One thing I have struggled with lately is finding good games to play. I bounce around from game to game trying to enjoy it but it just doesn’t scratch the itch like it used to. For example, one of my favorites was old school RuneScape, but it hasn’t really been giving me the same enjoyment that it used to. So then I would open up World of Warcraft, Destiny 2, just playing a little bit of each game. Think maybe I need some new games to play but it’s tough to find them these days.
So what are your favorite 1000+ hour games?
Per my steam library:
Factorio: 3,375.4 hours
Dyson Sphere Program: 2,505.9 h
Stellaris: 2,236.6 h
Terraria 2,629.9h
Skyrim: 1,239.5 h
Dungeon Defenders only has 600 hours on Steam, but I’m well over 2000 hours between Steam and PS3/4
I’ve also got a few thousand hours in Just Cause 2&3, as well as several Gran Turismo games and Forza Motorsport games. Morrowind probably has 2-3000 hours, oh and I’m not allowed near Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri anymore.
Secret of Mana and Chrono Trigger are probably up there as well since I’ll replay them every decade or so.
That’s a lot of gaming
I’m 44 years old, and have been gaming practically since I was born. My parents played D&D, and video games with us kids.
Also a lot of those totals are artificially inflated because I can leave the game running to finish a long task, especially Factorio and DSP
That’s awesome.
Factorio
The Factory Must Grow
I’m almost 100 hours into my new space age save, and I’ve played nearly 1k hours since I bought it 5ish years ago. By far one of the most enjoyable games I’ve ever played and I highly recommend it to everyone who enjoys sandbox games
Factorio. It’s the game I always come back to, and I’m always ready to spend 5 minutes playing here and there now that it works so well on steam deck.
terraria for me. i keep managing to find new stuff over a thousand hours later.
“Has this item always been here?! no way. REALLY?”
Well they keep updating it, so it may not have been there, unless you made a chest sphere and didn’t label the chests.
no its just there’s a lot of items in the game. and some you wouldn’t really find unless you were actively searching for them.
Sims 3, Skyrim, Fallout 4
Factorio: 2344
Path of Exile: 2736
Rimworld: 2191
Kerbal Space Program: 1071
I have a bunch of honorable mentions in the several hundred hours ranges that are only not 1k+ because I have severe ADHD and something else became a hyperfocus before they hit that point:
Backpack Hero
Ark
The Last Spell
Timberborn
Factory Town
Dyson Sphere Program
Loop Hero
Brotato
Satisfactory
Path of Achra
Against the Storm
Desynced
Commas, please.
Honestly, I had it all with line breaks, but it didn’t take. I will fix.
I’ve had that same issue before.
Thank you for fixing it!
Have you tried modded Minecraft ?
BeamNG.
I just can’t stop crashing cars into things in slow motion.
Oxygen Not Included- very detailed colony sim where scientific things like heat exchange, air pressure, etc. are essential for survival. I swear, my next file will be perfect…
If it still ran, MW2. Loved it
but today it would have to be minecraft. I have to play it in sessions but, it never fails to find a mod pack or challenge setup.
What’s your favourite mod pack recently?
my fav one recently has been ftb: skies, but that’s a skyblock , I’m going to try the decursio project soon though, it’s supposed to be an rlcraft/sevtech style mod pack, so I’m excited for it , I just haven’t have free time to play it yet.
Elite Dangerous. Well over 1,000 hours, especially with friends to explore the black with. Hard to get into, but it has so much stuff to do. It made me passionate about space! (And it’s always fun reading articles about a far-flung star and thinking “hey! I’ve been there!”)
Minecraft…
noita
I’m closing in on 2000 hours, and it’s such a great game if you like challenges and discovery.
I started playing it after one of the devs said, “I don’t think anyone will ever make another game like it.”
It’s a terrific implementation of a very pure concept.
I really hope that, despite the development challenge it may present, “noitalike” becomes a thing.
I think it’s an engine that would integrate really well with ML world/asset generation, too.
Dota 2.
I’ve played Dwarf Fortress, Stellaris, yet I still find Dota to be the most complex game ever.
It sucks that it’s a multiplayer game, and you need people to play it well with you, but when it works, it’s amazing.
Everything in it has layers of usability, usually componded by the everything else in the game - hero abilities, items, map, neutrals, even the stupid trees play a large role in the game.
I’ve spent hundreds of hours studying the mechanics, and I still don’t grasp everything.
I played a lot of DotA too, but that doesn’t have a playtime counter. But I have over 3000 hours in Dota 2.
My second favourite game is OpenTTD. It’s just so satisfying to optimize the train network and add another 100 trains to it. I’ve tried Factorio, but for some reason that did not scratch that itch.
Or some roguelites, like Slay the Spire (or the Touhou: Lost Branch of Legend), Synthetik (haven’t tried second one yet), they are always fun.
Great list! I’ve tried Dota 2 as well, it’s definitely extremely complex and addictive but not my kind of game, I just cannot thrive and enjoy that sort of game. Same goes with League of Legends. Just not my cup of tea.
I am a little curious about Stellaris though. That game seems so incredibly complex, like, what about it is The draw for people? I’ve heard so many people talk about it and has so many freezy steam reviews but when I first tried it as a demo, it seemed so absurdly complex That my head was spinning. Like I had no idea what the heck was going on. I’m not sure how to enjoy it I guess
LoL sucks, it’s like a shallow copy of DotA. I’ve played around 300 hours, it’s very silly in comparison.
Stellaris is kinda easy once you figure out that expanding is the No1 priority for the entire game. Expand, build ships - nobody will be able to stop you.
There was always a need for a ‘tall’ empire - so you don’t expand, but focus on your small part of the galaxy - but so far it’s always crushed by the expanding ones.
Once you get stargate tech, it’s 24/7 war. For even more territory.
Right now I remembered a game that never was really finished, Stardrive, where you could design your own ships down to the electrical wiring. It had layouts with sections, and you could fill it up to your liking. It was a shame that ground troops could finish the game in minutes.
Sometimes I feel like 4X games are usually more suited for roleplaying than actual challenge of micromanagement.
Anyway, I have a huge jam on my main line in OpenTTD, gotta fix my intersection again.
It’s a mix of strategy and role-playing. Sure if you want to survive on higher difficulties, you probably need a build that is meta. But on medium difficulties or lower you can pretty much roleplay your empire as you like and there’s many mechanics in the game that help with this. Your empire can be a democratic haven for all, a mega corporation, a machine hivemind forcefully assimilating organics into its network…and much more.
There’s also a great exploration aspect of the game. Your exploration vessels regularly find anomalies that tell a neat little story and provide bonuses to your empire (which can range from a small resource bonus to making one of your leaders immortal).
Of course, there’s also the power fantasy. You start with just one planet, but you will quickly expand throughout the galaxy. You can then wage war against other empires, build a federation together with them or convince the galactic community to crown you as Emperor of the entire galaxy. But the game also regularly throws adversaries at you if the AI empires are starting to become no match for you, may it be one of the space fauna suddenly becoming extremely hostile or a Great Khan uniting a marauder horde and demanding everyone to become their vassal.
It is also rare that a bad outcome leads to a straight loss. Losing a war (usually) does not doom your empire but you only lose a bit of territory or get vassalized, both giving you ample opportunities to build up your strength again or make allies to stand together against an enemy.
Garry’s Mod. Basically a gateway drug to hobby animation, and in some ways not so far off from the modding tools used to make it.
If you’ve watched stuff like Heavy Is Dead, they’re usually made with it. Some more professional-looking stuff is instead made in “Source Filmmaker”.
Kerbal Space Program
I’m well above a thousand hours on the first game. Then all my flying sims (MSFS, Xplane, DCS, Elite Dangerous) also have a very high hour count. But for civilian airliners most of those hours are spent AFK in cruise.
Rocket League