I recently booted up Half-Life 2 to replay it. I have played the absolute shit out of this game before, so 60% of it just feels like a drag to me now. It was such an amazing game but it’s sort of spoiled for me after I’ve played it too much.
I also discovered ULTRAKILL a few months ago. I feel like I could play that game forever. It has tons of content, weapon combinations and higher difficulties with different enemy behaviour.
Do any of you have more game suggestions like Ultrakill? A really replayable singleplayer game.
!!BTW I don’t mean online multiplayer games or games similar to candy crush!!
Tons. There’s an entire roguelike genre built around this; some of my favorites are Vagante and Streets of Rogue. There are games with procedurally generated worlds like Terraria, RimWorld, Dwarf Fortress, and Factorio. There are RPGs like Baldur’s Gate 3 that have so many ways to spec your characters and so many permutations of how events could unfold based on what you did that you’re unlikely to see them all.
Another great roguelike is Hades, which may or may not have dominated my video game attention for the last 8 months.
I didn’t personally care for it, but I know I’m in the minority. In fact, one of the reasons I didn’t care for it is because it felt far less replayable than many of its peers. Even Zagreus will call out “the butterfly room”, because there are so few permutations to see.
Hrm, you’re not wrong but Hades also exemplifies why quality wins over quantity when in replayability.
I’m sure it would if I thought more highly of it.
Lmao I love Hades but this is such a sick burn, I’m stealing it for next time someone tries to convince me some shlocky k-drama is peak kino.
I do hope Hades 2 ups the variability of the encounters more, you’re absolutely right about endgame being a bit weak for a roguelike, even with the different weapons.
Back in the day I played Hack until I noticed the sun had risen many times.
+1 for Factorio.
At one point I was playing so much Factorio that I started seeing conveyor belts and assembly machines in my sleep
Tossing Song of Syx onto the pile of games. Even if you don’t care for the art style, the game is immensely deep, and quite frankly, addictive.
If I had to choose a single game to play for the rest of time, it would be Dwarf Fortress. There’s just so much variety in its world generation and how the game can be played that if I was limited to just that one game, I would still have things to do.
And the awesome part of DF is that each time you start over (on the same world) you just add more to its history and the story continues. Losing is definitely fun when keeping that in mind.
Three of my favorite roguelikes are cataclysm dda, caves of qud and cogmind, recommend them to everyone
Have you checked out Tales of Maj’Eyal (tome)? Very highly praised roguelike, and lots of reviews consider it the roguelike.
What’s the hook to each one? I hear people mention Caves of Qud a lot, but the low-fi graphics aren’t grabbing my attention on their own.
All of these are classic roguelikes, a genre of games which frequently aren’t much to look at. The tradeoff for the looks is that they offer vast depth and complexity… and (usually) permadeath and a learning curve that’s more of a cliff. I recommend watching some yt videos about any roguelike you want to learn more about, just so a fan can explain the appeal and show off all the basics.
That said:
Caves of Qud - actually one of the prettier classic roguelikes, if you can belive it. You’re a traveller in a strange and unique world of vast salt deserts, jungles, and the titular caves. There is a ton of flavorful, semi-randomly generated history (especially the ever-important tales of the sultans) and cultures, so every run feels different. There is technically a main plot, but you can just ignore it and go exploring - it’s a sandbox experience. The best parts, to me, are the aforementioned flavour, the tactical combat (that can get incredibly chaotic, with screen-warping effects going off every turn), the build diversity, and delving too greedily and too deeply into the caves.
Cogmind - haven’t played this one, but it’s on a list. You’re a robot. You’re building yourself from parts as you go, fighting other robots and stealing their parts.
CDDA - one of my faves, but definitely not something I’d recommend as an intro to this genre. You’re a survivor in a zombie apocalypse. Go do things and don’t get bitten. It’s a sandbox - survive as long as you can, achieve a self-set goal. The distinguishing feature of CDDA is how realistic it tries to be - crafting is very complex, you need to track your thirst, nutrition, and sleep, you can easily get sick or get your arm broken, the zombies can track you by sight, noise, and lingering scent… My favourite part is surviving long enough to build elaborate apocalypse death mobiles, Mad Max style.
Minecraft?
Hard to do better than the OG endless sandbox.
Definitely was my first thought. I think that I’ve spent way more time on that game than I’d like to admit.
Even if one gets bored of the game itself, there’s a practically infinite number of mods and community content out there. New game modes like skyblock, mods that turn it into an RPG with magic systems, mods that make it an in-depth factory building game, mods that take you to new realms and thousands of items to discover… There’s a lot to enjoy.
Adventure maps are also fairly underrated. There are tons of community-made maps that can turn it into a different game. Notably, there was a huge Hogwarts campaign with quests and spells that turns it into a harry potter game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKcsoE5X4fc
OG endless sandbox is Dwarf Fortress.
slowly retracts into bushes
FTL. It’s a simple fun cheap game. Steam says I’ve played this for over 3,000 hours!
FTL is so much fun. Finally beating by first run felt amazing.
RimWorld. shit can go crazy with the mods a available or just vanilla.
I dunno, I only have 3417 hours played in Rimworld, I’m not sure that qualifies as infinitely replayable. /s
Don’t give up! You’re close to finishing the tutorial!
Obligatory Rimworld shout out.
I’ve dumped note hours into this game than the rest of my game library combined.
Rimworld is a great answer. Every game us different, and you can take it different places with mods as well.
A significant number of comments have mentioned Rimworld, guess I’ll install it. Thanks for your recommendations!
Dwarf Fortress, if you like rimworld but prefer gigantic learning curves
Minecraft, Hades, Solitaire, Civ, Gunfire Reborn, Vampire Survivor, Vampire Hunters, and Placid Plastic Duck Simulator,
I almost exclusively play single player games and honestly Elden Ring has been a huge time sink. There’s just something about mastering it that is satisfying. It has online features but they’re not required.
Combat also varies heavily between weapon types and equipment weight. You have to approach combat completely differently with different gear, so you can play it again with less of a feel of exploration (probably not none; it’s huge), but completely different battles.
Doom and all the other doom clones? Prodeus, dusk, forgive me father, there’s a lot
Xcom, xcom2
Welcome back, commander.
X-COM with the Long War mod.
Rainworld, Cult of the Lamb, Slay the Spire, Inscryption
For me, it’s Grim Dawn, honestly. (And Diablo before that) 10 classes to choose 2 from means a lot of new skills and builds. Tons of random loot, but also recipes to make and collect.
I mostly play with mods now. Grim Internals, full rainbow, some rep and exp gain ones, and the Item Assistant. I play solo, and have enjoyed every hour of it!
One I haven’t seen mentioned (at a glance at least) is Noita.
Getting the “false ending” is achievable with some effort, but I dare you to actually finish the game. And as far as replayability, you’ll be hard pressed to have two runs that go the same. The amount of Butterfly Effect in this game from all the combinations and systems is straight up insane.
I really can’t recommend it enough.
I’ve played a lot of RimWorld, and I don’t feel anywhere near done
Rimworld, especially with mods is a game I can always come back to. Such an amazing game.
Some single player games I’ve replayed often that aren’t roguelikes would be…
Dishonored Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2 Prey 2017 Hitman, but specifically the World of Assassination games Bethesda RPGs Grand Theft Auto/Rockstar, specifically for me 5 or Red Dead Redemption Dark Souls (I replay it on offline mode predominantly anyway) Dying Light Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor/War Halo MCC campaigns Mount & Blade series Katana ZERO Vanquish/other platinum games
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I think you dropped these.
Some incredible titles here, friend. Respect! I really need to play Knights of the Old Republic again.
That’s one that I was hesitant to include, because I feel like it’s more to do with my love of the era Bioware made, and nostalgia than it is a promotion of how the game holds up nowadays. But I personally love KoTOR!
+1 for Katana ZERO
Hades
