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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Risk of Rain 2 and Robo Quest are probably up your ally because you like Ultra kill
But if you want to diversify genre, here are some that I would recommend
- Card Games - Slay the Spire (Its like a card game and rogue like combined)
- Rogue Like - Hades is currently one of the top tiers in rogue like dungeon crawler
- RPG - Baldurs Gate 3, even if you end up finishing the game, how you ended up finishing it is what makes it so replayable. Each character has their own stories for you to uncover. Larian’s other gem is Divinity Original Sin 2 too
- Sandbox Games - Minecraft of Terraria
- Arcade - Most arcade games are highly replayable because thats their whole selling point. Currently I am back to playing Temptest 4000
- Hack n Slash - Grimdawn, nuff said
What you are describing is essentially the roguelike/lite genre, lol. Search up some of that, see if anything looks fun.
Rimworld, Terraria, Minecraft, Satisfactory, basically sandbox games, where each playthrough is different.
Not sure about satisfactory, considering the map is always the same. So the only sources of randomness are starting at another location in the same map or playing differently yourself
Then just go for factorio. Randomly generated map and recources. Highly adjustable for dificulty and a LOT of mods that add to the game. Concidering that the dlc , that seems to be as complex as the Base Game, comes out in Oktober you have a good Kandidaten for infinite replayability
I also recommend folks check out Dyson Sphere Program, I’ve sunk many hundreds of hours into it at this point
If you don’t mind top down colony managers, rimworld is an absolute gem. The base game itself is infinitely replayable because every game is basically a story. Think dwarf fortress with graphics (well, df has graphics now but). Also incredibly easy to mod to customize or completely change your game experience.
I think factorio is one, even when you launch your rocket (I have more than 100 hours and I don’t think…) you still can restart in a new generated world and try do to it again in a better way.
dude, after you launch the rocket is where the real game begins. You either go for a megabase or you start a overhaul mod. Restarting vanilla from scratch doesn’t really make much sense.
Minecraft, especially with mods.
Roguelites in general. My favorite is FTL. Also has good mods.
FTL!! It’s hard as shit lol
Ftl is awesome I really like it. Eventually I got the multiverse mod which is really well done and adds more events and aliens and things
Rimworld would be my top suggestion, as others have noted.
I picked up Old World (excellent native Linux support BTW) during this summer sale and have not been able to put it down. If you’re a fan of Civilization style strategy games I’d highly recommend checking it out. I haven’t really enjoyed a Civ game since Civ 4, and Old World feels very similar but fresher and with less jank. it’s got a Crusader Kings style dynasty system with randomized events that adds a layer of role playing your leader and securing their dynasty through heirs you can train/influence.
As for the repeatability, Old World has tons. Each culture plays significantly differently, and each leader has different bonuses that encourage an interesting style of play. Games don’t play the same because of the mentioned event system, but also because learning new technologies is “randomized” as well. New techs are researched based off a selection of 4 drawn tech cards once you finish a previous technology. The card system makes it so you can’t just rush straight to archers and dominate the early game to snowball into a power house every game, but its not truly random so you can “game” the system in your favor to get the techs you want with the tools the game gives you through either unique leader powers, or specific governor roles for example.
The game is super deep while not being off puttingly complex.
Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead
Zombie survival roguelike. It’s free, open source, and a mature project.
For me, Noita. I don’t recommend it unconditionally, but for me that game will forever be the only permanent game in my library. I expect it’s possible that I could finish Elden Ring. I know I will never finish Noita.
Yep! Noita is a game I play again and aga.in. Despite sucking at it
Fallout: New Vegas, Caves of Qud, Project Zomboid, Minecraft, Terraria, Morrowind, Skyrim, Dwarf Fortress, Kenshi, Rimworld, Elden Ring, and so much more.
The detail in Kenshi is pretty amazing. I don’t normally get sucked into single player games, but the design really does give the impression of nearly unlimited freedom, every different starting scenario feels genuinely unique. The slave start particularly was a ton of fun.
It’s pretty amazing that it was designed by basically one guy. He was really efficient in how he chose what game elements to invest his limited development time into and clearly had a really strong vision. I hope he can get a few more devs onboard to develop a second one, I feel like even two or three other people would make so much more possible.
Absolutely, it’s one of the few games that genuinely give the player absolute freedom, but does so in a hand-crafted world with detailed lore and worldbuilding. It’s great.
Anything with procedurally generated levels, like roguelikes/roguelites. I can personally vouch for the longevity of Slay the Spire, for one specific example.
The binding of Isaac.
I’ve been playing it on and of since the flash game released 13 years ago.
For the most enduring single player experiences, you really should give some grand strategy games a try, like older Total War entries, Crusader Kings, Civilization, Swords of the Stars, etc. Stuff like Factorio or Cities Skylines can also become addictive, but none of these games is action oriented.
Also, Age of Empires 2. I haven’t played 4 yet, but I think it speaks volumes that, at least on steam, AoE2 has more players at any given time than 3+4 combined.
Ziggurat might be an interesting pick, as it’s a roguelike FPS with magic weapons, though it might feel super neutered compared to Ultrakill. Risk of Rain 2 is 3rd person and roguelike, so every run you start from scratch and enemies will keep spawning at certain intervals, but it’s a fine shooter
Fallout 4 might have a rather clunky shooting, but if you get into it, you can spend many, many hours blasting a variety of enemies, finding all sorts of places and weapons. Skyrim is a close second, while better played in 1st person, it’s medieval sword and sorcery.
