My wife and I enjoy playing mystery walking simulators together and have been looking for more-- Steam's recommendation engine is pretty terrible in finding others or lesser-known titles, so I thought I'd ask around for what others play! They don't have to be full-on walking simulators, just games where dying is rare/not a big component of the experience (looking at you, Visage!), and the rest of the game is all about solving a mystery/thriller of some sort. Preferably first-person games with realistic-enough graphics.

Ones we've played so far and have loved are:

• Dead Secret
• Gone Home (loose fit)
• The Painscreek Killings (really loved this one)
• The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

Ones I've got in my queue:

• Anna
• Bohemian Killing
• Dead Secret 2
• Return of Obra Dinn

I've also played What Remains of Edith Finch, Dear Esther, Firewatch, and some others-- but those didn't really have a big enough mystery component to them (to be clear I liked them, they just didn’t have a dark/thriller vibe to em).

Any other suggestions?

I was wondering if anybody had any tips for muscling through a game. I've got a few games I want to play or go back to, such as Stardew Valley (I completed it before the 1.3 update, wanna play 1.4), and Factorio (I bought in a fit of passion, haven't gotten an hour in). There are others, but these are the two I find myself going "I'm going to play this!" and I just never get to, and it's not for time.

I like the concepts of these games, and I've got something like 135 hours on Stardew Valley, but seem to get bored after I've restarted it (I lost some key items and bugs caused me to never get them back, plus the mine completion bug fixed in 1.3). I started Slime Rancher after playing through it in early access, but can't seem to get back into it after it went gold a couple years ago.

I realize I'm sort of asking for a way to force myself to play games, but has anybody done this? I'm thinking for a given game I can set smaller goals to strive for, and work on doing that, but was wondering if anybody has any ideas.

I've never really been that into video games. When I was young, I played a lot of RPGs on the SNES and PS1. Within the last couple of years, I dipped my toes back in the water and tried a few out. I tried Skyrim on a friend's recommendation, but it was just a little too involved and open-world for me. I got Cities:Skylines, which I love because I love city builder sims, but that game just does not run well on any of my underpowered computers. And I loved Ori and the Blind Forest, a beautiful platformer, and I'd play it again right now if it wasn't Windows-only.

Here are my requirements. First, it needs to run well on a low-powered machine without making the fan go insane. I've got a MacBook Air 2012 and a ThinkPad x250 (Linux). Neither of these are the ideal gaming experience, I know, but I'm not looking for amazing graphics or bleeding edge technology or something super immersive. Pixel graphics are fine with me. It reminds me of my youth, anyway. I played both Skylines and Ori on my Intel NUC 4th Gen and while it worked, they both really taxed that little machine. I was able to finish Ori, but once a city reaches a certain size in Skylines, it gets unplayable.

I'm not looking for stress. I like RPGs and sims. But it doesn't have to be really hard or frustrating. I don't want to feel chased in a game. I prefer to feel that I'm driving the action and I can go at my pace. I want to feel like if I look away for a moment, I'm not going to lose everything. I'm a casual. I also don't mind if there's no defined ending of a game. For me, I'm more looking for a diversion and a slow build over some kind of constant progression/achievement type scenario.

If it has full controller support, that would be ideal. I've got a Steam controller, and I prefer using a controller to play a game. I've never liked using the keyboard to play. I'm not totally against it, but I guess I just never got into computer gaming. I pretty much always played on consoles in the past.

Linux or macOS only, please. I did have Windows installed once so that I could play games, but I'm not bothering with that anymore. I don't want to have to boot into another operating system just to play a game. I want to be able to hop in and out of a game while using my daily driver computer.

So in my research, I've looked into Terraria and Stardew Valley. These might be what I'm looking for. But I really don't know. Do either of these scratch my itch? Is there another game that I would enjoy based on what I've told you? Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

EDIT: Thank you everybody for your awesome suggestions. I'm still happy to hear more, as I plan to add the ones that really interest me to my wishlist and revisit later. I ended up getting Hollow Knight yesterday and I spent the whole day playing it. It's very engrossing, and it's the perfect game for me. It's so much like Ori, and that game blew me away. Chilled out, go at your own pace, exploring dungeons, challenging but not impossible (though the first Hornet fight was pretty tough for me). The game runs fine on my ThinkPad x250 (i5-5300U) in Pop!_OS Linux, apart from the initial movie scene stuttering--I just had to skip past it, unfortunately. It's such an awesome game, and I'm glad to see they've already announced a sequel. If you know of any other games that are like Ori and Hollow Knight, let me know.

In Euro Truck Simulator 2 you start off as a driver with no truck or money, take jobs, save up, get your own truck, buy/upgrade garages, buy more trucks and hire a fleet of drivers to work for you. There is little to spend the money on, other than more garages and more trucks, which means means more employees and more money coming in. Once you get a certain amount of employees it becomes so unbalanced that money becomes pointless.

There is a config setting `g_income_factor' that affects how much jobs pay. Set it to 0.5 and all jobs pay half as much as they normally do. There are mods that set it to various values to make it more challenging. The problem with setting it to a low value is that it makes the early game too hard. It can take way too long to buy the first couple trucks and start hiring people.

So my strategy is to change `g_income_factor' as I play. I start out with it as 1 (full income) and every time I buy a new truck I change it. I set it to 0.85^(the number of trucks in my fleet) . That way the more employees I have the less each makes and the less I make from my own driving. It also introduces a trade off to hiring new drivers. Is the new driver going to be worth the reduced income from the rest of my fleet? It reverses the dynamic where in normal play the more employees you have the easier it is to get more to a dynamic where the more you have the harder it becomes to grow.

I just bought this game and I'm in love. The whole Roller Coaster Tycoon nostalgia is at play here, that is for sure, but the level of detail in this game makes my head spin.

I spent a whole evening designing a custom styled burger and drink stand.

Anyone care to share some of the stuff they're been making?

Hello! I'm the girl who keeps posting about Dwarf Fortress here on ~games . When I posted about a succession game, many said they'd love to if they knew how to play. I'm going to link some resources for y'all:

INSTALLATION:
Main Bay12Games Page: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/

Lazy Newb Pack (tons of helpful stuff): http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=126076.0

GUIDES:
Dwarf Fortress Wiki: http://www.dwarffortresswiki.org/

DasTactic's Tutorial Series: https://youtu.be/qWXgVQXzjsw

I hope this helps! <3

• DyebrewsWitch a.k.a Alexis

Just wondering...

Let's do it guys! Every good forum/community from Ars Technica to the XKCD forums has had a go taking turns playing the most detailed simulation game I have ever seen. I can generate the world for ideal 44.10 (and hopefully 44.11) settings with my extra adventurer reactions.

Now that dwarves can get angry and stressed again, now is an opportune time. Who's with me?

Who here plays Dwarf Fortress? It is such an amazing game that I only got back to playing last night after a weeks-long hiatus while focusing on my job.

I prefer playing Adventurer mode with some crafting mods, and exploring the land - socializing, having fun, making NPC pals, and being a hero.

Maybe we can do a Tildes DF succession game!