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.

I personally usually heavily mod my games, due to finding the process of modding itself fun, along with me preferring to spend a LONG time at one run through.

As an example, I'd give minecraft where I usually play so-called expert packs, which are basically taking a lot of mods and making them depend on each other for progression.

12 Minutes
Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition
Age of Wonder - Plantetfall
Age of Wonders: Planetfall
Animal Crossing New Horizons (Gameplay))
Apex Legends Season 2
Arizona Sunshine - The Damned DLC
Ary and The Secret of Seasons
Astral Chain
Baldur's Gate III
Battlefield V
Battletoads
Battlewake
Beat Saber: Imagine Dragons Music Pack
Black Desert
Blair Witch
Bleeding Edge
Borderlands 2: Commander Lilith & the Fight for Sanctuary Official Trailer
Borderlands 3
BRAWLHALLA Adventure Time
Cadence of Hyrule
Carrion
CastleStorm II
Chivalry 2
Circuit Superstars
Code Vein
Collection of Mana
Commander Keen (Gameplay)))
Conan Chop Chop
Contra Anniversary Collection
Contra: Rogue Corps
Control
Corpse Killer: 25th Anniversary Edition
Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled Grand Prix
CrisTales
CrossfireX
Cyberpunk 2077
Daemon X Machina (Gameplay)))
Deathloop
Disgaea 4 Complete+
DOOM Eternal (Multiplayer)))
Dragon Ball Z Kakarot (Gameplay video)))
Dragon Quest Builders 2
Dying Light 2
El Hijo
Elden Ring
Elder Scrolls Online Elsweyr
Empire of Sin
Empire of Sin
Enter the Gungeon: House of the Gundead
Evil Genius 2 - World Domination
Fall Guys
Fall Guys
Fallout 76 Nuclear Winter (Battle Royale Mode)
Fallout 76 Wastelanders Expansion
FIFA 20
Final Fantasy VII Remake
Final Fantasy VIII Remaster
Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
For Honor: Shadows of The Hitokiri
Forza Horizon 4: Lego Speed Champions
Gears 5 (Escape trailer)))
Genesis Noir
Ghost Recon Breakpoint (Gameplay)))
Ghostwire Tokyo
Gods & Monsters
Greedfall
Griftlands
Halo: Infinite
Just Dance 2020
Kingdom Hearts III ReMind DLC
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Sequel
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Lost Oasis
Lost Words: Beyond the Page
Luigi's Mansion 3 (Gameplay)))
Madden NFL 20
Mario & Sonic at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
Marvel's Avengers
Microsoft Flight Simulator
Midnight Ghosthunt
Minecraft Dungeons
Mosaic
My Friend Pedro
Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch Remastered
No More Heroes III
ONINAKI
Ori and the Will O' The Wisps
Outriders
Panzer Dragoon Remake
Per Aspera
Persona 5 Royal
Phantasy Star Online 2
Planet Zoo
Pokemon Sword & Shield (Gameplay)))
Psychonauts 2
Rad
RAGE 2
Rainbow Six Quarantine
Remnant: From the Ashes
Roller Champions
Romancing Saga 3 & SaGa SCARLET GRACE: AMBITIONS
Samurai Shodown Rimururu
Shenmue III
SMITE Olorun
Sniper Elite: VR
Songs Of Conquest
Spiritfarer
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order
Starmancer
State of Decay Heartland
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate - Dragon Quest
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Banjo-Kazooie
Tales Of Arise
Telling Lies
Terraria: Journey's End
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance Tactics
The Last Remnant Remastered
The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel III
The Legend of Wright
The Lord of the Rings: Adventure Card Game
The Messenger: Picnic Panic
The Outer Worlds
The Sims 4
The Surge 2
The Walking Dead: Onslaught
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Complete Edition
The World of Dragon Quest Builders 2
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege – Clutch Royale
Tom Clancy’s The Division 2: Year 1
Tom Clancy's Elite Squad
Torchlight II
Trials of Mana
Trials Rising Season 2
Unexplored 2
Valfaris
Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2
Vermintide 2: Versus
Warframe: Empyrea
Wasteland 3
Watch Dogs 3: Legion (Gameplay)))
Way to the Woods
Wolfenstein: Cyberpilot
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair
Zelda: Link's Awakening
Zombie Army 4: Dead War

This post went well in ~books, so I figured we could give it a go here.

Top level comments should fill in the blank with some sort of descriptor identifying a kind of game you would like suggestions for. Be as generic or specific as you want.

Replies can then recommend games to that individual.

Hint: Use the "collapse replies" button to view only top-level posts.

I presume a lot of you might have noticed the discourse surrounding Sekiro and the notion that games like Sekiro could benefit from having a complementary "easy mode". The discourse is hot, and the takes are flying left and right but I'm curious to what the people of Tildes think about it.

For those of you who may be too poor to afford the latest AAA titles, or just don't want to support policies like micro-transactions and "If you're offended, just don't buy it", there are many open-source and/or free games that can tide you over. Some of my favorites are:

• FreeCiv: A civilization building game based on Sid Meier's Civilization 1 and 2
• OpenTTD: A transport network building game based off of Chris Sawyer's Transport Tycoon Deluxe
• Dwarf Fortress: Not Open-Source - fortress colony management simulator with an additional RPG gamemode

Do you guys have any other free, possibly open-source games that you would recommend?

Just as with the Wii, I think the motion controls are a big and fun feature of the Switch.

I have already searched online, but could not find a list of games that have motion controls (and in what way). I did see some attempt to put it on Wikipedia, but it was removed due to being too specific to be on Wikipedia itself.

If anyone found anything or is willing to help out, we could collaboratively write one up. What the best place for it would be, I do not know yet, but WikiData pops to mind.

I see votes, but I see no comments ...no idea how to interpret that.

Hello all, hope you're doing well. It's the weekend again, and that means that a lot of us have some free time on our hands. And some of my favorite things to do with my ever-shrinking free time is dive into a large game world and just explore. With that in mind, I thought we could start a little conversation about free-roaming video games, and open-world games in general.

Some thoughts to ponder:

• What are some of your favorite free-roaming titles?

• What keeps a free-roaming or open-world title from getting boring?

• What are some of the more unique ways to populate a large game world?

• *Is Just Cause 2 the best free-roaming game ever? The answer may surprise you!

So you're thinking about starting up a game, remembering all the fun times and great experiences you've had with it, and then you realize that if you want to play that game, you have to go through there again. A place so annoying, so difficult, or so boring that it saps your will to play it preemptively, or makes you drop it partway through. For me, I have this issue with the Dark Souls series. Tomb of the Giants for DS1 (Seriously, fuck the whole needing a lantern thing and fuck gravity), Lost Bastille for DS2 (I still struggle with the Ruin Sentinel 3v1), and Undead Settlement for DS3 (Seriosuly, fuck those bee shooting witches. And the swamp afterwards is a spit in the face after). Anyone else have their grievances with their games?

I've found a fair few glitches that I find really interesting, and I'd be pretty interested in seeing some more pixel vomit too. For the ones I'll be listing, they are in old games but are very interesting.

Everyone's seen the MissingNo. glitch, but a far less famous (although in my opinion, more interesting) glitch is the Super Glitch. If you've got an emulator, I'd recommend doing a save state and messing around with it - it's results vary a lot.

A glitch available in quite a few games is arbitrary code execution. It's pretty interesting in general, as people can do loads of things, from loading up homebrew to replacing maps. Most of the time it is rather difficult or time consuming to do, but it's still fascinating to see.

This one technically isn't a glitch at all, but teleporting in SRS-based Tetris games is pretty cool. An actual glitch in Tetris (NES version) is pentrises don't clear all lines, which can make pretty interesting stuff happen.

EDIT: I nearly forgot about The Big Skip in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga. I recommend watching a speedrun from AGDQ, it only goes over it very briefly in the tasvideos page.

What made them great? Who would you recommend them to?

Don't feel like you have to limit yourself to 2018 releases either. I'm interested in whatever you played and enjoyed regardless of when it came out.

Comment on both the concept (if it works, if it is pro-consumer) and the ever-increasing sizes of games.
For example, Rainbow Six Siege has been receiving steady updates since its release. I find a lot of them fun, but where does it end? Grand Theft Auto V is another game that is quite bloated at this point. Thoughts?

I was wondering about uncommon game mechanics recently and would like to get some inspiration for a possible next project. :)

I personally enjoy games in which a story is generated organically based on the user's gameplay.

By "lost", I mean games that have been lost to time--games that you would not be able to play now, even if you wanted to.

It could be because you cannot currently get a copy of the game (through legitimate means), or your own copy is not able to run since the tech has moved on. Perhaps the game's servers have been shut down or the multiplayer base has died out. Or, perhaps the game's development took it in a different direction and you're left hankering for an older build.

Description:

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 features thrilling grounded multiplayer combat, three full zombies adventures at launch, and a massive battle royale experience.

Note: I couldn't find a proper description anywhere so I just grabbed the text from battle.net

Links:

Battle.net Xbox PlayStation Amazon

I was inspired to ask this because I see a lot of other groups like ~TV people have been doing periodic discussions, and I got to thinking it could work here too. Every now and then, we could hold a discussion on either a video game or board game, for example. If I were to start this up would anyone be interested?

Edit: Oh, and any suggestions for if I do start it up? What games I could start with etc?

A lot of the time people will by default mark a game being buggy as a negative, and on the one hand I do understand this. But, at the same time, some of my most memorable gaming moments will be stuff like walking entering the wasteland to find an old barrel just spinning violently on the floor. Now, obviously a GAME BREAKING bug will always destroy an experience, but if you look at a civilian floating up a wall in spider-man PS4 and you're too worried about your immersion to find humour in it, I'm sure you're very fun at parties.