I’d like to get back into playing video games, but I don’t want to have to sign up for an online service like Steam or Ubisoft Connect.
I love technical sandbox games like Scrap Mechanic, especially if they have a “creative mode” that allows me to just make stuff.
Well, GOG sells a lot of commercial games and doesn’t require online connectivity for anything marked as “DRM free”. Tend to be older. Once you download it, no link to the service required.
I think that all the – be they free or commercial – games on itch.io don’t require signing up for a service, unless the game itself has some sort of service. I don’t have specific recommendations there, though.
Games bundled in a Linux distro won’t require a service.
There are open-source games.
I personally like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, which is a very deep open-world roguelike set in a post-apocalyptic world with zombies. Steep learning curve, as a warning, but you can do all sorts of stuff. NPCs, build bases and set up electrical power, build ground vehicles, boats, and rotary-wing craft. Vehicles can carry other vehicles, can have video cameras, turrets, armor, various sorts of lights, rams and other melee weaponry. Bionics, mutations, skills, farming, crafting, quests, music and sound packs, graphical tiles. Martial arts. Contains probably more real-world firearms than any other game I know of, does stuff like multiple optics, various stock and handle modifications, powder fouling. Moddable melee weapons. Artifacts. Mods to add spells, psionics, and various magic items. Traps and static defenses. Cooking, brewing, drugs, alcohol, various types of clothing. Explosives. Waifu body pillows. Regional weather simulation. Heating and cooling. Lovecraftian stuff. Radiation. Remote-controlled vehicles. Senses including smell, hearing with temporary and permanent impairment modeling, infrared, vision to see magnetic fields, light-amplification optics, eye dilation simulation when entering different light levels. Vehicle-mounted battery chargers, kitchenettes, water tanks, rainwater collection systems, water purification systems. Radios. Various factions of enemies, some of which fight each other. Bandits. Lockpicking, teleportation, various types of diseases, parasitic and fungal infections, various types of poisoning. Hacking. Furniture. Various types of psychological conditions. Gasses, gills, skates, broken limbs, stances, folding bicycles, body part level encumbrance, container size maximums (including modeling things like mesh bags that can’t contain small items and waterproof containers that protect things that are destroyed by immersion in liquid), pockets in clothing, various types of holsters and sheaths that can be worn on various places on the body. Pain, guilt, cannibalism, music. It’s got a lot of stuff. There’s a build on Steam now pre-set up with graphics and sound if you want to donate, but you can also just download the builds from the dev site for free. Has mobile builds, but I think that it really benefits from the computational power of a PC, as well as a keyboard.
Dwarf Fortress also has a steep learning curve, is a colony simulator. Not open source, but free, also deep, many hours you can spend there.
Shattered Pixel Dungeon is an open source roguelike, relatively shallow learning curve. Really aimed at touchscreen devices like smartphones, but has computer builds, has support for keys and stuff. See [email protected].
Mindustry is an open-source factory automation game in the vein of Factorio. Works on mobile or PC platforms.
I’ve only played Unciv on smartphone, but apparently it also has PC builds. It’s an open-source reimplementation of Civilization V, sans all the pretty graphics and animation and music and such. One of the deeper games I think you can get on a phone.
Someone else mentioned Minecraft. I think that that requires an account with the service these days, though Luanti – until recently known as Minetest – is a similar, open-source project that does not.
Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup is a tough roguelike known for being well-balanced, with the devs stripping out unnecessary stuff and streamlining it. I don’t play it much these days, but I’ve enjoyed it in the past.
Endless Sky is an open-source clone of Escape Velocity for the classic Mac, a 2D space exploration, fighting, and trading game. I don’t play it much, but I think that it’s worth a look if you’ve never played it.
Battle for Wesnoth is an open-source tactical hex-grid game. Characters can level up and gain abilities. Can be played on mobile OSes, though I think that it really benefits from a mouse.
I am not personally all that into OpenTTD, an open-source game based on Transport Tycoon Deluxe, but I have played it and have seen many people who are super-into-it.
I’ve played and enjoyed the open-source 0 A.D., some time back, but last I played it, it had a bunch of work still to be done. An Age of Empires clone.
There are a handful of open-source RTS Total Annihilation-inspired games based on the open-source Spring engine, like Beyond All Reason.
Oh, I haven’t played them for a long time, but if you have a gamepad and like twin-stick abstract minimalist shooters, I remember having fun with Kenta Cho’s games, and all are packaged in current Debian-family Linux distros. They use 3d textureless graphics, will run on any system out there that can do 3d.
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gunroar
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rrootage
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tumiki-fighters
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torus-trooper
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titanion
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mu-cade
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noiz2sa
https://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~cs8k-cyu/
I don’t see people often mentioning those, so maybe give them a bit more visibility.
Just wanted to stick something a bit more action-oriented in.
Tyrion is an old DOS shmup that was open-sourced ages back and is also in Debian-family distros as
opentyrian.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_(video_game)
I’d still play that.
Another old DOS game that was open-sourced is Star Control 2, in Debian-family Linux distros as
uqmfor Ur-Quan Masters.That’s old, but I think still fun.
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Oooo that cataclysm games sounds interesting. Gonna have to check that out and see what’s up!
I really like it, but I will warn that the learning curve is not shallow, and this is exacerbated by the fact that the game keeps changing and being rebalanced, so strategies change a lot over time.
Also, there used to be a (seriously out of date) wiki that a fan ran, but that went down a few months back, so it makes the curve even steeper.
When I first started playing, many years back, recreational drugs were a fantastic tool, because they provided tremendous stat bonuses. Those got nerfed; there are stat bonuses and reasons that you might want to take a stimulant or depressant or maybe stay awake, but drugs aren’t magical enhancers any more, work more like in real life.
There was an era when unarmed combat was really powerful – unreasonably so. I personally enjoy playing unarmed characters, and you can still do it, but it’s a lot more like trying to play unarmed in a real-life apocalypse – not easy.
Fighting basic zombies changed a lot, making crowds much more dangerous, when they got the ability to do things like grab someone and prevent dodging when grabbed, when the number of attacks one could dodge was capped outside certain (weapon and unarmed) martial arts forms bonuses, and got the ability to do things like have the collective mass of a crowd of zombies pushing against a wall push things over.
Food used to be a serious problem; now I don’t find it to be particularly an issue.
And there’s a lot of unintuitive stuff. In almost all games with zombies, night is the enemy. But for most types of builds in Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, night is your friend, especially in the early game. Yes, it hides zombies. But it also hides you and aside from their sense of smell, for most zombie types, your senses are superior to theirs at night, and it’s more critical to not run into crowds of them at night). So doing night raids on towns for supplies is generally a good idea.
There are a ton of stats, and a lot of them are hidden, and a lot of complicated mechanics, like multiple items in one slot (e.g. multiple items on a given layer on a given body part having an encumbrance penalty over the normal impact).
So it has an extremely ungentle learning curve. But…you also won’t run out of stuff to play with for a long, long time in that game. Can modify clothing items, like Kevlar or fur-line clothing. Firearm recoil is modeled. Can follow various mutation trees and “break threshold” in one tree, get more powerful mutations in one (be a humanoid feline or a tree-like critter that can feed on sunlight). Fat reserves. You can have tank treads on a vehicle, stick solar panels on the roof of a building and then wire the walls down to a subterranean base and set up lighting and dig a well, hack into robots to control them (or in some cases, use relevant credentials, like military or police), start wildfires, join forces with alien species trying to wipe out humanity, mount a tank gun on vehicles and blow through walls, reach the sea and board an aircraft carrier, auto-drive vehicles around the highway system…Caves of Qud (also a good game, considerably simpler) might have some degree of comparability in the number of ways in which you can interact with the world, though it has far fewer mechanics and amount of stuff.
One way I see people often recommend to come up to speed is to watch a streamer. This is not how I came up to speed, so I don’t know if I can recommend this personally, but it clearly works for some, and it does teach you some strategies that work with current builds.
Vormithrax is a popular streamer:
https://youtube.com/c/vormithrax
There’s a subreddit which has a fair bit of activity:
https://old.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/
And a Threadiverse community that doesn’t have much activity (well, yet!):
Thanks for loads of information, it makes it sound even more interesting still. The steep learning curve was the only thing that put me off slightly when you originally mentioned it and I planned to go onto YouTube and try and find some information that way and try and get a sort of idea of the game before jumping into it for sure.
Stuff with a steep learning curve are often much more rewarding once you can get past that barrier of entry so that aspect does also appeal to me some what. Ive just started a new game recently and dont have a lot of time for games so tend to just play one at a time but I’m going to try and absorb some info on this in the mean time.
Thanks for the recommendation and additional info!
God damn… this guy knows his stuff.
Endless Sky is a lot of fun. I think I’m through all the reasonably complete plotlines, but there’s plenty of different ways to play and self-directed goals to go after.
Non steam games wise, Myself and my friends play mindustry an RTS tower defense like game. It has a stupid amount of upgrading and building and conquering new areaa with new enemy’s. I too also love scrap mechanic I JUST WANT THE BIG UPDATE DANG NABBIT!!!
If your into terminal/hacker like games id highly recommend duskers. Its a game where you control salvage drones and go onto abandoned space crafts and thered enemys and you close and open doors with terminals and stuff. And your drones have upgrades and abilitys for certain things like traps and activating turrets. I also lovr the graphics very analog Its a really great game if your into it.
Also slay the princess is a really well write single player narrative. And is like old school choose your Adventure with a horror element. I have sunk many hours since the pristine cut droped
All of these games are available for gog
If you’re worried about DRM then look at GOG.com - they sell DRM free games, and you can download the installers direct from their website if you don’t want to use their client and want permanent backups. The installers are not online either. I have a large library of classics and new games from them.
I came across GOG just the other day. Looks great!
Minecraft
It’s available for android, ios, and free on itch(dot)io if you want it free, but Mindustry. Maybe not as free and creative as Scrap Mechanic (still have absolutely NO clue where to even find it for purchase), but it at least has a mode where you can build your own levels if you get bored of the official levels.
For more creative ventures, you could, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, go with minecraft (or luanti with a bunch of different mods/games from the content store if you’re looking for something free).
Edit: don’t know what I was thinking. Found Scrap Mechanic on Steam almost immediately. Must have been thinking another game or something else.
I personally play it through steam but I’ve had an account there for a decade now so that doesn’t bother me. But Factorio allows you to buy directly from their website if you prefer. This also bypasses steams cut I would assume (correct me if that’s wrong please) and you get a steam key with the purchase in case you do ever make a steam account.
You do need to make an account on their website to do that so apologies if that disqualifies it for you. Wube is a rare shining example of a god tier company though, finding a bug is literally a meme in the Factorio community cause of how thoroughly polished the game is. They even fix bugs that exclusively affect mods and not the base game.
I bought Factorio back in the early Beta days, because it was one of the only fun puzzle/simulation games that had a native Linux build available directly on their website. They even had a Linux build of the demo. Factorio is the game I’ve got best value for money over the years.
I only got into it 3ish years ago, originally pirating it cause I was broke at the time, but I bought it as soon as I could with my first paycheque from my current job. Absolute god tier game with god tier devs. I would’ve pre-ordered (heresy, I know) Space Age if they let me, but I bought it day one. I’ve already got 617 hours on the steam version, and I probably put about 5-600 hours into the pirated version before I could afford it.
Love me some Factorio and Wube. 2nd favorite game of all time behind Super Metroid.
Starsector is amazing, even though buying it on the website made me wonder if the storefront was made in the 90s.
Second this. Amazing game that I’ve been following since it was called Starfarer. Highly recommend.
kpatience (freecell)
sgt-puzzles
globalization 2 (an old, barely maintained RTS)
picmi
Doom - bought the wads from steam, but play them on gzdoom
Mario kart
Pokemon HG, FR
Quite a few, actually. And it’s worth mentioning that many games, while sold via steam, can also be bought directly from the makers. Factorio and Songs of Syx come to mind.
2nd Factorio and Factorio Space Age. Once you get your key (which doesn’t require Steam) there’s even a package in AUR for installing it and keeping it updated on Arch.
You forgot to include the most important phrase… “I use arch BTW” :)
“I use Arch, BTW” is so gauche. Now, we mention Arch in an off-hand way, the way you mention your yacht, or how absurd the taxes on your third home are, or how having two doctorates is becoming so common.
Subtle boasting is the “in” thing.
Vintage Story.
I’ve been obsessing over RimWorld again after finding out about Biotech and Anomaly which I had to get. I have it on GOG for some reason. Either it was on sale at some point or was given out free. But it’s the only not old game I have on there and not on Steam; but I added it to Steam as a non-Steam game.
And then there’s all the old games I have on there that may or may not also be on Steam. They weren’t on Steam when I got them originally, but some have since been put on Steam (like Heretic and Hexen).
I also own ARMA 2 through Greenman Gaming, all the borderlands and Civ 6 on Epic (because free), and most of the Battlefield games and the C&C complete pack on EA’s bullshit.
I’m not sure if you are in the same boat, but I bought ARMA 2 and Operation Arrowhead many years back directly from the dev’s website. I logged into their site about a year ago, copied the registration keys, pasted them into Steam, and was able to redeem it through Steam directly. If your games have CD keys, Steam can oftentimes accept those directly like you are entering a Steam product key. I think you put it into the field where you enter Steam gift cards and product keys.
The Operation Arrowhead DLC (as well as all the others I got after that one, like the PMC addon) is shown on my Steam list and I think around that time they had some way of getting your non-Steam release of the base game on it because at the time they didn’t have steam keys to do it, and launching the DLC does start the actual game, but the base game isn’t actually listed in my Steam library, so I have no idea what’s going on there 🤷🏻♂️
It’s not that big of a deal since I have moved onto Arma 3 years ago and arma 4 is right around the corner.
Minecraft.
You can get partway to Scrap Mechanic with Minecraft and the Create Mod.
Minecraft itself requires an online account, though, yes? Is linked to some sort of central authentication system, needs to be connected to play?
You need a Microsoft account to sign in to the launcher, download the game and play online, but if you already have the game installed you can launch it and play singleplayer without an internet connection.
I think itch.io might allow game purchases without any account, depending in the game, but even getting drm-free games is almost always going to require some kind of account somewhere. There’s always the “high seas”, but that’s not something everyone is comfortable with.
GOG is probably your best option for completely DRM free games, and fwiw, a lot of Steam games don’t require you to use Steam to launch them. A fairly thorough list is kept here: https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
I’ve been playing Kerbal Space Program again (it’s one of those games you tend to come back to after a while without playing).
You can buy it from stores like GoG or even the maker itself.
Same thing for Factorio (jokingly called Cracktorio by many).
Both are about finding ways to create complex functional things from simpler elements to achieve goals.
