I’ve been playing Conan Exiles, a survival crafting game that’s been out for several years but still receives regular major updates.
It’s a bit generic - there’s little I haven’t already seen in another survival game - but it’s more polished than most due to having a major developer behind it. There’s a lot of content, bespoke animations for nearly every weapon, and the base building is a delight. Exploration is also great due to diverse biomes and the game’s climbing system, which also lets you grab the wall while falling and slowly slide to a halt - this looks and feels great and turns avoiding falling damage from a headache into a cinematic moment. It’s not parkour, but it tugs the same strings.
The game has an unfortunate tendency to crash when messing with companion inventories, though that may be due to a Steam Workshop mod I’m using (one I can’t bring myself to remove because it makes inventory and companion management so much easier). Aside from that hiccup - which only triggers once every few hours, which is tolerable for me - and knocked out enemies occasionally falling through the ground (you need to drag them back to your base to recruit them as NPCs), the game has been rock-solid.
I’m somewhat tempted to buy the new Dune game by the same devs, but I’ve heard mixed things about the solo experience.
I second this as a sandbox builder game. Self hosted a server and played with my wife for a few months. I feel like I barely scratched the full content of the game. Base building and taming/companions really is a delight. Especially building a full fortress with all the “staff” for the crafting stations.
The quality of life features around base building are sublime. Being able to upgrade structures in-place and freely move stations and chests around has ruined most other base building games for me. Inventory management and crafting aren’t great, but I can count on one hand the number of games that do those right (and at least there are mods to fix the worst of it).
The one thing I dislike about companions is how many bad ones you end up with. Especially with taming - a 20-30% chance at best of raising an elite tame means my bases are littered with regular hyenas/bears/rhinos who wouldn’t survive if they accompanied me. And I’m only just now leaving the desert - I can only imagine how many reject animals I’ll have by endgame!
Luckily with humans you can see what class and level they are before deciding to capture them, and there’s a dungeon filled with medium-tier recruits right in the starting area. It’s nice that making a full working base isn’t restricted to late game like it is in other games.
I’ve been playing Conan Exiles, a survival crafting game that’s been out for several years but still receives regular major updates.
It’s a bit generic - there’s little I haven’t already seen in another survival game - but it’s more polished than most due to having a major developer behind it. There’s a lot of content, bespoke animations for nearly every weapon, and the base building is a delight. Exploration is also great due to diverse biomes and the game’s climbing system, which also lets you grab the wall while falling and slowly slide to a halt - this looks and feels great and turns avoiding falling damage from a headache into a cinematic moment. It’s not parkour, but it tugs the same strings.
The game has an unfortunate tendency to crash when messing with companion inventories, though that may be due to a Steam Workshop mod I’m using (one I can’t bring myself to remove because it makes inventory and companion management so much easier). Aside from that hiccup - which only triggers once every few hours, which is tolerable for me - and knocked out enemies occasionally falling through the ground (you need to drag them back to your base to recruit them as NPCs), the game has been rock-solid.
I’m somewhat tempted to buy the new Dune game by the same devs, but I’ve heard mixed things about the solo experience.
I second this as a sandbox builder game. Self hosted a server and played with my wife for a few months. I feel like I barely scratched the full content of the game. Base building and taming/companions really is a delight. Especially building a full fortress with all the “staff” for the crafting stations.
The quality of life features around base building are sublime. Being able to upgrade structures in-place and freely move stations and chests around has ruined most other base building games for me. Inventory management and crafting aren’t great, but I can count on one hand the number of games that do those right (and at least there are mods to fix the worst of it).
The one thing I dislike about companions is how many bad ones you end up with. Especially with taming - a 20-30% chance at best of raising an elite tame means my bases are littered with regular hyenas/bears/rhinos who wouldn’t survive if they accompanied me. And I’m only just now leaving the desert - I can only imagine how many reject animals I’ll have by endgame!
Luckily with humans you can see what class and level they are before deciding to capture them, and there’s a dungeon filled with medium-tier recruits right in the starting area. It’s nice that making a full working base isn’t restricted to late game like it is in other games.