Favorite Sandbox-style game?

Game looks kinda fun. Sort of want.

Satisfactory is a hot new one. Still in early access but a lot of the streamers seem to enjoying it

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Satisfactory

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$30 for an early access game is a little troublesome for me.


FWIW I ended up getting space engineers. I feel like I can have some fun with it but it's a pain in the arse to start off doing the Drop Pod scenario.

Empyrion is a promising one also in early access, space themed, build your base, build ships from ground up. Incorporate all kinds of gadgets, electronics, circuits all with hunger and oxygen considerations. Planetary craft (almost forgot 1st one is motorcycle to build for initial scouting resources/locations), low orbit/local space, and hyper thrust ships for star travel. Factions, hostile flora and fauna. Very entertaining.

I got burned as my 1st night of playing one of the themed scenario starts, I recovered the damaged base, built a prefab hovercraft to get materials, and 1st aircraft, met some aliens and logged off. Next AM was major update that added logistics, factions, and weight constraints so everything I did was kaput. Logged in to the Aliens that were peaceful and passive and had my vehicle in their dock that night, to being very aggro and shooting before I could even materialize fully.

There's a big Steam Workshop of designs and schematics to use free too.

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I've been watching a guy stream Space Engineers and that looks pretty fun.

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I never played Space Engineers, but Kerbal is a massive time sinkhole if you're into all that.

(ETA: Most recently, I got pulled into Two Point Hospital's free weekend and they got me.)

For about a year I was spending my time playing Ark Survival evolved, because well who doesn't want to fight and tame a T-Rex and then ride it around like a land yacht? The game has a deep but quirky building system, boss battles on each map, tech trees, creature taming and breeding and a lot of untimely death. The multiplayer PVP community for the game is incredibly toxic but the single player world is good in that minecraft sort way that it's great fun until you run out of things to do / build. It was a nice way to relax after work.

I played on PS4 and it was alright but If anyone decides to try it be warned the game is pretty poorly optimized for every platform, so big boy PC or lowered graphical settings. Also the Nintendo switch version is not advised.

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Everytime I see one of those games I think they look so cool then I play them and realize how much grinding/work is involved with obtaining anything.

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Luckily the game includes sliders for everything. The official settings it would take a creature hours to days to tame up, I ended up setting it so the longest tame was about 5 minutes once you knocked a creature out. Raising a baby giga (gigantic T-Rex) takes over a week on official settings, I ended up with them hitting maturity in just 5 hours. You can change everything including the amount of resources you get from harvesting.

Unfortunately the sliders in the settings are very poorly explained and you almost need a team of engineers to work it all out. Thankfully though I just found some nerds on the internet who already worked it all out and I copied their settings.

Still the biggest risk reward in gaming for me was flying into the volcanic trench and stealing my first Wyvern egg. Nothing more terrifying than looking behind you and seeing 6 angry dragons coming for you like winged linebackers of death.