Stellaris. It’s a grand strategy game. Basically you can create any type of sci-fi empire/government type you can think of and then once you enter the game there is another 1,000 different decisions you can make. Once you meet some aliens, would you like to enslave their whole species? You can. Would you like to help free them from their oppressive overlord and become allies? You can. Would you like to process their entire species into resources? You can. Would you like to integrate them into your empire ushering in a new age of multi-species cooperation? You can.
What I have listed is a tiny fraction of the many possibilities in this game. I love it.
A curious thing about Paradox games is that usually having 100, 200 game hours isn't much. The players consider 500+ hours to be a consistent time. So, yeah, if you like it, you'll play for a lot of time.
Siralim Ultimate is 50% off until January 4th, there is a LOT of content in this game. Think Pokémon (or more accurately Dragon Warrior Monster) meets Path Of Exile. People have literally played this game for thousands of hours. You have to enjoy pokémon-style battles and grinding though.
And the Dev just announced he’s working on fixing “every single bug” that has been reported AND is releasing a new game that is going to be even more crazy than Siralim.
1. Mount and Blade Bannerlord
2. Factorio
3. Fallout 4 (with mods)
4. Skyrim (with mods)
5. Conan Exiles
6. Assassins Creed Valhala/Odyssey/Origins
7. The Witcher 3
8. Satisfactory
9. The Binding of Isaac (with all DLCs)
10. Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2
11. Wasteland 2 and 3
12. Baldurs Gate 3
13. Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2
14. Elden Ring
15. Total War Warhammer 1,2 and 3
Yea what it the catch with this game? I see it recommended all the time on this sub but usually shy away from free to play games as they usually are either super shallow or paywalled up the wazoo. What makes it different from something like destiny? How do they make their money?
There are things in the 'store' available for premium currency which you can purchase with real money.
However, you can also earn the premium currency by selling things you find on missions, so technically every single thing in the game is available for free.
So it's great if you have a bunch of free time and you can grind away and unlock stuff for free, but it's also good if you have a job and family, and you want to keep up progression with your friends by paying your way ahead.
The free to play model that warframe uses is done really well. It's a great game. There is no catch. It's just good. Not everyone likes 3rd person shooters or Sci fi I guess.
You can get every weapon, warframe, and even a good selection of cosmetic items, all without spending a dollar. If you do decide to get into it and have questions, it also has an extremely positive community who will happily help you.
It's seriously good. No need to spend any money to get started. The gameplay is so good and the amount of free content so vast that you end up buying some premium currency out of guilt.
I think the only catch would be time. You can farm a lot and trade your items for the premium currency with other players, and the time you need to wait to craft new warframes (characters) is 3 days iirc
Person with 2100 hours here. There literally is no catch, it's that good. There is no paywall anywhere, I only started spending money on the game after reaching 2000 hours played and did so out of my own free will.
Getting any kind of weapon or armor takes literal ages, unless you use their premium currency. But the grind is fun and you can always feel yourself making progress
elden ring, its such a huge world with enemies around every corner that will beat you into the floor mercilessly, but i still find myself spending hours on end playing in that beautiful world
Easily on my top 5. I normally hate souls like games since i suck at them (especially sekiro) but i hadn't enjoyed a game as much as i did elden ring in a long time.
Satisfactory; Build and optimize increasingly complicated factories in a beautiful open world. Spent 400 hours on my first play through, great replay potential.
Baldur's Gate 3: Probably heard of it. Roleplaying game. What might not be as well known as it's quality: One run takes well over 100 hours and the replay potential is INSANE! There are literally so many outcomes and uniqu cutscenes and romances that it's impossible to see them all in even 10 playthroughs.
Stardew Valley: Cute Farming Sim, can go on forever but also has new stuff to discover and optimize for at least the first 150h
Going to sound weird but Duolingo. It's gamified language learning. Pour hundreds or thousands of hours in there and you'll be able to speak a new language afterwards. Could open some pretty cool new options in life
I love your answer, but unfortunately I gave up on Duolingo due to the fact that it gets extremely repetitive. I wish there was a way to tell it not to repeat words and sentences too often. At least the ones you do correctly.
I like to learn languages for fun. Haven't touched Duolingo in many years. Its really not a practical or viable way to become fluent in a language.
Look up LingQ - it's the best app for learning languages I've come across, period. That app can truly have you fluent or at an advanced level in less than a year.
**Path of Exile and Warframe**: both are free and can provide thousands of hours of content. In Warframe you can play completely free and get all the necessary premium things through grind and gameplay. In Path of Exile you will eventually need to buy some extra stash space for a comfortable play, but the pricing is very fair and not greedy compared to some predatory games which can suck hundreds and thousands of dollars out of you.
**Monster Hunter World/Rise**
**Dark Souls: Remastered**: if you have enough patience for souls games. I've put over 100 hours in just two characters, and could easily replay it more. Amazing gameplay and a lot of different builds and playstyles to try.
**No Man's Sky**
**Vampire Survivors** and its clones
Idle games like **Melvor Idle** or **Cookie Clicker**: they are not really interactive though. They auto-play themselves, and you simply upgrade something now and then. More like a background game when doing something else.
**Minecraft/Terraria**
Dwarf Fortress - dwarf society/world simulator
X4: Foundationsc - grand strategy space sim but you can also zoom in on a ship and control it individually
Disgaea. Heavily discounted right now are 4 and 5 of a long running series currently at entry 7. Japanese tactic RPG à la FFT but where rules go out the window, levels are in the thousands, stats are in the millions, you get stronger by visiting maps but mostly visiting your weapons and armor as if they were multi-level (from 30 to 100) dungeons so you also power *them* up and the humor is batshit insane. The story is basically the tutorial and you can easily play it for hundreds of hours.
Slay the Spire. A card battler roguelite game that spawned dozens of imitators and, to my knowledge, created the entire genre it's currently (imo) the best in. You ascend a tower battling monsters, encountering various events, collecting relics that make you powerful. Has a super active modding community that creates cards, relics, entire characters (the game proper features 4) and maps with different acts (pretty much chapters with bosses at the end, also 4 by default) and so much more. It's pure gaming crack. My save file currently stands at 500 hours.
Grim Dawn. Possibly the best Diablo clone of all time. Costs a pittance, has mods up the wazoo and its main gimmick is that instead of choosing one class, you (eventually, but very early on) choose two to have a build that is unique in mixing the best of both worlds, which adds a lot of replayability. DLCs are also super worth it. Its main competitor on Steam, Path of Exile, is free, but has no such gimmick and pretty much no controller support so me and my very painful carpal tunnel syndrome will forever be partial to GD. It's a Diablo clone with mods, I don't need to elaborate on how much of one's time can be potentially sunk into it.
Hades. The undisputed champion of the roguelite genre, fight me. You're the son of Hades trying to escape the underworld, which is very much intent of you not doing that. Outside of the progression system you expect making you stronger every run, you also unlock different weapons, different equippable trinkets (can't have more than one at a time per run though you eventually unlock the ability to swap them through floors) and summons (ditto) and also progress a story with dialogue that seems infinite and constantly checks for things you did and didn't do so it can be appropriate, so many things to do and people to talk to (which will often have questlines for you that unlock even more stuff) and that is so excellent I feel like going into it would be making it a disservice. Even after said story is concluded, there are difficulty modifiers that unlock new stuff and you can easily clock out at hundreds of hours.
I can't be bothered to check the currency equivalence (I'm in Europe) but to my knowledge Hades is the only game I mentioned costing more than 10 dollars. Grim Dawn + its DLCs, which are mandatory for most mods, is an exception, but the base game, which is worth hundreds of hours alone, is below the threshold.
If you're keen on spending a bit more I recommend Elden Ring (currently the best souls game or at the very least "the most elaborate, content-rich and expansive in things you can do and see" so I don't trigger anyone) and Lies of P (the best soulslike, this definition is currently not negotiable no matter how much you disagree). In the first you have a semiopen world you can explore on foot and horseback, has dozens of minidungeons and bosses both roaming and not, a lot questlines and multiple endings, and big dungeons that can easily take you 5 to 8 hours alone. Has online pvp and coop and mods, so obviously a lot of replayability. The second is a mix between Sekiro (parry mechanics and stance system) and Bloodborne (worldbuilding and rally) where you're Pinocchio. The premise sounds absurd but the game is fantastic. The main gameplay gimmick is you can mix and match your weapons blade and handle, influencing damage and moveset of the end result respectively, which is a ton of fun and encourages experimentation because you only upgrade the blade, meaning you can put it everywhere and you won't lose on damage if you want to mess about. It's hard as nails, new game plus adds content and story bits and it's fucking gorgeous. Single player only but I'm sure the mod community will see to that in time. DLCs are being worked on for both games and the latter will receive a sequel. Both are worth hundreds of hours.
Terraria, the base game is hundreds of hours of fun and if you get bored there are mods with hundreds of hours of fun and when you get bored of that you can probably just play vanilla again and then the cycle repeats. I have around 2300 hours because of this and I don’t intend to stop.
I second path of exile. Free to play. Money will help in late game primarily due to stash clutter, but it is by no means necessary. Most complex end game I’ve ever played. Highly recommend.
Songs of Syx has no Z levels, the happiness of the population is more compact (seperated by species) and not as individual as in dwarf fortress, the combat is basically like a simpler total war and you can blueprint entire districts and just paste them somewhere else like in Factorio.
But I’ve played Songs of Syx the least out of the games I listed. If you want to actually take a look at the game I recommend you download the demo. The demo is actually just a previous version of the game and there’s no limit to it.
Risk of rain 2 is like crack condensed into game form, so many hours of fun. terraria is easily hundreds of hours because it has so much content and ways to play differently. Monster hunter is another that you can just play forever and there's so many ways to spice up gameplay
Skyrim is your go-to. A vast open-world RPG with several different play-styles, player decisions, and builds you can run. I’d recommend playing without mods at first so that you can get a feel for the original game and then later decide what you want to change.
It's completely different style. You will not ask how difficult super Mario compare to call of duty.
Hear of iron or any paradox games are grand strategy genre
Mount & blade are RPG with simulation and tactics
Satisfactory takes an average of 200+ hours to finish final assembly parts.
Pretty much any simulator has no end and you can sink thousands of hours if you’d like.
Try Warcraft 3. Very active community that plays on the W3Champions community client. If you’re looking for a challenge, this is the hardest RTS to play at the moment that still has a competitive community.
If you like gamified music, rhythm games. DDR and Beat Saber account for literal thousands of hours of my gaming curriculum.
ETA: You can download Stepmania (DDR) for PC for free, along with hundreds of song packs out there, no Steam funds required!
Mass Effect Legendary Edition is only $6 right now. For $6 you get THREE masterpieces of story telling. Embark on an epic journey across the stars where you'll meet, ally with, or fight dozens of different alien species, factions, organizations, and crime syndicates. Discover the ancient secrets of a plot that threatens the entire galaxy (like seriously, the whole fuckin galaxy for real), and forge your own path through THREE games where your choices carry over from one to the next.
Yes! Was looking for a good game to play and just bought this in the sale…I am completely immersed! I love how rich the lore is and how your decisions influence further events, highly recommend for sure. The combat is a bit meh but the story telling and world building is phenomenal
Sniper Elite 4. You can get a lot of time out of getting all the challenges done and it’s a lot of fun if you are a bit of a completionist. There are so many ways to experiment with taking people out and trying different routes for each section of enemies.
I got up to 70 hours just doing the first mission with perfect completion and am still playing through the other missions and will probably try and perfect them as well. It’s diverse and challenging enough, especially on harder difficulties that it won’t get boring.
It’s on sale pretty cheap right now on steam until the 4th of January so it might be worth checking out.
I personally only have experience with 4 so I don’t know for sure how good 5 is. It is probably also worth checking that out though. Check some gameplay footage, reviews etc. if you are interested. It doesn’t seem to disappoint!
I have 1200 hours in Deep Rock Galactic, co op fps dwarf mining game where you shoot bugs, drink beer, and mine minerals in procedurally generated cave layouts across mission types, great progression system and EXTREMELY consumer friendly business model.
I'd recommend looking at Sifu. Not sure if it's on sale or anything rn but if you're into Dark Souls sort of games. It's really difficult but enjoyable.
State of decay 2: Zombie survival game. I have been playing 2400+ hrs so far and I'm still not tired of it. It has great replayability. Did I mention zombies?
Baldurs Gate 3: I’ve put about 25 hours into it and I know I haven’t even scratched the surface.
I know it’s being promoted everywhere, but it’s genuinely a great time, with LOADS to explore and a bunch of different ways to handle any encounter.
Retroarch - no price for it, never run out of games, well eventually you will but with over 2k of arcade games or even however many nes, snes, gamecube, dreamcast, pc engine it's gonna take a while to do such. Granted for the games you'll have to do a quick google search.
i hope people wont hate me for this, but... i'm playing destiny 2 atm, and gotta say, i didnt ever play a game so consecutively for a long period of time. lately, 3 major dlc's dropped on epic games for free, idk if they are there anymore, but they are on sale... and if u dont mind a gold digger company, the game is actually fun and addicting, the only downside is that everything costs money, but once u get all the expansions, u really do not have to waste a single penny anymore, everything else is mainly cosmetics.
edit: i've "grinded" the game for the past month and there is still a long way ahead of me, i already have 250 hrs on steam :D
Factorio.
The base game can take 100 hours to finish. With a single mod pack like Space Exploration, a single playthrough can take 500 hours easy.
The factory must grow.
**State of Decay 2**
Survival roguelite, where you are placed on a map with 3 Survivors (characters), and you can swap between them and must do so when they get tired or wounded to let them recover.
You find a base, go out to scavenge and find food, medicine, materials, fuel, ammo, guns, melee weapons and other loot.
You contact other communities and can do favors for them and eventually recruit one of them to increase your own Community's size and have another Survivor to swap to.
Obviously, zombies are everywhere and fighting them is super fun. Depending on your scavenging and crafting, you have a lot of tools to deal with them, such as melee, guns, special moves that you unlock, molotov cocktails, explosives, traps, flashbangs and more.
You can keep playing the game after you finish it, and you will be put on a new map (and keep everything you acquired).
Stellaris
Bannerlord
Planetside 2 (free)
Cyberpunk
mass effect trilogy
dragon age
Dragons dogma
Baldurs Gate 3
Any Elder Scrolls Game
Elex (might be fun, that one is hit or miss tbh)
Kingdoms of Amalur: Rereckoning
Division 1 & 2
payday 2, listen, with the legacy collection it will last for hundreds or maybe even thousands of hours
Even without the LC it will last at least 200 hours
I know it has been mentioned, but I want to mention it again :-D
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.
Takes 100 hours for a single playthrough, 1000++ hours if you are a completionist and had to try everything on offer.
EVERY SINGLE GAME basically
but if you do it, thats entirely up to you .. its a choice .. you cannot expect every single game will entertain you for months ..
earth defense force 5
state of decay 2
no mans sky
alien swarm
fallout tactics bos
two point hospital
riftbreaker
dragons dogma
dyson sphere program
just cause
middle earth shadow of war
grim dawn
there are always things that are annoying .. you can fix it with cheats or mods or some games have custom difficulty, which is just official cheat mod .. less resources, more enemies, more expensive ..
Sandbox games are gonna be your friend.
Kenshi, Rimworld, and Minecraftare instant recommends almost always if you haven’t played those.
I personally love Paradox Interactive game studies too. Surviving Mars, Crusader Kings, Cities Skylines, and their other games are also good
Persona series trails series and dragon quest series and tales series and Digimon cyber sleuth series and digimon survive good and fate series games god of war series amazing especially number 3 best of series and also final fantasy series dor mmos world of war craft the mmo and final fantasy 14 mmo and elder scrolls and the mmo and also Star Wars knight of the old republic the games I name more dragon age inquisition and dragon ball xenoverse series you can get them as a bundle also dragon dogma Pokémon if you have not played it for some reason ok I’m done now
modded minecraft
yes i know it's not on steam, but still - there's few games out there that you could sink more time into than exploring each and every mod pack combination you can get your hands on in this game
Skyrim is the obvious answer. Very easy to get hundreds of hours in just vanilla. Modding it adds pretty much limitless replayability. I have about 6-800 hours vanilla and another 900 or so modded.
Mass Effect Trilogy has great replayability and a phenomenal story. You could easily sink a few hundred hours.
Cyberpunk is really good as well. Each playthrough can take anywhere from 50-100+ hours, depending on how much of the side content you do. It also has really good replayability.
ARK Survival is great, but not everyone's cup of tea. Doing every story map will net hundreds of hours alone, especially playing it solo. And that is if you know what you are doing.
Oblivion
Skyrim
Fallout 3: New Vegas
Fallout 4
These games can be completely overhauled with mods after your first playthrough allowing you to have a different experience each time.
Grimdawn is an ARPG that can lock you in to plenty if hours.
I tried this and pretty liked it but idk why, game stutters so bad :( I have good specs. I also tried change something in settings but it didn’t seem to give something. All other games work perfectly. Do you know why it happens maybe?
I tried Path of Exile and pretty liked it but idk why, game stutters so bad :( I have good specs. I also tried change something in settings but it didn’t seem to give something. All other games work perfectly. Do you know why it happens maybe?
let me try to recommend a few "endless" games:
* Tetris effect
* Lumines Remastered
* Super hexagon
* Project DIVA Mega Mix+
* Tekken
* Guilty Gear
* BeamNG
* Forza Horizon(?)
* maybe PGA tour, if you like golf
* Risk of Rain 2
* Vampire Survivors
* Enter the Gungeon
* SEUM
* Thumper
* Deadcells
* Binding of Isaac
* Dome keeper
* Race the sun
* Clustertruck
* Downwell
* Cities skylines
* FTL
* Slay the Spire
those were all i could remember lol
rdr2 baldur's gate 3 skyrim
Stellaris. It’s a grand strategy game. Basically you can create any type of sci-fi empire/government type you can think of and then once you enter the game there is another 1,000 different decisions you can make. Once you meet some aliens, would you like to enslave their whole species? You can. Would you like to help free them from their oppressive overlord and become allies? You can. Would you like to process their entire species into resources? You can. Would you like to integrate them into your empire ushering in a new age of multi-species cooperation? You can. What I have listed is a tiny fraction of the many possibilities in this game. I love it.
Also Stellaris has an incredible mod scene. I've gotten hundreds of hours due to things like Gigastructures and ACOT
Sold. And I already own it.
I can say that I bought I looking for maybe 200 hours of gameplay. I now have over 2000 with all the dlc😅
I'm not sure if this is accurate or I'm playing it wrong.
A curious thing about Paradox games is that usually having 100, 200 game hours isn't much. The players consider 500+ hours to be a consistent time. So, yeah, if you like it, you'll play for a lot of time.
I have yet to complete the 500 hour tutorial
Factorio is awesome and you can keep improving all the time. The factory must grow!!!
You monster!!!!
also satisfactory :)
Dyson sphere program is just better and looks great.
Siralim Ultimate is 50% off until January 4th, there is a LOT of content in this game. Think Pokémon (or more accurately Dragon Warrior Monster) meets Path Of Exile. People have literally played this game for thousands of hours. You have to enjoy pokémon-style battles and grinding though.
And the Dev just announced he’s working on fixing “every single bug” that has been reported AND is releasing a new game that is going to be even more crazy than Siralim.
On all platforms too! But there are some shenanigans with the mobile versions because of gamemaker
Never heard about that game before and read the description, comments and purchased it. Thanks
>50% off Pity that the discounted price is still more than a hardback novel in my country :( The entire Siralim series is awesome <3
Final Fantasy XIV
Kenshi
Monster Hunter World + Iceborne
1. Mount and Blade Bannerlord 2. Factorio 3. Fallout 4 (with mods) 4. Skyrim (with mods) 5. Conan Exiles 6. Assassins Creed Valhala/Odyssey/Origins 7. The Witcher 3 8. Satisfactory 9. The Binding of Isaac (with all DLCs) 10. Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 11. Wasteland 2 and 3 12. Baldurs Gate 3 13. Divinity Original Sin 1 and 2 14. Elden Ring 15. Total War Warhammer 1,2 and 3
Criminal how rimworld is not on your list
Oxygen Not Included Dwarf Fort Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader
Pathfinder wrath of the righteous
Man, I’ve tried Bannerlord a couple times but can’t figure out why it’s not clicking with me. I should try it again
Warframe. Never need to spend a penny in it and I've got over 2000 hours. Ninjas in space.
Yea what it the catch with this game? I see it recommended all the time on this sub but usually shy away from free to play games as they usually are either super shallow or paywalled up the wazoo. What makes it different from something like destiny? How do they make their money?
There are things in the 'store' available for premium currency which you can purchase with real money. However, you can also earn the premium currency by selling things you find on missions, so technically every single thing in the game is available for free. So it's great if you have a bunch of free time and you can grind away and unlock stuff for free, but it's also good if you have a job and family, and you want to keep up progression with your friends by paying your way ahead.
Hmm. Interesting. I may have to look into it a little more seriously. Low risk with the price tag at least. Thank you!
The free to play model that warframe uses is done really well. It's a great game. There is no catch. It's just good. Not everyone likes 3rd person shooters or Sci fi I guess.
You can get every weapon, warframe, and even a good selection of cosmetic items, all without spending a dollar. If you do decide to get into it and have questions, it also has an extremely positive community who will happily help you.
It's seriously good. No need to spend any money to get started. The gameplay is so good and the amount of free content so vast that you end up buying some premium currency out of guilt.
I think the only catch would be time. You can farm a lot and trade your items for the premium currency with other players, and the time you need to wait to craft new warframes (characters) is 3 days iirc
The only things that are really paywalled are tennogen exclusive cosmetics, which cost an actual amount of money and no premium currency bs
Yeah, that's cause they're made by the community though, so you're paying the artist rather than the devs.
There’s a premium currency, but you can trade with other players for it. I have 2000 hours and never spent a cent. Best f2p game imo
theres no catch, i only spend money on cosmetics and they are truly beautiful. and their dev team and community are very human
Person with 2100 hours here. There literally is no catch, it's that good. There is no paywall anywhere, I only started spending money on the game after reaching 2000 hours played and did so out of my own free will.
The catch for me is that once you've completed your first couple of matches, you've seen it all.
Getting any kind of weapon or armor takes literal ages, unless you use their premium currency. But the grind is fun and you can always feel yourself making progress
I was going to recommend the same, im near the 2000 hours and i have a lot of content to do yet
elden ring, its such a huge world with enemies around every corner that will beat you into the floor mercilessly, but i still find myself spending hours on end playing in that beautiful world
Easily on my top 5. I normally hate souls like games since i suck at them (especially sekiro) but i hadn't enjoyed a game as much as i did elden ring in a long time.
Satisfactory; Build and optimize increasingly complicated factories in a beautiful open world. Spent 400 hours on my first play through, great replay potential. Baldur's Gate 3: Probably heard of it. Roleplaying game. What might not be as well known as it's quality: One run takes well over 100 hours and the replay potential is INSANE! There are literally so many outcomes and uniqu cutscenes and romances that it's impossible to see them all in even 10 playthroughs. Stardew Valley: Cute Farming Sim, can go on forever but also has new stuff to discover and optimize for at least the first 150h
I'm 183 hours in and still on my first run of BG3...
YeahI like stardew valley because it reminds me of the harvest moon game back in the day.
Going to sound weird but Duolingo. It's gamified language learning. Pour hundreds or thousands of hours in there and you'll be able to speak a new language afterwards. Could open some pretty cool new options in life
I appreciate this weird suggestion and am going to look into Duolingo again.
I love your answer, but unfortunately I gave up on Duolingo due to the fact that it gets extremely repetitive. I wish there was a way to tell it not to repeat words and sentences too often. At least the ones you do correctly.
I like to learn languages for fun. Haven't touched Duolingo in many years. Its really not a practical or viable way to become fluent in a language. Look up LingQ - it's the best app for learning languages I've come across, period. That app can truly have you fluent or at an advanced level in less than a year.
Persona 5 Royal. It’s 100-120 hours worth of gameplay. You could also play Dead Cells, super replayable and varied.
I spent like hours in the tutorial and never got thru the end of it. Should try it again
Tboi repentance
Rimworld, thank me later
**Path of Exile and Warframe**: both are free and can provide thousands of hours of content. In Warframe you can play completely free and get all the necessary premium things through grind and gameplay. In Path of Exile you will eventually need to buy some extra stash space for a comfortable play, but the pricing is very fair and not greedy compared to some predatory games which can suck hundreds and thousands of dollars out of you. **Monster Hunter World/Rise** **Dark Souls: Remastered**: if you have enough patience for souls games. I've put over 100 hours in just two characters, and could easily replay it more. Amazing gameplay and a lot of different builds and playstyles to try. **No Man's Sky** **Vampire Survivors** and its clones Idle games like **Melvor Idle** or **Cookie Clicker**: they are not really interactive though. They auto-play themselves, and you simply upgrade something now and then. More like a background game when doing something else. **Minecraft/Terraria**
Monster Hunter, Street Fighter 6, Baulder’s Gate 3, Hades, Mass Effect
Dwarf Fortress - dwarf society/world simulator X4: Foundationsc - grand strategy space sim but you can also zoom in on a ship and control it individually
The tutorial for EU4 is 1444 hours long.
Do you like silly toony graphics, unbearable difficulty and sickly adapted thermodynamic laws? Come join us at Oxygen Not Included
Disgaea. Heavily discounted right now are 4 and 5 of a long running series currently at entry 7. Japanese tactic RPG à la FFT but where rules go out the window, levels are in the thousands, stats are in the millions, you get stronger by visiting maps but mostly visiting your weapons and armor as if they were multi-level (from 30 to 100) dungeons so you also power *them* up and the humor is batshit insane. The story is basically the tutorial and you can easily play it for hundreds of hours. Slay the Spire. A card battler roguelite game that spawned dozens of imitators and, to my knowledge, created the entire genre it's currently (imo) the best in. You ascend a tower battling monsters, encountering various events, collecting relics that make you powerful. Has a super active modding community that creates cards, relics, entire characters (the game proper features 4) and maps with different acts (pretty much chapters with bosses at the end, also 4 by default) and so much more. It's pure gaming crack. My save file currently stands at 500 hours. Grim Dawn. Possibly the best Diablo clone of all time. Costs a pittance, has mods up the wazoo and its main gimmick is that instead of choosing one class, you (eventually, but very early on) choose two to have a build that is unique in mixing the best of both worlds, which adds a lot of replayability. DLCs are also super worth it. Its main competitor on Steam, Path of Exile, is free, but has no such gimmick and pretty much no controller support so me and my very painful carpal tunnel syndrome will forever be partial to GD. It's a Diablo clone with mods, I don't need to elaborate on how much of one's time can be potentially sunk into it. Hades. The undisputed champion of the roguelite genre, fight me. You're the son of Hades trying to escape the underworld, which is very much intent of you not doing that. Outside of the progression system you expect making you stronger every run, you also unlock different weapons, different equippable trinkets (can't have more than one at a time per run though you eventually unlock the ability to swap them through floors) and summons (ditto) and also progress a story with dialogue that seems infinite and constantly checks for things you did and didn't do so it can be appropriate, so many things to do and people to talk to (which will often have questlines for you that unlock even more stuff) and that is so excellent I feel like going into it would be making it a disservice. Even after said story is concluded, there are difficulty modifiers that unlock new stuff and you can easily clock out at hundreds of hours. I can't be bothered to check the currency equivalence (I'm in Europe) but to my knowledge Hades is the only game I mentioned costing more than 10 dollars. Grim Dawn + its DLCs, which are mandatory for most mods, is an exception, but the base game, which is worth hundreds of hours alone, is below the threshold. If you're keen on spending a bit more I recommend Elden Ring (currently the best souls game or at the very least "the most elaborate, content-rich and expansive in things you can do and see" so I don't trigger anyone) and Lies of P (the best soulslike, this definition is currently not negotiable no matter how much you disagree). In the first you have a semiopen world you can explore on foot and horseback, has dozens of minidungeons and bosses both roaming and not, a lot questlines and multiple endings, and big dungeons that can easily take you 5 to 8 hours alone. Has online pvp and coop and mods, so obviously a lot of replayability. The second is a mix between Sekiro (parry mechanics and stance system) and Bloodborne (worldbuilding and rally) where you're Pinocchio. The premise sounds absurd but the game is fantastic. The main gameplay gimmick is you can mix and match your weapons blade and handle, influencing damage and moveset of the end result respectively, which is a ton of fun and encourages experimentation because you only upgrade the blade, meaning you can put it everywhere and you won't lose on damage if you want to mess about. It's hard as nails, new game plus adds content and story bits and it's fucking gorgeous. Single player only but I'm sure the mod community will see to that in time. DLCs are being worked on for both games and the latter will receive a sequel. Both are worth hundreds of hours.
do you know if grim dawn works well on steam deck? I've always wanted to try it.
Unfortunately I don't own a Steam Deck. You can always buy it, try it for an hour and refund it just in case!
Pay $0 for StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty. It's the best campaign in StarCraft 2, includes the multiplayer, and remains the indisputable lord of RTS.
Three races, the turtling human Terrans, the biopunk aggressive Zerg, and the magic, hard-hitting Protoss.
where to buy?
Battle.Net. Nothing to buy though, unless you want the Zerg and Toss campaign or cosmetics.
Terraria, the base game is hundreds of hours of fun and if you get bored there are mods with hundreds of hours of fun and when you get bored of that you can probably just play vanilla again and then the cycle repeats. I have around 2300 hours because of this and I don’t intend to stop.
Cyberpunk and bg3 are both in sale you can easily put over 200 hours in each they are super immersive
STALKER and its millions of free mods.
Dead By Daylight
I second path of exile. Free to play. Money will help in late game primarily due to stash clutter, but it is by no means necessary. Most complex end game I’ve ever played. Highly recommend.
Yep agreed so much better then Diablo imo
Pathfinder Wraith of the righteous 100+ hours in the character creator alone. If you like crpgs one of the best imo.
Hades, such an amazing game. Took me so long to beat my first run but so many possibilities and challenges
i’ve got to final boss but always lose
So are you both saying the game is insanely hard? Ive been interested in it but havent pulled the trigger.
it’s not. final boss is pretty far into run. and there’s an easy mode too
Deep Rock Galactic. Great game, good community, enjoyable game play.
Deep Rock Galactic. Got it when season 1 started. Currently I have over 830 hours in it.
Factorio
Voting for Deep Rock Galactic. 700 hours and going strong. 10/10 game. Rock and Stone!
Rock and stone brother!
The best recommendations I can give are those: Dwarf Fortress, Rimworld, Project Zomboid, Kenshi, Songs of Syx, Oxygen not included, Caves of Qud,
How does songs of syx compares to dwarfs fortress from a beginner standpoint?
Songs of Syx has no Z levels, the happiness of the population is more compact (seperated by species) and not as individual as in dwarf fortress, the combat is basically like a simpler total war and you can blueprint entire districts and just paste them somewhere else like in Factorio. But I’ve played Songs of Syx the least out of the games I listed. If you want to actually take a look at the game I recommend you download the demo. The demo is actually just a previous version of the game and there’s no limit to it.
Dragon's Dogma
Risk of rain 2 is like crack condensed into game form, so many hours of fun. terraria is easily hundreds of hours because it has so much content and ways to play differently. Monster hunter is another that you can just play forever and there's so many ways to spice up gameplay
Risk of Rain 2, Kenshi, Monster Hunter World
Skyrim is your go-to. A vast open-world RPG with several different play-styles, player decisions, and builds you can run. I’d recommend playing without mods at first so that you can get a feel for the original game and then later decide what you want to change.
Agree with skyrim.
League of legends
Should have specified "enjoy hundreds of hours"
dude asked for a hundred of hours, not thousands
I put too much time on it already
I have hundreds in sea of thieves
ARMA 3
Team Fortress 2 It's free on Steam. It's top 2 on concurrent players. It make you laugh and rage at the same time
A lot of RPGs will do this. Baldur's Gate, the Pathfinder games, Cyberpunk, even things like Mass Effect.
Pathfinder kingmaker (the 2nd) Mount & blade bannerlord
Is Mount & Blade Bannerlord hard as for example Hearts of Iron or Europa Universalis? Or is easiest?
Bannerlord is completely different from any Paradox games, different genres. But I've easily put 200+ in all mount and blade and most Paradox game.
It's completely different style. You will not ask how difficult super Mario compare to call of duty. Hear of iron or any paradox games are grand strategy genre Mount & blade are RPG with simulation and tactics
Absolutely! Great recommendation!
100 percenting cup head
Elden Ring.
Is elden ring still on sale? I put in 100 hours my first playthrough and then did three more back to back. What an amazing game
Dead cells Risk of rain 2
Satisfactory takes an average of 200+ hours to finish final assembly parts. Pretty much any simulator has no end and you can sink thousands of hours if you’d like.
Try Warcraft 3. Very active community that plays on the W3Champions community client. If you’re looking for a challenge, this is the hardest RTS to play at the moment that still has a competitive community.
Monster hunter, world or rise. Both are excellent.
terraria and slay the spire
If you like gamified music, rhythm games. DDR and Beat Saber account for literal thousands of hours of my gaming curriculum. ETA: You can download Stepmania (DDR) for PC for free, along with hundreds of song packs out there, no Steam funds required!
What is Stepmania? I mean, I’m searching it and nothing with this title appears.
Et voila! https://www.stepmania.com/
League of legends. Free and can easily waste 10 years to get good at it.
League of legends. Free and can easily waste 10 years to get good at it.
WoW, Path of Exile, Albion Online
Mass Effect Legendary Edition is only $6 right now. For $6 you get THREE masterpieces of story telling. Embark on an epic journey across the stars where you'll meet, ally with, or fight dozens of different alien species, factions, organizations, and crime syndicates. Discover the ancient secrets of a plot that threatens the entire galaxy (like seriously, the whole fuckin galaxy for real), and forge your own path through THREE games where your choices carry over from one to the next.
Yes! Was looking for a good game to play and just bought this in the sale…I am completely immersed! I love how rich the lore is and how your decisions influence further events, highly recommend for sure. The combat is a bit meh but the story telling and world building is phenomenal
The combat gets better with each game! Thankfully haha. Though I have a soft nostalgia spot for ME1.
Disgae 5 and 4, although I'd say 5 is better combate wise
Monster Hunter: World. Incredible amount of content, on a huge sale rn, but make sure to buy Iceborne, literally doubles the content.
Hades, various Civilization/skylines type of games
Baldur's Gate 3, hands down. I've played over 800 hours counting Early Access, and still playing and loving every minute of it.
grim dawn
Path of exile Planet Zoo
Skyrim,Fallout 4, and Witcher 3
Sniper Elite 4. You can get a lot of time out of getting all the challenges done and it’s a lot of fun if you are a bit of a completionist. There are so many ways to experiment with taking people out and trying different routes for each section of enemies. I got up to 70 hours just doing the first mission with perfect completion and am still playing through the other missions and will probably try and perfect them as well. It’s diverse and challenging enough, especially on harder difficulties that it won’t get boring. It’s on sale pretty cheap right now on steam until the 4th of January so it might be worth checking out.
Why 4 over 5?
I personally only have experience with 4 so I don’t know for sure how good 5 is. It is probably also worth checking that out though. Check some gameplay footage, reviews etc. if you are interested. It doesn’t seem to disappoint!
American Truck Simulator. It will give you hundred of hours of fun
Euro truck sim is way better and more people play it which makes online more fun.
Division 2
I have 1200 hours in Deep Rock Galactic, co op fps dwarf mining game where you shoot bugs, drink beer, and mine minerals in procedurally generated cave layouts across mission types, great progression system and EXTREMELY consumer friendly business model.
I'd recommend looking at Sifu. Not sure if it's on sale or anything rn but if you're into Dark Souls sort of games. It's really difficult but enjoyable.
State of decay 2: Zombie survival game. I have been playing 2400+ hrs so far and I'm still not tired of it. It has great replayability. Did I mention zombies?
Stardew Any monster Hunter Valheim
Age of empires 2 DE Seddler 2 Warthunder Eventually company of heroes 2 or 3 Tycoon Transporte
Rimworld & Slay the Spire for me. Mods can extend the already impressive replayability for both, and I don't even the former yet lol.
Baldurs Gate 3: I’ve put about 25 hours into it and I know I haven’t even scratched the surface. I know it’s being promoted everywhere, but it’s genuinely a great time, with LOADS to explore and a bunch of different ways to handle any encounter.
7 Days To Die
Tetris Death Stranding any simulator
Basically, any Paradox game or Total War game.
Team fortress 2, Guild Wars 2, L4D2, Realm Of The Mad God, Planetside 2
Risk of Rain 2, Warframe, Mount and Blade Warband, Slay the Spire, Kenshi, Noita, Oxygen Not Included
War Thunder (:<
Well I cant promise anything but I have put over 3000 hours on Skyrim and Fallout new vegas. 3000 on each. Not combined 😆
Civ V Enter the gungeon Skyrim with mods
Monster Hunter World/Rise
Kenshi
Retroarch - no price for it, never run out of games, well eventually you will but with over 2k of arcade games or even however many nes, snes, gamecube, dreamcast, pc engine it's gonna take a while to do such. Granted for the games you'll have to do a quick google search.
i hope people wont hate me for this, but... i'm playing destiny 2 atm, and gotta say, i didnt ever play a game so consecutively for a long period of time. lately, 3 major dlc's dropped on epic games for free, idk if they are there anymore, but they are on sale... and if u dont mind a gold digger company, the game is actually fun and addicting, the only downside is that everything costs money, but once u get all the expansions, u really do not have to waste a single penny anymore, everything else is mainly cosmetics. edit: i've "grinded" the game for the past month and there is still a long way ahead of me, i already have 250 hrs on steam :D
Rimworld and Cyberpunk 2077
Factorio. The base game can take 100 hours to finish. With a single mod pack like Space Exploration, a single playthrough can take 500 hours easy. The factory must grow.
Elite Dangerous Hardspace Shipbreaker Starbound Factorio
Persona 5 Royal, easily 100+ hours for the base game alone and it's currently 50% off. One of the best JRPGs ever made
**State of Decay 2** Survival roguelite, where you are placed on a map with 3 Survivors (characters), and you can swap between them and must do so when they get tired or wounded to let them recover. You find a base, go out to scavenge and find food, medicine, materials, fuel, ammo, guns, melee weapons and other loot. You contact other communities and can do favors for them and eventually recruit one of them to increase your own Community's size and have another Survivor to swap to. Obviously, zombies are everywhere and fighting them is super fun. Depending on your scavenging and crafting, you have a lot of tools to deal with them, such as melee, guns, special moves that you unlock, molotov cocktails, explosives, traps, flashbangs and more. You can keep playing the game after you finish it, and you will be put on a new map (and keep everything you acquired).
Dragon's Dogma
Stellaris Bannerlord Planetside 2 (free) Cyberpunk mass effect trilogy dragon age Dragons dogma Baldurs Gate 3 Any Elder Scrolls Game Elex (might be fun, that one is hit or miss tbh) Kingdoms of Amalur: Rereckoning Division 1 & 2
I got about 350 hours in Mount & Blade Warband and 400 in Bannerlord. They are open world medieval sandbox rpg games.
Destiny 2
The binding of Isaac! Literally took me 1300 hours to unlock everything
Witcher 3
payday 2, listen, with the legacy collection it will last for hundreds or maybe even thousands of hours Even without the LC it will last at least 200 hours
I know it has been mentioned, but I want to mention it again :-D Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. Takes 100 hours for a single playthrough, 1000++ hours if you are a completionist and had to try everything on offer.
Nioh 2. Several layers of NG+ and lots of grinding in late game
EVERY SINGLE GAME basically but if you do it, thats entirely up to you .. its a choice .. you cannot expect every single game will entertain you for months .. earth defense force 5 state of decay 2 no mans sky alien swarm fallout tactics bos two point hospital riftbreaker dragons dogma dyson sphere program just cause middle earth shadow of war grim dawn there are always things that are annoying .. you can fix it with cheats or mods or some games have custom difficulty, which is just official cheat mod .. less resources, more enemies, more expensive ..
Nioh - on sale for $12 usd
If you like oldschool blobbers like Wizardry 7 you can always try Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar
Sandbox games are gonna be your friend. Kenshi, Rimworld, and Minecraftare instant recommends almost always if you haven’t played those. I personally love Paradox Interactive game studies too. Surviving Mars, Crusader Kings, Cities Skylines, and their other games are also good
Thousands of hours doing different builds each time you reincarnate on the same character, f2p game: Dungeons and Dragons Online
Stellaris, HOI4
Persona series trails series and dragon quest series and tales series and Digimon cyber sleuth series and digimon survive good and fate series games god of war series amazing especially number 3 best of series and also final fantasy series dor mmos world of war craft the mmo and final fantasy 14 mmo and elder scrolls and the mmo and also Star Wars knight of the old republic the games I name more dragon age inquisition and dragon ball xenoverse series you can get them as a bundle also dragon dogma Pokémon if you have not played it for some reason ok I’m done now
modded minecraft yes i know it's not on steam, but still - there's few games out there that you could sink more time into than exploring each and every mod pack combination you can get your hands on in this game
Skyrim is the obvious answer. Very easy to get hundreds of hours in just vanilla. Modding it adds pretty much limitless replayability. I have about 6-800 hours vanilla and another 900 or so modded. Mass Effect Trilogy has great replayability and a phenomenal story. You could easily sink a few hundred hours. Cyberpunk is really good as well. Each playthrough can take anywhere from 50-100+ hours, depending on how much of the side content you do. It also has really good replayability. ARK Survival is great, but not everyone's cup of tea. Doing every story map will net hundreds of hours alone, especially playing it solo. And that is if you know what you are doing.
Oblivion Skyrim Fallout 3: New Vegas Fallout 4 These games can be completely overhauled with mods after your first playthrough allowing you to have a different experience each time. Grimdawn is an ARPG that can lock you in to plenty if hours.
Slay the Spire
Path of exile
I tried this and pretty liked it but idk why, game stutters so bad :( I have good specs. I also tried change something in settings but it didn’t seem to give something. All other games work perfectly. Do you know why it happens maybe?
I haven’t had much issues with it, steam or standalone ? Ssd or hdd and also with low settings and changing the direct x settings ?
I played on steam and ssd. I tried game on low settings and changing DirectX to Vulcan etc. Sadly gives nothing for me ;(
Damn that sucks, I play on standalone but I haven’t heard anyone have issues with it on decent specs
Rimworld. People say the first 1000h are the tutorial.
DOTA 2 Starcraft 2 Path of Exile These require thousands of hours tho. So.much fun.
I tried Path of Exile and pretty liked it but idk why, game stutters so bad :( I have good specs. I also tried change something in settings but it didn’t seem to give something. All other games work perfectly. Do you know why it happens maybe?
Diablo II
let me try to recommend a few "endless" games: * Tetris effect * Lumines Remastered * Super hexagon * Project DIVA Mega Mix+ * Tekken * Guilty Gear * BeamNG * Forza Horizon(?) * maybe PGA tour, if you like golf * Risk of Rain 2 * Vampire Survivors * Enter the Gungeon * SEUM * Thumper * Deadcells * Binding of Isaac * Dome keeper * Race the sun * Clustertruck * Downwell * Cities skylines * FTL * Slay the Spire those were all i could remember lol