PC Gaming

If you haven't played it yet, give a try to Astroneer, a space automation/exploration game with no combat and light survival elements (basically oxygen). Above Snakes is also fairly cool, is an isometric survival game where you build the world piece by piece. I have also had fun playing As We Descend it's a roguelite deck-builder of sorts, but with some turn-based tactics RPG mixed in. Because you like mmos, I'd take a look at Bitcraft.

Wow what a thread. You all rock! Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I have grabbed demos for most of these and will write a follow-up post at some point with my thoughts on some of them.

But for now... The Last Caretaker grabbed me almost instantly. Highly recommend even after only playing the demo.

If you want to sink countless hours into it and are looking for automation, building and exploration.. maybe X4: Foundations is something for you? It's basically a giant, fully simulated space sandbox. (And you'd also be supporting a small independent studio, writing their own engine etc.)

Caves of Qud is one of the best exploration games I've ever played. It's a traditional roguelike where the overworld map is the same each time but the world history, factions, and most individual zones are procedurally generated each time you start over.

You play as either a mutated human with strange bonuses like extra arms, the ability to mind control, wings, etc. or a Truekin that starts with higher base stats and the ability to use implant tech to do things like replace your legs with tank treads or your eyes with night-vision goggles.

It's a deep simulation; all of the NPCs in the game are as fully modeled as the player character, the NPCs you meet are a result of the generated history, and the best choice is often to run away.

It's turn-based with multiple difficulty levels. I recommend playing on classic, but the other ways are just as valid.

Oxygen Not Included

Its a colony management sim with plenty of depth. Design plumbing and electricity systems. Farm and ranch. Make oxygen because ... its not included. Disease management. Expand your base. Adorable art style. I love the game and was my go to when I was bed-ridden. Hope you enjoy your time off even though your sick.

If you enjoy automation, tower defense, survival/building games Rimworld might be of interest to you. Enjoying committing war crimes is optional but a nice bonus!

Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Game about cutting up spaceships with lasers and gravity tools with a bit of a narrative.

It's not a great alignment for the types you identified, but I like all the things you mentioned and found this quite nice.

Humanity is a great Civ alternative. Much more responsible and responsive developer and publisher. They also do the endless legend and endless space strategy games.

Fantastic soundtracks and art style. Very well polished games.

Emberward would be right up your alley. It's a rogue-like TD with tetrimono you customize during your run. It just went 1.0 last week and has 96% positive ratings on Steam with almost 4,000 reviews. It's also currently on launch sale.

These might not be for you but I want to provide a couple of options that aren't exactly what you're asking for but are pretty close. No offense taken if you think they are terrible.

Lonestar - Top down space rogue-like where you place modules in your ship to synergize damage output. Also known as 'space math'.

Sunless Skies - Steam punk space train set in the Fallen London universe. Emphasis on exploration and the setting just oozes style. Also the soundtrack is awesome.

Halcyon 6 - Take control of a space station and try to put together a fleet to replace the one that gets nuked at the start of the game.

Rimworld, the best war crimes simulator.

Open transport tycoon, open source remake of the best transport simulator ever.

My favorite game to play when I am sick is Banished, a medieval city building game that was the labor of love of a solo dev. It starts off quite brutally difficult until you learn the best ways to handle the first winters and then it becomes a cozy opportunity for optimization, and a challenge to balance expanding the city as much as you can while supporting the population with agricultural and forestry goods. It's inspired some other games to follow in its footsteps, and it has a modding community still making content for it.

Factorio. KeeperFX

You'd love space engineers.

I've been having a really fun time with vintage story, a.minecraft alternative that goes for detail. It has stuff like crop rotation, a realistic (compared to minecraft at least) steel making process. I think it offers a lot richer and more varied experience than vanilla minecraft, and is surprisingly good about not forcing you to grind.

sandustry is pretty cool, it’s a 2d falling sand based factory builder. early access now iirc, and still new enough that there’s not a lot of guides or tutorials available.

i really dug it bc it REALLY appealed to the min/max part of my brain. every little efficiency boost felt like a discovery lol

First thing that comes to mind is stardew valley, very chill, you can sink hundreds hour without noticing, best farm sim out there.

About automation and roguelike, I'd suggest plateup, it's a cooking roguelike where you manage a restaurant, but there are some automation elements to it, one of the things I like doing is building fully automated restaurants to beat a run.

Still on roguelike, I sunk a few hours on backpack hero, where backpack management is the most important thing and battles are turn focused instead of action focused, position and items you have will be the difference.

All of these are very fun and hooked me for hours for different reasons, hope you'll enjoy them.

I loved minmaxing and grinding around in Grim Dawn and Timberborn. You might too. 👌

Yesterday I bought "Ball x Pit" (Vampire Survivors meets Pinball) and "No Man's Sky" (Space Exploration/Survival). And Last week I've played around 12h of one of my favourite survival games "Valheim" that just came out of Early access.

I hope you get well soon. m

I'm really into souls games so I'm going to focus my recommendations to games with little combat and also tailor the list based on what you tried and didn't like so far.

Optional or minimal combat

• Green Hell
• My Summer Car [AI generated paintings]
• Potion Craft
• Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
• Subnautica [controversy with dev buyout and lawsuit, but a solid game]

Combat required but easy

• Yakuza Kiwami (the other yakuza and like a dragon games are great too but some of them might have kernel level rootkits, and some are available on GOG without rootkits)
• Final Fantasy 12 The Zodiac Age

Exploration focused

• Dave the Diver
• A Short Hike
• Disco Elysium
• The Stanley Parable
• The Talos Principle (1 and 2)
• Stray

Story focused games (non exploration)

• Unpacking
• Venba

Worth trying

• Tropico 6

You could give Sanctum and Sanctum 2 a try. They are “FPS Tower Defense” games where after the tower building phase you go in and blast the enemies by hand alongside the towers.

The FPS combat is not particularly hard because it is still a tower defense at its core, but there are some enemies that are easier to kill by hand than with towers because they have armor and take much more damage at their weakpoints and the towers aren’t very good at aiming at the weakpoints. Also there are some interesting build crafting options, especially in Sanctum 2.

It’s the earlier work by the team who made Satisfactory.

Two games I will suggest:

"Captain of Industry" is a colony sim/automation game, in addition to production you also must care for a population of workers. Production is more complicated than, say, Factorio because most thing have a waste product.

"The Last Caretaker" is a bit different, you're a robot, on a boat, after the end of the world. You run around fixing machines, fixing your boat, and you sail to locations to find resources to do whatever it is you were built for. There are things that will attack you but that isn't what the game is about.

Now Im going to lurk your thread for more suggestions.