I like community builders and games that I can keep a world for years and grow, watch it evolve. I enjoy Rimworld. ARK evolved series is good.
Bonus if it’s multiplayer capable LAN and not online.
Oxygen not included is nice but mentally taxing sometimes. I prefer laid back chill games with economy and farming. 2d or 3d doesn’t matter. I don’t mind trying indie games. Survival based games are nice. I’m not super pick and choose.
Give me your greatest joy in game form. I’ve heard Stardew Valley is good. I tried it, reminds me of a gameboy game. I could not get into the game. My character kept falling asleep like 14 times in a day.
OpenTTD!!!
Also Satisfactory.
X4 is an economy simulator masquerading as a flight simulator. It also goes on sale regularly!
Tux Kart ! ftw
Mewgenics! It’s weird, it’s funny, the music is top tier.
If you’re into strategy I can highly recommend some TBS Games (Turn Based Strategy) in no particular order:
- Heroes of Might and Magic 3, 5 and the new Olden Era
- Civilization 5 and 6
- Age of Wonders
- Battle Brothers
- Old World
- Songs of Conquest
All of them got something to do with building up and watching grow but in a more “laid back”, strategic way 😎
Factorio.
Cities: skylines
This one doesn’t even require Proton, since it’s Linux native. It’s also a very chill game.
Minecraft, especially modpacks like that of FTB
I love sky blocks. Currently playing ATM10 To The Sky.
+1 to modded minecraft. The Create mod and its many many many addons would fit right in with OPs tastes I think. A team of modders even made a mod adding physics that allow for building planes, cars, and more. It’s pretty wild.
said mod adding physics is single-handedly making an august 2024 hotfix update the most popular minecraft version
(Java Edition of course. There’s several different launchers you can choose from after purchasing a legitimate forever copy of Minecraft, but PrismLauncher is the one I use and it’s a native Qt application.)
If you haven’t played it, Terraria. One of my all time favorite games, after all those years. Should also be really cheap on sales.
I’m trying to persuade my partner to play it with me at the moment. He seems open to it, but experiences inertia around starting a new game.
Mindustry a defense strategy game, you collect minerals and conquer unexplored territories
If you like Rimworld the obvious suggestion from me is Dwarf Fortress. It’s on steam but if you’re not sure I believe there’s a free version with the original ascii graphics on the bay12 games website (at least there was when I last played).
Also Factorio might interest you, but for a laid back experience you’d want to turn down biters (mostly disabling expansions). May be mentally taxing.
Another comment mentions modded minecraft, which gets a +1 from me. Though if you want a “forever world” I’d suggest playing unmodded (save for some client side graphics / QoL if desired), as there’s at least some guarantee you can keep the world as the game gets updated. If you do go modded though I’d suggest using prismlauncher and browsing through premade modpacks on modrinth and curseforge. P.S. if you don’t already own the game somehow you’ll want java edition, not bedrock
Project zomboid, once build 42 finally comes out that is. Shouldn’t be more than a few more months right? Haha
That game has consumed multiple glorious years of my life. Amazing game with an amazing modding community.
Vintage Story is worth looking into imho.
Do you need to tinker to make it work? I remember reading that the creator had no plans to put it on Steam.
It has native Linux support, works out of the box for me using KDE Fedora 43.
It is written in C#/.Net, which depending on your Linux system can be a bit of a hassle to set up (like me on Gentoo).
That said, the Flatpak version is incredibly easy to get up and running no matter which distro you use, which is what I opted for.
I’ve always been a fan of hearts if you can get 4 people together. If not, rummy or bridge? I guess it depends how offline you mean.
He said “linux friendly”. How many linux users do you know with THREE irl friends?
Lol. For those rare Linux users with three friends, Deeprock Galactic is also a delight on SteamDeck.
Satisfactory
Hundreds of hours in Linux played, can confirm it’s great. Also Coffee Stain studio just dropped the 1.2 update yesterday.
I dunno if I’d call it Linux friendly. It runs under Proton moderately well, but it feels like it’s still not quite as good as it was on Windows. And there’s no official support.
I’ve put hundreds of hours in on Linux and completed the game once. I’ve done almost everything there is to do in the game without issue. It’s never felt like a sub par experience.
Satisfactory is fantastic on SteamDeck, since their big update (mid last year?) to get SteamDeck verified.
