I like community builders and games that I can keep a world for years and grow, watch it evolve. I enjoy Rimworld. ARK evolved series is good.
Bonus if it’s multiplayer capable LAN and not online.
Oxygen not included is nice but mentally taxing sometimes. I prefer laid back chill games with economy and farming. 2d or 3d doesn’t matter. I don’t mind trying indie games. Survival based games are nice. I’m not super pick and choose.
Give me your greatest joy in game form. I’ve heard Stardew Valley is good. I tried it, reminds me of a gameboy game. I could not get into the game. My character kept falling asleep like 14 times in a day.
Unciv is a good civilisation clone.
Factorio.
Cities: skylines
This one doesn’t even require Proton, since it’s Linux native. It’s also a very chill game.
Mindustry a defense strategy game, you collect minerals and conquer unexplored territories
If you haven’t played it, Terraria. One of my all time favorite games, after all those years. Should also be really cheap on sales.
I’m trying to persuade my partner to play it with me at the moment. He seems open to it, but experiences inertia around starting a new game.
If you like Rimworld the obvious suggestion from me is Dwarf Fortress. It’s on steam but if you’re not sure I believe there’s a free version with the original ascii graphics on the bay12 games website (at least there was when I last played).
Also Factorio might interest you, but for a laid back experience you’d want to turn down biters (mostly disabling expansions). May be mentally taxing.
Another comment mentions modded minecraft, which gets a +1 from me. Though if you want a “forever world” I’d suggest playing unmodded (save for some client side graphics / QoL if desired), as there’s at least some guarantee you can keep the world as the game gets updated. If you do go modded though I’d suggest using prismlauncher and browsing through premade modpacks on modrinth and curseforge. P.S. if you don’t already own the game somehow you’ll want java edition, not bedrock
Project zomboid, once build 42 finally comes out that is. Shouldn’t be more than a few more months right? Haha
That game has consumed multiple glorious years of my life. Amazing game with an amazing modding community.
OpenTTD!!!
Also Satisfactory.
Satisfactory
I dunno if I’d call it Linux friendly. It runs under Proton moderately well, but it feels like it’s still not quite as good as it was on Windows. And there’s no official support.
I’ve put hundreds of hours in on Linux and completed the game once. I’ve done almost everything there is to do in the game without issue. It’s never felt like a sub par experience.
Satisfactory is fantastic on SteamDeck, since their big update (mid last year?) to get SteamDeck verified.
(Edit: And before that update, it was essentially unplayable.)
Factorio is definitely worth a try.
Vintage Story is worth looking into imho.
Do you need to tinker to make it work? I remember reading that the creator had no plans to put it on Steam.
It has native Linux support, works out of the box for me using KDE Fedora 43.
It is written in C#/.Net, which depending on your Linux system can be a bit of a hassle to set up (like me on Gentoo).
That said, the Flatpak version is incredibly easy to get up and running no matter which distro you use, which is what I opted for.
CoreKeeper is a good one for multiplayer. Like Terraria x Stardew. I self hosted a server that we played for months, including at a LAN party, but I do think they use a nat hole-punch server to ease connectivity. Not sure if it was possible to direct connect via IP. It’s a big world with boss/gear progression and some mining automation.
Nothing has quite scratched the Rimworld itch for me, anything in that realm just makes me wanna play RimWorld more. But technically I have to mention Dwarf Fortress.
If you haven’t played a factory sim, Factorio is a classic. If you don’t want to have to fight buggers, you could try Dyson Sphere Program or Satisfactory instead.
Modulus is a recent factory sim with a unique twist: instead of having a fixed tech tree you work through, you’re given arbitrary 3D block configurations, and you lay down the configuration of buildings to make them. I really like the open-endedness. Some designs nicely complement others, so that the pieces you cut out to make part A can be stuck into the line that makes part B.
Btw, for Stardew, you need to eat foods that give your stamina back. Early on it’s harder to get the foods, but later you grow tons.
Postal Diplomacy has been around longer than the internet, so why not.
Kerbal Space Program runs better through proton than it does either natively in windows or natively in linux.
It’s the game I have the most hours in, by a large margin.
X-plane runs natively on Linux, and you have countless hour of simming. While not fully single-player, Elden ring works perfectly through steam/proton, and the ordinary interaction with other players is about letting message
