Hi. Usually I play RPGs but I’m under a lot of stress right now and was thinking I could use a nice, relaxing sandbox-style PC game to play around with.
I enjoy strategy/puzzle games and resource-management games but I am a little bit stupid with these things. I enjoyed Sim City 4 but often find it to be challenging to the point of frustration. So I was looking at something like Civ V and thought that may be way out of my league. My Aunt got obsessed with it for a while and said it eventually began to feel like a job.
I know Sims 4 is out there, but appears to suck according to most reviews. I enjoyed Sims 3 quite a bit.
Things like Animal Crossing/Harvest Moon are appealing but again, these are not very highly rated on PC.
I’m still pretty pissed off about Spore.
I’d probably also enjoy any Myst-style puzzle game. I recall playing the beginning of the original Myst way back in the day but I exploded and died pretty early on. My favorite puzzle game of all time is Lemmings.
For what it’s worth, Civ V can be played by facerolling the keyboard on the easiest level.
It sounds as though you’re looking for an open-ended world/city/town sim or something similar when you say “sandbox” then, right? Because most people would include games like Just Cause 2 or Saints Row the Third in there but I don’t think that’s what you’re looking for.
Another option along these lines is Civilization Revolution. It’s a pared-down version of the Civilization games, not at all taxing, and quite quick and fun, obligatory mention of my opinion goes here. I have it for the PS3 and occasionally dust it off for a quick go at world domination. Much quicker and easier to jump into than the more complex Civ builds.
I know it’s multi-console, but unfortunately I don’t see it listed for PC. Their main page does mention iPad, and it’s available on iOS and Windows phones. I realize you specified PC games, but I include this on the off-chance it’s off some use to you.
The first two games that came to mind when you said “sandbox” were the latest Sim City and Kerbal Space Program, but the first one still bogs you down in details like Sim City 4 did, and Kerbal Space Program is a bit heavy on the math and physics - to paraphrase Mr. Burns from the second Simpsons Halloween Special, “It’s not brain surgery; it’s rocket science!”
Here’s a thought: Trainz. It’s open ended and, well, it’s trains, so there’s as much (or as little) “cutely” factor as you want.
Having difficult with Sim City 4 is pretty much par for the course.
Kerbal Space Program is difficult at first. If you don’t go into it with the attitude of laughing at your failures and learning from them, you’ll get discouraged. But if you do go into it with that attitude, it’s great.
Construction and management:
Banished (pastoral building of a village)
Anno (any in the series, 2070 is the most recent one)
Puzzle:
Stealth bastard deluxe (smart, sharp)
Osmos (abstract puzzler that draws on sciences, can feel meditative)
Braid (painting-like aesthetics and relaxing music)
Of these, I think Osmos and Banished might be best. Osmos has a free demo on Steam. Banished is 20$ but you can try it for 0$ if you are imaginative.
Actually, I see that Stealth Bastard Deluxe is 2$ now and until 15 September on Steam. That’s probably one of the most worthwhile purchase anyone can make this year. You and anyone reading this should at least give it a try for the price of a coffee.
As far ask I can tell, KSP only has to be as math and physics heavy as you let it. You can bash together ridiculous bodges and ROFL at the hilarious failures that result, especially since Kerbals seem remarkably durable.
Ok, if you want successful missions, some math is required. But I think the tools are all there to make it not so onerous. It’s not as if you’ll have to break out slide rules and trajectory tables.
Besides, Orion engines! Ride into the sky on a trail of multi-kiloton fission explosions! How could that not be relaxing and massively enjoyable?
The ultimate sandbox game is Minecraft–have you tried it out? On a PC, you’ll need a browser open to the Minecraft Wiki to learn how to do basic recipes, since there’s pretty much no in-game help, but once you get past the first few recipes, you’ll refer very rarely to the wiki. It deserves every scrap of praise it’s gotten, an absolutely phenomenal game–and if you don’t want to deal with fighting, there’s creative mode that just allows you to futz around and make whatever you’d like.
For sheer fun, though, I’ll give the edge to Terraria. It has more fighting and fewer options for building, but it’s still a great game for exploration and tinkering around in.
BOth of these games are different from the sandbox games you mention, but if you’ve never tried them before, they’re a ton of fun. I’ve put well over a hundred hours into each, and I rarely put more than a dozen hours into a game.
A really good online puzzle game with a little bit of sandbox element to it: Fantastic Contraption 2. The goal is to build a device that can move a shape into a goal space; the solutions are open-ended, and it’s very satisfying to finally solve some of the harder levels.
I tried it on iOS and I was underwehelmed, though I have since come to understand that the iOS version blows donkey balls in comparison to the original game.
I’ll look into it. I’ll admit I’m a little stressed out that you can die. Do you think the sandbox mode is as fun as the adventure mode?
I haven’t played much Banished but I haven’t seen anyone call it a casual experience. More of a “watch your villagers starve despite all your best efforts” simulator.
I don’t like the “creative” mode very much, but plenty of people do. The penalty for dying is pretty low: you drop your stuff. If you remember where you died, you can go get it, and if you’ve got a chest somewhere that you can store your non-essential goods, it’s not so bad, although you might cuss up a storm the one time you dig down straight into lava.
Terraria has a lighter penalty for dying: you lose half the money you’re carrying (I think that’s it, anyway). Again, you can store your money in a chest back home, and then the penalty for dying is trivial.
Terraria regularly goes on sale for $2.50 or thereabouts, so if you watch for sales, there’s little risk in getting it.
Also, in Minecraft, it’s possible to play in a conservative manner: make a bed as early as you can, and stay above ground as much as you can, sleeping at night. You won’t build lots of metal stuff, but if you want to be a farmer, that’s fine: you can get big herds of sheep and cows and chickens, make fences, build houses, plant wheat, etc. all without any metal. Monsters only appear aboveground at night, and if you sleep as soon as the sun goes down, the risk of death is extremely low.
Obligatory mention of the Ur cutesy city builder : the *Impressions *line of games, starting with **Caesar **all the way to Rise of the Middle Kingdom.
I wholeheartedly vouch for the latter, which is the best of them all IMO, but **Zeus **is also fun, as is **Pharaoh+Cleopatra **(though that one does involve some non-intuitive crap when it comes to optimizing cities, in particular to avoid noble houses popping all over the place and torpedo your manpower willy-nilly). Caesar III… hasn’t aged well, managing walkers is an enormous PITA and you wind up making city plans that make no sense and look like crap. No idea about Caesar IV, it had bad press at release so I never played it.
Those games are at the same time more ostensibly simple than the SimCity line (won’t have to deal with sewage or traffic jams), but their intuitiveness is deceptive - there’s quite a bit of complexity in managing walkers, optimizing supply chains and so on. And Feng Shui in RotMK.
The **Anno **series is also fun, relaxing too. I haven’t played the whole line but Anno 1470 was pretty interesting. Anno 2070 seemed even more my cup of tea… but it chugged too much to be playable on my machine despite its relatively decent specs for its time (2Gb RAM, Core2 3.17 GHz, Radeon 5780)
**Tropico **can get old fast, but 4/5 are worth a look.
I played **Banished **a little bit, but it’s a bit *too *open-ended/sandboxy a city builder for my tastes. Like, OK, my village can support itself throughout the year, population trickles in, resources are no problem… now what ? Do I just… look at it and make it prettier, what ?
In a completely different style you’ve got The Movies - half of the game is managing your Hollywood lot & movie sets, pampering high-maintenance actors, marketing your flicks and so on ; the other (non mandatory) half is fucking around with Babby’s First Machinima. It’s pretty fun, particularly if you’re the creative type.
Okay, this is going to sound dumb, but I’m looking for something that will cost me at least $20. The reason for that is I’m trying to get myself excited about a number of stressful tasks I have to do by earning dollars toward a reward (the game.) So the less instantly I can gratify myself with it, the better.
Now. These are all fantastic suggestions and I greatly appreciate the input. A lot of these look really interesting.
Please disregard the last comment, as it just occurred to me I can force myself to earn the $20 and then just spend $2.50 if I am so inclined.
This… looks really freaking cool. Game rankings gives the base game 85%, which is pretty good, but the Deep Ocean expansion is rated 91%. It sounds pretty complex perhaps to the point of frustration, but the uniqueness of the world is exciting enough to make me want to give it a shot.
Anno 2070 is 30$.
You might look up Anno 2070 and look at its description tabs. One of them is “city builder” and it’ll take you to a list of city builders and management games.
Tropico 5, Cities in motion 2, Prison Architect and Maia all fit the bill and are worth checking out.
It becomes a logistics game of “I produce this much of item A in that island and then ship it to that island where it get turns into item B and then item B is shipped to that other island so I can keep that class of residents to get at the better tech level”. I wouldn’t say it’s frustrating so much as a bit overwhelming past a certain point.
