Abiotic Factor is an interesting crafting game that takes place in a science facility during a mysterious emergency. I’d recommend playing with friends, but I think it’d be fun solo, too.

I also had fun with Subnautica, though that one is a few years old now. I have not tried the sequel, but I’ll probably pick it up some day. It’s a game where you have crash-landed on an alien ocean world, and you have to explore to make better tools to try and escape.

I’ve been playing Hardspace Shipbreaker lately, where your character is someone who disassembles spaceships. The fun of the game is moving around in zero-g and safely take stuff apart without setting off the nuclear reactor, or explosively decompressing a ship right next to you. You upgrade your tools as you do more jobs.

There’s a popular indie game right now called Megabonk; if you like rogue-light games, it’s a fun one. Avoid waves of monsters and upgrade your character by picking the best of three random power-ups as your level goes up.