Mods - I am not sure how to read the rule against game suggestions. If it means no asking for suggestions please just wipe the post. No harm, no foul.
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Fall is usually my busiest time of year preparing for winter in our little forest home. But I have been given orders from the doctors to basically take bedrest for up to 3 months, but I’m allowed to be sitting up… So books and games are basically all that is on the menu.
I enjoy automation games, tower defense, survival/building games, and exploration games.
I dislike ‘souls-like’ experiences where combat is tight and requires perfect timing. In fact in most games where combat can be disabled I usually do that.
My top games of all time would be factorio, minecraft, WoW/FFXIV (yeah… i know. But they count as one), Dyson sphere program, vampire survivors (and many of that type), and gemcraft type TD games.
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Some games that have been recommended and tried, but don’t work for me right now or I have already finished:
mindustry, satisfactory, valheim, no man’s sky, alchemy factory, luanti, terraria.
Thanks in advance for your time. Much appreciated.


I really want to enjoy it, but that game, and dwarf fortress are just too much for me. I just get overloaded with information and I don’t enjoy it.
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 dungeon crawler, so you can approach it however you want though you can always get unlucky. CDDA actually isn’t that “hard” if you don’t take big risks.
Why not Project Zomboid? CDDA is just so rich 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
Is there any way to play CDDA without the ascii graphics?
Absolutely!
https://github.com/I-am-Erk/CDDA-Tilesets
(these are in base game)
Thanks! Heard about this game several times now but kept getting distracted by other stuff. Gonna give it a try!
Remember you can always press ? and type in a description to look up a command!
It’s definitely not for everyone, but once you begin to understand the systems there’s nothing else like it.