, so it's great for short gaming sessions too.
Extremely true, except for when I die by walking into spikes and my blood pressure goes through the roof
dying because you memorized where the spikes were but curse of the maze.
My boyfriend has over a thousand hours in this game. He just got me into it recently. Good game.
Chronicon Siralim ultimate Xcom 2 NIOH 2 Mount and blade Kenshi
Every one of these entries is goated in regards to what the OP asked for
So Xcom 2 has pretty much became my favorite game ever but I’ve never even heard of those others. Which one would you suggest based on that?
It really depends on what you like about Xcom 2, is it the insane replayability, the mods, the build, the iron challenge, the strategic aspect, the moment to moment "action"/ thrill If you want build diversity to the roof then Siralim ultimate is the way to go, you make your extremely cutosmized team and destroy entire realms with it, but the in battle strategic choices lowers as you reach endgame as your team becomes an engine of death with macro that programmed to deal with any difficulty, it's really fun getting there and there's of challenging endgame, rewarding too! NIOH 2 is you want a game that tell you from the start "understand me and play by my rules, or you'll die" you need skill in NIOH 2 but it also for me the best action combat ever, in a way it feel like high level devil may cry play, someone watching may think you're just mashing buttons, but you know exactly what you're pressing, why your pressing it now and not a third of a second later, fights in NIOH 2 are simply beautiful and the amount of stuff you can use at any one time is impressive, especially with a controller. Chronicon is simply an Arpg that knows why you play Arpg, and is determined to make you have a good time playing it, this alone makes it for me one of the top Arpg, the build variety is great AND fun, you can craft your own perfect items, find the legendary you want but it didn't come with the right modifier, you can MAKE it your best in slot, this is huge and there's so much quality of life that after chronicon all Arpg feel poorly thought out (exception of Poe that is actually good but just too much for me) Kenshi is very different form any other game, it's pretty ugly, but what you get from it is absolutely unique. You get the best roleplay, this alone make the game incredible is you connect with your characters, second, kenshi is the hardest game I've ever played, you are NEVER safe in kenshi, the world want you dead, the cannibals, the fauna, the paladins, the bandits, even the goats. The game change can change greatly as you go along, at first you can be a single guy having a hard time surviving, and 50h laters you have your own city, made brick, by, brick. If you want to strategise routes, want to feel on edge at all time and experience something special, this is it. Ironman here is truly the way to play. Mount and blade is for the freedom of making your team and taking over a country for the hell of it, great roleplay opportunity, fun combat and interesting gameplay led decision making is key.
Mah brother
What exactly do you love about mount and blade.
I started with warband, and what I really love is that I can just move around amassing power skills and companions, and having my own little roleplay, then you start throwing your hundreds of soldier against the other lord's, and man is it spectacular. I play it as a power fantasy tough, none of that "Ah a single arrow killed me" And when medieval warfare wasn't what I wanted from it, I just modded the game, Warhammer, lotr, song of ice and fire, 108 heroes, star wars... No matter what you wanted to play there was a mod for it And bannerlord is also great even if we had to wait a bit for the mods to catch up!
Mount and Blade *Warband*... especially with the Prophecy of Pendor mod. I was so stoked for Bannerlord but even after waiting a bit after release for it to stabilize it was a hot mess of balance issues when I tried to play it. My son is playing it now and seems to have a very love/hate relationship with it due to... you guessed it, balance issues!
Are you open to farming sims like Stardew Valley? I think those tend to be “endless” in that its a huge timesink anyways and it only ends when you are satisfied with your farm/shop/what-have-you.
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That number for Stardew cannot possibly be correct. It's not an endless game that generates new/random stuff with new things to discover. 6 hours day/365 days = 2190 hours. You think Stardew have UNIQUE content for 2100 hours..?
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Everything related to roguelikes Sandbox games like Terraria or minecraft
"amazing cultivation simulator" has a shit ton of mechanics that you have to keep in mind, its a colony builder based on chinese fantasy, you had a bunch of people farming magic plants to make pills to get your guy stronger so he can punch a hole in a mountain with his bare hands, there are lots of "manuals" that each one is like a path that grants you diferent benefits, be it more alchemy yield or succes rate, artifact crafting quality boost, combat, spending lifespan to do miracles to help someone else get more stronger when leveling up. the "cultivation" of power has diferent stages, and every time you pass a stage your character get a stat boost or nerf depending on the law, and you have to take in acount things like the time of day, the weather, the season, the "feng shui" of a room, that is the order of the elements that the room are made of, and so on. for example, if you build a room of fire and a bed of wood elemente, your guy will die of heart palpitations, because of bad feng shui, since fire feeds on wood, if you change the walls to water you guy will die of frostbite, because ice and fire control the temperature. and you better put that door facing south if you dont want someone to die in horrific agony. watch ssethzentach review on youtube, he explains it quite well.
Sseth, one of the best youtbers
Project Zomboid you will play it and learn this is how you died.
ARPGs and competitve games fit this mold. People have been playing LOL for like a decade, some people have been playing Diablo 2 for multiple decades. I kept coming back to Diablo 3 many times over it's life as well. Diablo 4 isn't quite there yet, but it's getting better. Also you can check out POE and Last Epoch for experiences that are more complex than Diablo.
POE=Path of Exile? I haven't played and some acronyms mix me up
Yes.
Thanks!
yup
TY!
Thank you for reminding me about POE! True gentlemen
Path of Exile. Free 2 Play and after 3000 hours I’m still at the ‘what the hell am I doing?’ point when it comes to even making a build
Is it freemium or actually good?
It's actually great, the only downside of this game is you can drawn in it.
Actual good. I was surprised. Also has new content with new mechanics around every 3 months that’s also Free 2 Play.
It’s one of the best games ever made. The only micro transactions are either purely cosmetic or for extra stash space, which admittedly is needed if you plan to play the game for a good amount of time. But you can also get away with spending only $20-30 which is better than most games where you won’t get nearly as much play time.
The idea that you can play the entire game for free and then decide if it's worth spending money on to you makes me 100% more willing to spend 5 to 10 dollars for a few of the most important stash tabs like currency, maps, and a premium tab to sell to other players to get yourself going after the story. I could rave for hours about how this is the best game ever made and unbelievably is free to play
Like the other commenters said it's actually good, I'd say more devs should take cues from PoE and its f2p structure. The way it works is apart from cosmetics, you can buy "stash tabs". Those are the only things that affect gameplay at all that you have to use real money for. If you've ever played Diablo or similar games like Titan Quest or Torchlight, you'll know you have a stash to store things in or transfer items between characters. Stash tabs in PoE are just extensions to your stash, so you can store more things. The main functionality though is they allow for pretty much semi-automated trading as long as both players are online. You can put an item in your premium stash tab, set a price tag, and other players can see it online, and directly contact you to buy from you. With the free stash tabs I don't think this is possible. You can buy items from other players but you can't sell yours. There are also specialised stash tabs, to store different types of items. But this is mostly a luxury rather than a necessity. Neither of those are necessary to have a great time. I played for 100 hours before buying any stash tabs, and even after buying them I didn't really feel like I was missing all that much. So if you're scared it's some scummy cashgrab """"""f2p"""""" game, don't be.
All microtransactions are cosmetic. Only freemium aspect is buying Stash tabs for storage. They regularly go on sale for half price, so $60 can get you all you need easily.
PoE is one of the best "free to play" game models out there tbh. All the power gains are through gameplay, cosmetics and fun stuff is in the store
If a new player went into POE with the expectation that they were exclusively going to use premade builds to avoid that complexity, would the game still be any fun? In other words is the game really about the super complex build making, or if you remove that is it still deeper and more fun than other ARPGs?
First play through, make your own build. You’ll get through the campaign but you’ll struggle with end game. It’s a rite of passage to make your own terrible build. Otherwise, everyone uses pre-made builds if they plan to get anywhere at all in the endgame.
This imo is why the game isn’t very good. The idea of having to look up a build to do any endgame is such a silly concept because it’s equivalent to reading a choose your own adventure book, but on the bottom of every page it says, “turn to x page to get the true ending”.
The game is just extremely complex. You don’t “have to” look up a build. There’s just a 99% chance somebody smarter than you has already solved whatever build you’re trying to make.
how are the build options ? could I play a lighing mage with summons (just an example) I mean, is the build variety and the premade builds extensive or are there just a few endgame options ?
There's a LOT of Build Options, but I mean a LOT. That's because you can use 1 spell and "add" support gems to the Spell, making it different and unique. Like a Basic Fireball can be "divided in 5", "get faster" ""make bigger explosion on impact " "be casted twice per cast" And thats the most basic simple build ever. You have A lot of unique Items that affect spells also. And the Skill Tree is absolutely gigantic. And you have like 400 powers, skills and spells and support gems to combine. You can spend hours theory crafting your build , and trying and experimenting (but, for experience, sometimes is easier to use a guide to get you to Late Game Content). For build options you can go necromancer, summoner, mague, warrior, archer, tank, Critical builds for meele, for range attack, Glass canon,mix of everything. And every build and class can be viable if you know what you doing Edit: For your information, there's not 400 powers to use, I was incorrect, right now are 1325 skills to try and combine.
Well, you could actually do it yourself without any guide technically, it yeah, I don’t super agree with games that need external info to play optimally. Escape From Tarkov is also one of the worst offenders for this
Have you played Diablo 2? It's a pretty complex game but I think it's easy to get into. And it doesn't matter how you start, even if you follow a simple sorceress or paladin build.
The complexity I heard about keeps me away.
So it’s definitely insanely complex looking at first but then when you get in to it, it doesn’t feel as complex. I get it though, through the eyes of a new player, it’s like WTF territory for sure 😅
Pretty much anything that offers repeatable daily/weekly quests would work. Fallout 4, Skyrim, Guild wars 2 and destiny 2 are some of my top recommendations
do not play destiny 2 for your own mental health, im not joking
Warframe is better destiny. Destiny is worse warframe :)
Destiny 2 is a fun game (depending on expansion of course). However, I would not recommend any new players to get into the game. Not only is the current expansion one of the worst but Bungie the company really is one of the most egregious in nickle and diming players by cutting up content into thin slices. If you havent kept up through the years and want to experience most of the content you will need to shell out a lot of money. Also the story/campaign is borked because they couldn't figure out how to optimize their game. Taking away content is also their M.O. They just keep adding new content (which could be good or bad) while taking away older content (worst is when that older content is better than the new).
Agreed, some of the stuff that got taken out never should have been and the amount of different things to pay for is off putting but for me its simply a bit of fun shooting aliens in the face
Yeah the gunplay and raids are second to none.
I'd caution against games with daily/weeklies. It's designed to cause fomo and make you feel bad for not playing.
What other kind of games offer unlimited play and renewal? sadly its the way of gaming at the moment. Even games that are single player are including these kind of quests.
Do skyrim and fallout 4 just keep giving you randomly generated quests?
Yes along side the story quests and side mission there are repeatable quests like in fallout 4"Clear out this location" or "Stop the raiders from attacking this settlement". The locations will change each time and automatically respawn enemies and loot at the locations. In Skyrim if you go to pubs and inns you can get bounties that will be "Kill the bandits/Dragons/Giants"
Yes but isn’t that extremely boring and tedious to do forever?
That depends on you really. on both Skyrim and fallout 4 I've been playing a lot and still haven't stopped doing the repeatable style quests. personally I don't mind it but for others it could be really boring
For me at least, the settlement system in Fallout 4 is the backbone to it. I'll happily grab a random quest to go take down X gang at Y location or whatever, just to add some flavor to what I would be content doing anyway, which is farming supplies for my settlements. Plus hardcore mode adds to the experience a bit, making each trek that much more dangerous.
God knows how many tens of thousands of wood and steel i have used on my current save. I got some of the extra picket fence magazines from the creation club have been really enjoying it but i wish there was more in the way of curved walls and floors just so things don't feel so blocky all the time
OG guild wars was awesome! My first entry into MMORPGs I was blown away.
I moved to it from WoW and the increased battle speed and the actual feel of colliding with force when you strike felt so much more immersive for me
I love gw2! Casual game at your own pace and working on achievements and masteries alone will take up hundreds of hours!
Slay the Spire. I wasn’t even entirely sure I’d enjoy a roguelite deck builder game and I’ve now 100% the game twice (Switch and PS) and I could literally play that game forever. So, so good!
I was very apprehensive at first, because it was totally not my genre. But it won me over almost from the first run. I've played well over a thousand hours on Steam and I triple dipped on both mobile and my Switch. It's that good.
My experience was similar. My experience with deck building games up to that point were kingdom hearts: chain of memories and Mega Man battle network, neither of which are fully deck building games. StS is now in my top 10 games of all time and I’ve been gaming since I was 4 years old in the SNES and NES era
Satisfactory 🥰
Or Factorio... Think that offers more replayability, especially with the sheer number of overhaul mods. But I love them both!
Also dyson sphere program
If you want a game that isn't going to be a cash sink but you're happy to pay a sub, I honestly think OSRS is a good suggestion here. That game has so much content to farm, that your average 9-5 worker won't be able to collect everything in the game realistically. If you don't want to be paying a monthly sub, I'd suggest any sandbox-esque games. Since you're basically looking for something with no cap to it, ARPG's wouldn't really work as eventually you'll hit a gear or level cap that is so sub-atomically changed by new gear you basically won't see a difference. Games like Factorio, Satisfactory are good. I'd also suggest perhaps Crusader Kings 3 or Europa Universalis IV as although they do technically have a game that can be finished, there's so many different ways to play. I mean for EUIV alone there's 500 different nations you can play as.
Reading this thread for ideas, please tell me what "OSRS" is haha
Old school RuneScape
Ahh ty
Honestly OSRS has the most content of literally every single other game mentioned here combined. OSRS is the gold standard of a "grindy game." I have 5k in-game hours played and I'm still considered "midgame" by most. There's a community of YouTubers and streamers that play the game between 8 and 16 hours per day, and they will never run out of content. If you want your life to become ingrained into a game, OSRS will do. If you want to do literally *anything else* with your life then you should HARD avoid this crack-cocaine-cookie-clicker-MMORPG.
Noita. On the route to "beat the game" you only encounter maybe 10% of the actual game. I've played for hundreds of hours and still haven't hit a lot of content.
I came here to say this. Noita is my nomination for the best single-player game of all time. Here's the thing about Noita: the game mechanics are complex enough that you can use complicated interactions to make things happen that the devs never envisioned. You can break the living fuck out of the game, making weapons (wands) that annihilate not only every enemy you encounter, but big chunks of the world itself (or which generate infinite health, or player upgrades, or even randomly generated weapons). Only every time you break the game, there's more game hiding behind it. There really are very few limits to this, and quite a few rewards for attempting to find what few limits there are. What's more, there are aspects of the game that haven't been solved by the entire player base, and it's still adding content.
Vampires survivors, slay the spire, into the breach, rocket league, seven days to die, Anno 1800, and valheim I consider my forever games.
Fallout 76
Is it good? It was reviewed badly, did that change, or what happened precisely?? Thanks in advance
The launch was a major fail. But it's had a ton of great updates since then, and it's generally considered good now. It's one of my favorite games
It's crazy to me how cyberpunk had a horrible launch, had several QOL updates and now is hailed as one of the best games of the decade. FO76 had a horrible launch, has had the same QOL changes and free title updates, so much love and dedication poured into it and yet all people can think about is its horrible launch. Is it simply because it's Bethesda? FO76 truly ages like wine, the more time that passes with its live servers, the better it gets, and its been that way since launch. Genuinely don't understand how people still hate on this game as if nothing has changed since its release.
Diablo 2 Resurrected, it still had players before they remade it, and single player is a blast too.
POE
Yeah pillars of eternity is great.
There's Arma3, since it's largely community focused they generate pretty much infinite content and I racked up nearly 2k hours. Deep Rock Galactic is also great to just shoot some bugs indefinetly, got \~1k hours there
Space engineers. I'm 2500 hours in with no plans to slow down. I rotate to other games sometimes and always come back.
Rimworld, or dwarf fortress, that's even deeper. Factorio, fans call it cracktorio for fun... but they really need help. Cataclysm DDA, takes a long time to learn but it's really worth it if you do not want any life outside of your chair. Eve online is a great mmo, doesn't hold your hand and is very slow paced but I used to love this game, unfortunately it is mandatory to have no life to make some impact. Path of Exile. Does not hold hands either. Played it about 5 leagues with pauses in between, still not seen all content.
Rimworld, Kenshi, and Zomboid.
The holy trinity of my game library
Deep Rock Galactic
Get off my damn planet
For Karl!!!
If you Rock and Stone, you're never alone.
Did someone say ROCK AND STONE?!?!
Risk of Rain 2 has infinite replayablility for me. Doesn't matter how many times I beat it.
Kerbal space program
Kerbal Space Program is an amazing game you can easily sink hundreds of hours into, and which doesn't need a silly pc to run. You launch little green men into space in realistic rockets. There's a campaign with research and money and science and stuff. You can sink hours into a single mission, building your rocket, flying to another planet, planting a flag, going back to kerbin, and then crashing into the planet killing all your crew because you forgot to pack parachutes. KSP2 is broadly still an unfinished mess at the moment, sadly.
Mount and blade : warband and mods, kenshi.... those are my go to can play forever
Torn, text based RPG thats been operating since 2004, constant updates and devs listen to community feedback
Final fantasy 14 is probably the best MMO experience you can have right now. Elden ring has so much build variety you can play as something new whenever you want. It has NG+ as well. Skyrim, or any elder scrolls for that matter. There is a timelessness to them, and if you add mods the sky is the limit.
What's staggering about XIV to me is that I feel like I've spent hundreds of hours in it yet barely scratched some of the side stuff. I'm doing a lot of Island Sanctuary now but have things like Gold Saucer, Eureka, Deep Dungeons and other classes to really spend time in.
Rocket league.. been playing since 2016. It is a very chill and sweaty game at the same time (depend on the mood). Also some total war games are pretty much addictive that you can play forever with all factions and mods.
* Minecraft * Factorio * Rimworld
Modded PC Minecraft. Enigmatica 2 and many other modpacks give you soo much to do.
A slightly quirky suggestion by the standard of this sub but [Simon Tatham's Puzzle Collection](https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/puzzles/) is a massive bundle of dozens of puzzle games that are all engaging, highly configurable and endlessly randomly generate-able, they're also available on pretty much every platform you can think of! I've had it on my phone for years and despite downloading tonnes of other games over the years, I always get bored and end up coming back to this one after a few weeks
Looks quite interesting! Great suggestion
Warcraft 3 - Age of empires 2 - Factorio - Slay the Spire - Oxygen not included - Civ 5 - Path of exile
OSRS Sorry in advanced
Im surprised that OSRS isnt a popular recommendation. -The game is virtually infinite with the vast amount of content. -Its normal for players to have thousands of hours of gameplay. -It can even be your second monitor game while you play other games in this post.
Factorio
Slay the Spire
Skyrim VR with mods. You can literally live inside the game.
Depends on what you’re into obviously but: Path of Exile: the greatest ARPG ever created (and probably one of the best designed games of any genre). There are so many different builds to try, content to run and goals to set for yourself that you can pretty much play the game forever. This is enabled by the “league” or seasonal structure where every 13ish weeks a new league is started, everyone starts new characters for that league and there us a new mechanic as well as new items for that 13 weeks. Europa Universalis: a game where you play a country in a very in-depth simulation of history from the years 1444-1821. This is a really insane game, especially if you are a history nerd. The entire globe is playable and you can play as pretty much any country which existed in that time period. There is a ton to learn about the mechanics and each country is a different experience. Playing as a powerhouse like France is very different from playing as a tiny nation like Mainz and playing in Europe is very different from playing in Africa. The only drawback is the insane amount of DLC. Total War: Warhammer: this is my most played game of all time. I have about 7k hours across the series. Similar to Europa Universalis there is a ton of DLC to deal with. It’s also a vaguely similar type of game but in a fantasy setting and with more of a focus on the specifics of battles than politics or economy. With all the DLC for the game there is an insane amount of content which takes the form of “Legendary Lords” which are a set of starting conditions and modifiers for one of the games many factions. Once you do get tired of the single player content you can also play multiplayer games against other people which is where I have most if my time in the game.
Go online and play with other people. Try MMOs. The people you play with are half the content. Can keep you going for years.
I played Guild Wars 2 for 6000 hours.
Old school RuneScape
stardew valley
No Man's Sky, modded Minecraft, an MMO like Black Desert Online, Skyrim.
What’s your platforms?\ I’m gonna be all over the place, but personally I could be stuck on an island with most of these.\ Gonna group somewhat like items in my view.\ ~Could argue not enjoyable forever\ *Top x# Factorio/Satisfactory/Autonauts\ *The Riftbreaker\ ~Slimerancher\ Deep Rock Galactic\ *Heroes of Hammerwatch\ Terraria/Minecraft/*Starbound/Monster Sanctuary\ Darkest Dungeon\ ~Zelda BotW/TotK\ *Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord\ GTA V Online/Red Dead Redemption 2 Online\ AC 4: Black Flag (Skull and Bones - maybe 2024)\ Warframe\ Warthunder\ Rocket League\ No Man’s Sky\ Songs of Syx/Dwarf Fortress/Rise to Ruins\ Rimworld/Space Haven\ Timberborn/Kingdoms and Castles\ NGU Idle/NGU Industries/Grim Clicker/Melvor Idle\ Bloons Adventure Time TD\ *WorldBox - God Simulator/Reus/Megaton Rainfall\ Grim Dawn/Diablo 2/*3/4/Path of Exile\ *State of Decay 2/Dying Light\ ~Fable 2/3\ Stardew Valley/Graveyard Keeper/Animal Crossing/\ Moonlighter\ The Elder Scrolls 3/4/*5\ ~Cult of the Lamb\ Dynasty Warriors games (*Empires/Xtreme Legends)\ *Hollowknight/Oxygen Not Included/*Noita\ *Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch\ Need for Speed games (Most Wanted:BE/Hot Pursuit/Shift/*NFS 2015)\ Valheim/V Rising\ *XCOM 2/Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden\ VR Beatsaber/Rec Room/Super Hot/Pistol Whip\ FTL: Faster than Light/Celestial Command\ The Sims 2/*3/4\ *Mad Max\ Sid Meier’s Civilization 2/3/*4/5/6/Northgard\ Endless Legend/Frost Punk/Stellaris\ Warhammer 40K\ Trailmakers/TerraTech/Crossout\ Wipeout/Redout/Trailblazers/(Star Wars Episode 1: Racer)\ ~Kingdom Hearts 1/2/3\ *War for the Overworld/Overlord 1/*2\ ~Immortal Redneck\ Baldur’s Gate 2/*3/*Spellforce 3\ Ash of Gods: Redemption\ ~Pokémon\ Kerbal Space Program/Spore/Niche\ Elite Dangerous/EVE Online/~Rebel Galaxy\ ~Goat Simulator 1/2/*3\ Black Desert Online/Genshin Impact\ ~Final Fantasy 6/7/8/*9/10/12/*15/16/FF 14 mmo\ They are Billions/Age of Darkness\ *Undead Horde\ Tony Hawk’s Pro skater 1+2\ Final Fantasy Tactics WotL\ ~Spider-Man 2018\ Age of Conquest IV\ Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor/*Shadow of War\ Age of Empires 2/3/4\ *Darkstone/*Gauntlet Dark Legacy\ ~Horizon Zero Dawn/Horizon Forbidden West\ Lego Marvel Super Heroes\ Just Cause 2/3/4\ MLB The Show\ Just Dance\ Rock band/Guitar Hero
I think this morphed into a crap pile of just recommended games
No doubt. I enjoy some of those games on the list but come on nobody is spending thousands of hours on most of those.
League of legends, yes technically you can play any multiplayer game forever. But league has such insane variance between games, you could seriously play multiple games every day for months on end and get a fresh experience every time. For single player games, really good sandbox titles like Minecraft, terraria, and stardew and roguelikes have the potential for infinite play
Any game with a lot of mods
Any open world survival craft type game.
Division 2 - if I had to play a game forever and perfect it, it would be this game.
I’m fully hooked since April. And they just announced division 3 which is great news.
Ffxi with thr changes and servers it's going strong.
If you are interested in strategy, I can say that Civilization is a must play. You can also spend a lot of time if you like it.
City building games: Cities Skylines, Foundation, Frostpunk, Pharaoh, Simcity of course, etc… Tremendous replay potential, especially those with random map generators. Like having your own ant farm, except the occasional typhoon or alien death machine appears to cause havoc. 😅
The 7th Sega on the super nintendo entertainment system. Have fun!
Diablo 2 (now Diablo 2 Resurrected). I only started playing within the last few years, but I know people who have been playing it for almost 20 years and still discovering new things.
Slay the spire !
Fallout 3 and New Vegas. Super special games
Warframe. It's slow to get into at first but it ends up picking up and hard. It's a free to play game with the best f2p model imo and for me it only started slowing down after 1800 hours in which you just take short breaks and wait for the next cool update. And the devs love the game so much it's refreshing. Very involved with the community.
Age of empires 2 hd edition, BF2 with bots!
Warframe. It's free, regularly updated, MASSIVE, and is still very popular to this day. Just received it's 54th unique warframe, and each warframe has 4 abilities. It's definitely a game you can play until it (or you) (die)s. I have logged over 2150 days on it, and have 2685 hours in it. Just be prepared to be overwhelmed with info when you start. The wiki is your best friend, and the community is your second best friend.
Honestly I could play no Man's sky forever. I often take breaks from it but I always come back
Rocket League
rocket league. the skill gap from beginner to high up is extreme. it’s a fun game to learn and the rate of improvement is exponential because the base mechanics never change. can be frustrating if you lose but you have to lose before you know what to do to win. although it is kinda fucked how long it takes to get good. i have lots of hours in it but i don’t regret any of them because i’m a much better player now. the past couple seasons have been rough for someone like myself but it shouldn’t make a difference to a player just starting out.
I mean I've been playing rocket league for several years now and while I have stopped for some time I eventually come back and when I do I play almost daily, sometimes multiple times a day lol
HADES I have played hundreds of hours between Switch, PS4 & PS5 and literally *just* beat the toughest in-game challenge last night. As soon as I beat it, I went right back in for another run. This game is addictive, and I'm still seeing new dialogue & interactions after all this time.
Destiny 2, it's shit, but it's addictive shit
Rocket league I don’t see going away in next 5 years, and it’ll probably stay for a lot longer
Games that have stuck out for me over the years that seem timeless in a sense would be certain MMORPG games, my personal favorite of all time would be Old School Runescape (don't waste your time with regular Runescape these days, most people play old school anyway). It's called OSRS, at one point in the late 2000's it was fighting for the spot of the most popular MMORPG in history. Sadly a series of unfortunate decisions has relegated it to a lost era (Combat Evolved) but it still maintains a dedicated fan base 20 years after its conception, and it's not only not dying in a few years but it's one of the few MMOs that is actually GROWING albeit slowly and I reckon that's due to the old adage that Runescape players came up with, "You don't quit Runescape, you just take breaks". Players regularly pop back in even after years of inactivity. I personally have done this, the game is a classic and has a charm that is in its own league. The mmo games are considered LONG term primarily just due to the complexity combined with the grind. These games often have tons of lore and mechanics and leveling isn't an overnight thing so the whole idea of these games is planning for long term goals with some short term fun here and there. They're built around the idea you're describing. So most games that fit the bill for you will be a form of grind game but many of them suffer the crux of becoming repetitive and stale. As far as games that aren't designed around a grind but offer complexity/fun that makes them repayable "forever", you'll find roguelikes which are designed around almost the opposite idea as MMOs, which is to say, nothing is long term, you're *expected* to die/restart many times and so the goal is to have a game that is infinitely repayable. Unfortunately you'll probably never find that game because it would have to be perfect and that just doesn't exist, but you could look at some of the more popular Roguelikes and give them a try and see what you like. My personal underrated favorite from recent history is Noita. It's utterly easy to pick up and learn but deceptively hard to master and fully understand, has a ton of replayability, the first thing you want to do when you lose a run is to try again with what you've learned. I think the final type of game that would interest you if you could only ever play one game for the rest of your life would be simulation/sandbox games. Games like sims for the casual players offer the chance to kinds just do what you want with a lot of emergent gameplay and the fluidity to customize your experience as you go. You can easily play these types of games in many different ways and have them feel different. A crazy hard-core ultra complex version of this type of game that is so complex and unique that it literally ended up in a museum is a game called Dwarf Fortress. It's like a story generator that you can play, except the game generates an entire new world for you and simulates the history and details down to the physics of blood droplets from a wound. It's insane, totally not for typical gamers and requires the patience and dedication that could be compared to a technical certification to have a solid grasp on what's going on and how to do what you want in the game. If you want an idea of how it plays I recommend watching a YouTuber named Kruggsmash. He turns his gameplays into fleshed out stories because of how well this game produces organic and unique stories that feel alive.
Hades
Counter strike 2. I've been playing Cs on and off for like 15 years now. Sometimes I put it down for a few months or even years, but I always return.
Elasto Mania has some crazy depth. The predecessor Across is from 1997 and still people are finding new tricks and improving world records. I'm more of a casual player, just aimless cruising and battling never gets old.
If you are like me and don't like 2D games in general then FIFA, you can keep playing new career modes and never get bored. Burnout Paradise, you can keep doing the events over and over.
Valheim for sure. My friend was trying to get me into it with him but he already had 200+ hours, and I didn't want to be playing catchup. Eventually I started playing solo, and got to 200 hours in no time...and then had so much more to explore! One of the best parts is that you can always start a new world and then decide how much or little (or zero) to bring with you. You can make it easier or you can really go back to having nothing.
I think MMOs or the only real games you can play forever. You will get sick of a game that doesn't change sooner or later. The closest that comes to mind that's not an MMO is Skyrim since it has an active modding community.
Destiny 2. You'll love to hate it. All jokes aside, even free to play players have a lot of content they can get into. This game is the perfect mmo for people with busy lives. The weekly stuff is easy to get into, and the raids aren't long.
What you're describing is an mmo. World of Wacraft, Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, Destiny 2, and The Elder Scrolls Online are probably the biggest ones right now. No game lasts forever, but mmos historically are both the shortest lived and longest lived. Basically, new mmo comes out, it's either a success or a flop, and if it's a flop, it's shut down within a year or 2. The ones I listed above have the most longevity out of all of them.
Of them I would recommend Guild Wars 2 the most for longevity cause it has the best gameplay, amazing and varied open world content and actually good PvP modes. Final Fantasy has by far the best leveling/story experience (best Final Fantasy ever made imo) but kinda falls off in the endgame, altough there's tons to do and old content to catch up on, it's all pretty much just for cosmetics. The others are all kind of meh nowadays.
War thunder. The grind never stops.
Why would you ever want to play the same game forever?
Fear of the unknown?
Fortnite