Summary
- Open-world games like Spore, Flotsam, and State of Decay focus on community-building for a satisfying experience.
- Terrara, Kenshi, and Fallout 4 combine survival-craft, open-world exploration, and town management for unique gameplay.
- Titles like Death Stranding emphasize community-building through gameplay, storytelling, and multiplayer interaction.
Open-world games can offer tremendously immersive single-player adventures that span vast expanses and tell dramatic stories. However, some are more refined in their theme, offering gameplay and narratives that focus on community.
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This can result in a satisfying open-world experience. Be it the tribal community-building of Spore's small open environments or the vast scale of Death Stranding, these titles offer a variety of open-world experiences that excel with their focus on building a strong community.
7 Spore
Building A Sustainable Species
Spore
- Released
- September 7, 2008
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ due to Animated Blood, Comic Mischief, Fantasy Violence
- Genre(s)
- Life Simulation
Spore is an open-world sandbox game about creating and guiding an entire species through a series of evolutionary stages, starting from a single cell. This results in truly dynamic gameplay that allows players to be creative at every step.
As Spore progresses into the latter stages of evolution, players become tasked with managing not just a single cell, but an entire community. Upon reaching the creature stage, players can even explore and interact with other species as they attempt to expand and evolve their own.
6 Flotsam
Maintaining A Drifting Colony
- Platform(s): PC
- Released: 2019
- Developer(s): Pajama Llama Games
- Genre: Colony-Sim
Flotsam has been in Early Access for many years, and its gameplay can be repetitive at times, but it remains a unique experience for its combination of open-world exploration and colony-sim gameplay. In Flotsam, players must manage a floating colony, built from the scraps of a Waterworld-esque post-apocalypse.
This watery setting brings with it a tranquil ambiance that carries much of the experience, but the gameplay itself remains sturdy. More importantly, the open-world exploration and scavenging blend well with the colony-sim gameplay, resulting in a community-building experience that's uniquely engaging.
5 State Of Decay
Maintaining A Community In A Zombie Apocalypse
State of Decay
- Released
- June 5, 2013
WHERE TO PLAY
State of Decay: Year-One brings the hit zombie survival-fantasy franchise to Xbox One. Delivered in beautifully remastered 1080p, along with improved lighting, textures, animations, and combat mechanics, State of Decay: Year-One pulls you even deeper into the post-outbreak world. Make your stand against the collapse of society in the ultimate zombie survival-fantasy game. Explore an open world full of dangers and opportunities that respond to your every decision. Recruit a community of playable survivors, each with their own unique skills and talents. Design and fortify your base against the relentless hordes of the undead. Perform daring raids for food and ammunition, and do whatever it takes to live another day.
State of Decay is an open-world survival sandbox game that takes place during a zombie apocalypse. Unlike zombie games like Left 4 Dead, however, State of Decay focuses on building a strong community over linear design. What results is an experience that’s heavily focused on scouring the world for supplies, avoiding/battling the undead horrors, and trying to make it back in one piece.
This can be a particularly thematic experience, and fans of zombie media, such as the hit TV series The Walking Dead, are sure to enjoy it. However, the game can be a somewhat simplistic experience, especially in its combat. Still, scavenging the open-world environments of State of Decay is tense, and managing the burgeoning community is satisfying.
4 Terraria
Survival-Craft Meets Town Management
Terraria
- Released
- May 16, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
Terraria is an open-world survival-craft game that facilitates a great deal of creativity. In the game, players are able to freely explore, gathering resources and building a base that facilitates their needs. Best of all, base-building is both a creative and meaningful endeavor, as players are charged with attracting a variety of NPCs.
These NPCs require the proper facilities before they can move in, and players will need them if they want easy access to what they have to offer. As a result, Terraria is as much about exploration and crafting as it is about building a community. This provides even more motivation to explore every nook and cranny of the world, adding diversity to the experience as time goes on.
3 Kenshi
A Harsh World That's Safer With A Team
Kenshi
- Released
- December 6, 2018
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- nr
- Genre(s)
- RPG, Open-World, Survival
Kenshi is a distinctive sandbox RPG that takes place in a harsh and hostile open world, giving players the freedom to set and pursue their own goals. While players can carve a path on their own, Kenshi's world is dangerous, and building a tight-knit crew of companions can be of great benefit.
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Furthermore, Kenshi allows players to effectively build their own towns. While it can be dangerous to do so at first, building a strong community provides players with a much-needed base of operations. In addition, building a community can help to attract business, allowing players to gain more than safety from their headquarters.
2 Death Stranding
An Asynchronous Community
Death Stranding
- Released
- November 8, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity, Strong Language
- Genre(s)
- Action
Death Stranding is a unique game that tasks players with carrying cargo across a dangerous and at-times supernatural wilderness. Keeping Death Stranding from effectively becoming a walking simulator is the tactile controls and the addition of myriad threats and hazards.
Thematically, Death Stranding is about building connections between outposts, helping to build a strong community and bring people together. This is furthered by an asynchronous multiplayer element that allows the community to lend a hand to one another.
1 Fallout 4
Post-Apocalyptic Town Management
Fallout 4
- Released
- November 10, 2015
WHERE TO PLAY
Fallout 4 differentiates itself from other entries in the series in myriad ways. Most notably, this title includes base-building. While players can spend their time pursuing narrative progress and venturing into the lesser-known corners of its open-world, Fallout 4 encourages one to build and maintain strong communities.
Building isn't the most intuitive system, but it can be rewarding to develop and maintain a healthy settlement. Players must worry about the resources and general happiness of their settlements, and defenses must also be built in order to keep towns safe. In addition, players can even build supply lines that connect settlements and allow them to help each other. For some, building these settlements won't be as interesting as the rest of the game, but it's an undeniably large part of what makes Fallout 4 unique.
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