Puzzle Pirates, frankly. Made by people who knew what they were doing, were extremely talented, independent, although eventually tried to hook onto Sega as publisher, almost killed the game and then re-purchased the game from Sega to continue as “re-indie” devs. Still going to this day with a stable player base of a few hundred. The game itself is very clearly hand-crafted and every one of the (few) developers left their mark on it. Feels completed and polished.
A videogame that was made with complete love and devotion to the medium, made with talent and sincerity, and is a pinnacle of everything it stands, something that will stand the test of time…
And nobody mentioned Stardew Valley? I spent too long looking for it and didn’t find a single mention of it. Absolute mastery of its genre, an incredible amount of dedication spent by the developer listening to the fans, and I can’t imagine it not still holding up 10 years from now, or even 20 years from now.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is great, I love it, but there were so many performance issues with the game even with top tier hardware, and the game was borderline unplayable for others due to these issues. I have a little bias since my save didn’t sync across devices with the steam cloud and I have to start all over. Love the game, but I just can’t believe Stardew Valley isn’t even mentioned.
Terraria I feel would be closer as stardew valley is a one man job. Terraria grew as a vision that hasn’t really strayed beyond, but every update instead chisels the stone more. It is a game that took castlevania/mario inspirations and honed it into a perfect conception of 2d sidescrollers but with a liberty. (Akin to stardew being the first real open farming sim)
Redigit did amazing on the original SMBX fangame. Basically took the concept, and removed constraints. You can see the differences in development ethos as new people came on and really created a diverse game. It is so groundbreaking in their conformity that most can only compare to Minecraft, something essentially extradimensional to terraria.
Imagine being so baller you get compared to a game that puts you in control of shaping the world around you. When terraria is a game that predominantly shapes you around the world. Eventually even adding lore to these shapes it forms out of you.
Are you the summoner? The fisher? The knight? The archer? The farmer?
You will be all at some point in your journey of improvement. You will don every hat and for it you will be able to reflect back on your next life and proceed with new knowledge. The Belmont’s curse is never over, and this is our only solace.
I kinda feel like Stardew is incomplete, I want to know more about the world, the lore. I also wish that I could have more time in a day to complete what I set out to do.
Not every game needs an endless depth of lore that only those without jobs or have other things that fill up their days can dive into. Stardew Valley is a farming simulator, it doesn’t need hundreds or thousands of years of history for you to study up on, and thank the dieties it doesn’t. It meets the prompt provided in the original post.
Not bagging on people who enjoy deep lore in games, you do you, but I only get about 1-3 hours a week to play so that shit is not for me anymore. I need a game I can very easily pick up, get some shit done, and be okay putting it back down again before not too much time is up.
You can add layers to the lore; Minecraft as the first layer, Mass Effect as the second and Warhammer 40k as last. It takes as much time as the last though. But it doesn’t go the extent of all of those. I think Mass Effect did pretty well in that regard
You might be interested to know that concernedape’s new game haunted chocolatier will be set in the same world.
Baldur’s Gate 3
A lot of folks are listing their favorite games but this is the one that truly fits.
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Unusually long development time by a studio known for DnD-simmiliar RPG games getting the next installation for the series that defined the genre.
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Cast voice actors for several years, ones that are still playing their characters on a variety of platforms.
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Just chock filled references to DnD lore, cute in-jokes, and faithful updates on old characters.
Everyone involved clearly loved it!
It got people not previously interested in DND to actually enjoy DND.
Also, as a literal interpretation, it occurs over 3 arcs.
Unusually long development time
No joke, I installed the open-beta/pre-release years ago, played for a bit, and uninstalled it. When the actual release dropped, I had the most intense déjà vu about it all because I forgot that had even happened. I had to go back to my Steam library to puzzle it all back together.
Part of the reason development took so long was due to them using early release for the right reasons. They listened to the player base and changed the game based on feedback from the fans
The real question is what is Larian’s equivalent to Peter Jackson’s “Meet the Feebles”?
Divinity: Dragon Commander, duh.
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As far as labors of love go, Stardew Valley is probably the most current example. People paid for this thing years ago, but Concerned Ape keeps adding new features anyway. The retro graphics give this thing a timeless quality out of the box, so it already looks “dated” - this hasn’t stopped the robust player community around it. We’ll probably see this game stay relevant for a long time.
And that’s before you start talking about modding the game.
The amount of mods for this game is insane. From simple QoL stuff through to full expansions.
No replay of the game ever has to be the same.
Do people ever do total conversion modifications anymore? Are there any Stardew Valley mods that turn it into something totally different?
I have no idea. Only recently tried an expansion mod for the first time. I never even considered conversion mods might be a thing for this game.
I was just reminiscing on how people used to do stuff like that for the early FPSes. And honestly, since I never really got into Stardew, I thought it might be cool to see a totally different world.
Hope you’re enjoying the expansion!
Yeah it’s been great. Stardew Valley Expanded adds areas and characters and stuff to the game that feels like they belong in the original world. The creator did an amazing job.
Dwarf Fortress.
Objectively correct answer.
Strike the earth!
Baldurs Gate 3.
Mass Effect. I know some will disagree, the third game has a lot of glaring issues, and EA really fucked up the ending, but as far as a fully fleshed out story and universe with a multitude of unique and independently structured species, characters, and cultures I think it’s one of the best. The writing and possible story outcomes and decisions that vastly and permanently affect the story from the first to the third game are insane.
We don’t talk about Andromeda anymore… (And such a fucking lost chance at continuing the franchise) I agree. At the time of release, it sucked all your choices where concentrated to three at most. Actually it still sucks. Buy the whole experience from 1 to 3… It takes space in my mind you know. Its the peak of escapism for me. 3 should have been a lesson to learn from going forward with the franchise… But EA mauled all of it… The worst part is, with such strong connection to the world, lore and characters you can’t just make a “spiritual successor”. The same formula wouldn’t work without preexisting lore.
I agree, it’s all or nothing with Mass Effect, you have to play all three games, especially with the third one because that game is trash if you haven’t imported a save from the previous games, it simply does not stand on it’s own like 2 does. Andromeda had a lot of amazing gameplay mechanics that I felt were a big upgrade from the Shepard saga, but every other aspect of that game was just so awful that I can’t even think of it as canon to the original series. They could have done some cool shit with it, but instead we just got a castrated rip off version of the original trilogy story, but with less species and absolutely no consequences for your decisions, and crew interactions were utter bullshit, everything lead to the exact same thing. Fuck EA. The online co-op stuff was pretty dope, though.
Neither of these are popular enough to be on the scale of LoTR, but in terms of atmosphere and detail:
Hollow Knight - my absolute favorite thing about it is each NPC has its own voiced language recorded, babbling in the background as you read the dialogue.
Subnautica (the first one) - shitting myself with each new experience is something I’ll always cherish. Highly recommend just playing without looking into the gameplay or plot. Has elements of exploring, resource gathering, base building, psychological horror (not graphic, just tense scenarios), sneaking.
Good one! My favorite single player RPG for sure
The first Halo trilogy takes the cake for me
YESS
Outer Wilds is this game.
Cold Waters if you’re hankering for some hot sub on sub action.
Ocarina of Time. I’m biased because of nostalgia, but I genuinely think it’s the best game ever created. It took everything that was great about the SNES classic A Link To the Past, brought it into 3D as an early N64 game, and improved literally everything. The atmosphere, the gameplay, the story, the time mechanic, the music… It’s not perfect, in fact these days it’s trivial to break many things in it with glitches, but I think it’s absolutely the best.
Half life and half life 2
Minecraft
Minecraft before the Microsoft acquisition.
I don’t really know Minecraft before the acquisition. Is it really that much different?
Secret Friday updates used to drop with new features that weren’t documented and just got to explore and find them.
I remember updating singleplayer to find cacti added and placing a bunch under a railway tunnel to stop mobs. (They updated the physics to break them when adjacent to another block patch or two later)
- Removed Herobrine
Neato. Thank you!
Microsoft has continued improving the Java Minecraft. I can’t see a reason to complain.
