Play Luanti or Vintage Story

Fuck Microslop

ughhh

Unionize NOW

Lame

Fuck Discord

Remember you can always press ? and type in a description to look up a command!

Absolutely!

https://github.com/I-am-Erk/CDDA-Tilesets

(these are in base game)

Clanworld seems worth checking out too as a bit cozier alternative.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1700870/Clanfolk/

The Isle looks fascinating.

Monster Hunter Rise or World are superb alternatives with tons of content.

In a weird way I would recommend Tales Of Maj’Eyal, Tangledeep, Golden Krone Hotel or Shattered Pixel Dungeon <-- free and open source as good ways to dive into this kind of game, and have more fun learning the mechanics, Caves Of Qud overwhelms me too which might make my main suggestion sound insane but shrugs…

https://store.steampowered.com/app/259680/Tales_of_MajEyal/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/628770/Tangledeep/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/497800/Golden_Krone_Hotel/

https://shatteredpixel.com/

Honestly my primary recommendation is Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, yes it is also ridiculously deep but it isn’t balanced to be a balls to the wall dungeon crawler, you can approach it however you want and modulate difficulty/complexity through your player choices though you can always get unlucky. CDDA actually isn’t that “hard” if you don’t take big risks.

Why not Project Zomboid? CDDA’s world is just so rich there is no way Project Zomboid will catch up and if I want realtime and multiplayer Endgame Road To Salvation or Survivalist Invisible Strain compliment CDDA better in my opinion.

https://cataclysmdda.org/

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cataclysm-dark-days-ahead

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1264920/Endgame_Road_To_Salvation/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1054510/Survivalist_Invisible_Strain/

If you want a more focused experience where dying doesn’t end your run try the superb Sky Islands mode included in the base CDDA game now.

https://github.com/TGWeaver/CDDA-Sky-Islands

Since you have played Luanti and Vintage Story I think it is worth throwing the open source game Veloren in here too. It has a very fun gliding mechanic.

https://veloren.net/

A pretty chaotic mix but I tried to imagine games that would deeply reward close engagement over long stretches, a game like Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is a game you can come back to again and again for the rest of your life!

eeew

“already”?

“Blah blah blah China is worse though! blah blah blah!!” - people who spend their time here concern trolling about tankies

I am not saying the culture of AAA studios isn’t toxic as hell, but the size difference does create the potential for stability a smaller studio just physically cannot have even if its culture is far better.

Hell yeah thank you!

Video games are more than part of our culture, they extend into areas far beyond just entertainment.

Games are a way of understanding dynamic, hopelessly interdependent systems whether in an attempt to predict how dynamic situations with multiple actors with differing objectives will turn out or better understand history as a living dynamic thing that happened to occur one way (see Cole Werhle’s board game Pax Pamir 2e or John Company as perfect examples of this).

The evolution of good game design and the general progress of most games getting better UI systems over time as designers figure out how to best represent complex situations and choices to players is also FAR more important than just a nice consequence of iterative design, it is the groundwork for good architecture in the software realm in terms of how software is experienced by humans.

I wish that was how it would work, but we have to step all the way back here and consider how there is a fundamental difference from an employment perspective, from a target product perspective and from a budget perspective between indie game companies and large boring game companies.

I love indie games, I don’t play AAA games really, but you have to recognize the crucial role larger game companies play at providing consistent employment for entry level game development jobs… those workers can go on and found indie game companies and make their best games fine… but what about before that? What if you want to develop awesome video game but you have a family? You really want to fuck around with going it alone as an indie game company?

From the other side, even in the sanest possible world are indie game companies the right tool to craft highly iterative cinematic sports games with? … that sports fans will want to play?