Strictly linear games are all well and good, but they can struggle sometimes with replayability. You might know going in, for instance, that a game's main story has 30 levels. On completing them, you may have seen everything that title has to offer. There may be challenges or other difficulty options, but is that enough to keep you in the game? That's up to the player to decide.
10 Best Linear FPS Games For Players Exhausted Of Open-Worlds
If another open-world game sounds like an exhausting proposal, these linear FPS campaigns are short, sweet, and immensely satisfying.
Alternatively, if you're able to define your own specific goals, you can effectively keep playing as long as it takes to complete them. It helps to make sure they're actually practical to achieve, but these games accommodate that way of thinking very well.
5 Minecraft
Create, Survive, Repeat
It seems as though Minecraft is going to be around forever. The key to its success is something that's so difficult to emulate: Being everything to every player. There are those with little interest in the Creative mode but who have spent hundreds of hours in Survival, and vice versa. Between these two offerings, Minecraft has successfully catered to umpteen millions of fans.
Whether you want to slay the formidable Ender Dragon or simply build an entire ancient Roman town complete with elaborate fort and arena, Minecraft absolutely has you covered. It's a fascinating lesson in how structured game design can be restrictive, and players can construct things the developers could never have imagined if they're just given the means and the freedom to do so. Simply watching other players online in creative mode can give you an idea for a project that might consume the next six months of your time.
4 Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Mission Complete (Or Not)
With a game like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it's probably best if you go into it with a defined goal and endgame in mind. If you don't, you could find yourself returning to the game on a daily basis forever, and then it risks become a chore. Maybe you want to complete your Museum, for example, which will take a full year of non-time traveling play thanks to the seasonal nature of bugs and fish. Alternatively, you might have a vision for a perfect island (more customizable than ever thanks to the terraforming mechanics) design, for others to visit and admire your genius via Dream Islands. Heck, why not collect as many of those wonderful rare items as possible?
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Your goals are entirely up to you. Some players engage in the practise of ruthlessly 'trading' villagers in order to craft their dream roster, whoever they may be. The ultimate achievement, for still others, is to populate your island with only one species of villager. Your goal, after all, might be to be inundated with excitable Octopi villagers in your house on your birthday, and who could deny a dream like that? The game's still being updated and is still going strong.
3 RimWorld
Contend With The Sheer Unpredictability Of Space
Games often task the player with managing a group of colonists and survivors and trying to maintain them, and it's hard to imagine a more hostile environment than space in which to set such a title. RimWorld is one of those experiences in which you rarely exactly triumph, and a lot of your time in the game will be spent attempting to react to spontaneous disasters and fight off the inevitable.
This isn't to say, though, that there isn't a lot of freedom to choose how your colony develops, the nature and primary focus of its occupants, and other important elements. Another major one is the ending. If you have industrious colonists, they may be able to craft you the necessary pieces to build a spaceship, enabling their escape. You might even lead them to assault the Mechhive, and thus bring an end to the mechanoids. As long as their basic needs such as food are catered to, and they're kept safe, they're content for you to focus your domain around scientific research, growth, or whatever you wish.
2 Slime Rancher 2
What Does Ranching Success Look Like? You Decide
The Slime Rancher titles aren't just known for the adorable slimes, but for the open-ended nature of the experience too. The goal is ultimately to discover what happened on Rainbow Island and defeat that tricky end boss, but in the meantime, it's mostly about developing your ranch. You can achieve this however you wish, from selecting a favorite type of slime to focus your efforts on to spending hours in the open-world areas hunting for a wide variety.
6 Most Relaxing Side Activities In Open-World Games
When players get worn out by the intensity of an open-world story campaign, these relaxing side activities are there to give them a break.
You can, of course, optimize your output by exclusively prioritizing the most high-value plorts, but it seems a little contrary to the spirit of the game in some ways. It's about the charm of the experience, the different personalities of the slimes, and heading out into the open world is the best way to embrace that.
1 Green Hell
One Of The Most Brutal Survival Experiences
As noted, RimWorld is set in an incredibly dangerous environment, the better to heighten the survival challenge. Green Hell, by contrast, takes place here on Earth, but is almost as perilous. Jake Higgins is a scientist who has ventured into the Amazon rainforest in an effort to locate his wife, but outside of the story mode, developer Creepy Jar gives the player one job: Make the best you possibly can of this hostile environment.
While managing illness and injuries, your own sanity, and performing crucial jobs like learning to boil water, start fires and get enough nutrients in your diet, you're free to explore as you wish. There are some huge, elaborate bases that players can create, using sophisticated materials and mechanics. You can even take the role of hunter and turn the tables on the hostile locals. It's the bonus mode Spirits of Amazonia that offers the most variety, though, where players increase their bond with local tribes by performing a wide array of challenges, from animal hunts to solving riddles in the environments. You can choose which tasks you engage with, or you can simply explore the world at your leisure. Whatever you choose as your goals, Green Hell will test you in all sorts of ways.
10 Most Complex Survival Games
These excellent survival games offer the most depth and complexity to satisfy the most extreme survival enthusiasts.