I love these mechanics. Manually controlling a player character to run around a world doing these things is great for immersion.
I’ve already played Skyrim and My Time at Portia.
Valheim has a lot of that feel to it as well.
Factorio, although it’s more about automating those things. Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, which are 3d versions of the same concept.
If you want more of a creating bench style, there’s a whole crop of games under the “open world survival craft” genre such as valheim, raft, rust, project zomboid, green hell, and so on.
+1 for satisfactory, and the 3000 hours I have logged in it.
Ah, so you are approaching mid game.
Vintage Story. It is a survival game built by former Minecraft modders. It has pretty detailed metal crafting. You have to forge your items and then shape them on an anvil
On one hand I love vintage story’s focus on realism, on the other hand crafting and smelting stuff takes forever I sometimes wish it were as simple as minecraft. It’s cool the first few times but if I have to make another pot or heat up my metals and wack them a million times I’m going insane.
Definitely what OP is looking for, though.
In case you didn’t see already, Portia has a sequel that’s at very late stage early access.
The whole pantheon of Factory games fill a similar itch like some others have mentioned.
I’ve very recently started playing Dinkum which is a bit more Portia/Stardew/Animal Crossing like, with running around to harvest and mine then crafting and selling to buy things to build your island.
A bit less purely crafting but a good game with similar spirit is Graveyard Keeper.
Some of the survival games have decent crafting mechanics. Like 7 days to die you can turn down the zombie part and spend some hours running around and getting material to build a base and fix vehicles and stuff. Also Raft and Volcanoids are some other crafty survival game.
Don’t know about the best, but I detest games around crafting and I absolutely loved Subnautica. The whole experience become one of my video games.
Found it to be intuitive and streamlined. They tell you everything through the menus, so you don’t need to run to the wiki for recipes (albeit I did use the wiki for coordinates on where to find certain things) and it has a story/events that push you further.
The gatekeeping isn’t just to pad out the game, but it actually makes sense narratively (i.e. you need to go deeper and deeper as the game progresses so you’ll be needing new material occasionally. You can’t just avoid the crafting and complete the story.
You’ll be constantly building a stock of raw materials and transformed ones as you need to improve your things but also produce fuel/energy, build/improve your base and there’s even gardening (the latter is optional).
They also offer multiple modes. I played the one where you don’t need to eat or drink, but otherwise is the same experience. But they also have a survival one where you need to eat and drink and another where if you die, it’s game over. Adicionally there’s also a creative/sandbox mode.
…Minecraft. No, really. It’s actually good.
Especially with a decent modpack. Specifically, one that comes with Tinker’s Construct.
I don’t think it aged well but haven and heart blew my mind years ago how immersive and in depth it was.
Project zomboid doesn’t have smelting right now but it it will eventually, but the crafting / gathering loop is pretty good and complex.
I loved the short time I played HnH but multi-client botting is the only way to keep up with everyone and it just turned me off of the whole game.
Minecraft
You gotta check out Satisfactory. That’s the whole game.
The whole game is to not manually mine/smelt/forge.
The whole factory subgenre literally spawned from the idea “what if we made a factory that did the grinding for us”.
Or the OG Factorio
Or the OG Modded Minecraft.
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Try Stationeers, if you like difficulty. Smelting single metals is easy, but having to smelt ores at a specific temp and pressure to create alloys is hard, especially if you have to first manufacture the gas that heats it.
I liked how crafting in Shroud of the Avatar was setup somewhat realistically, even if it was tedious as fuck. Real life is also tedious as fuck. Like you actually put the metal in a forge, heat it, pound it, etc. Like all the steps for making the thing you’re making from mining the ore, smelting and refining it, and then using the metal to make stuff.
The only one I liked is the Monster Hunter series.
I’ve identified good progression systems as the main thing I like about games with crafting. You make something which enables you to get the next best thing, repeat.
Notable examples are Terraria, (modded) Minecraft to some degree, Runescape (no bias towards OSRS or RS3), Monster Hunter series, various MMO’s, Subnautica, ARK and Forager.
I haven’t played the games I’m about to recommend.
- Sengoku Dynasty - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1702010/Sengoku_Dynasty
- Medieval Dynasty - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1129580/Medieval_Dynasty
Is it Life Simulator type games you’re interested in? Or just specifically those concerning mining, smithing, and forging?
Just games where you make the things you use out of raw materials you get from the ground
How about Planet Crafter? You crash land on a planet and you have to terraform the planet using the materials you gather.
There’s also Occupy Mars. This is more realistic. It’s just that there’s one aspect of it that I think you might love.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/758690/Occupy_Mars_The_Game/
Using a drill, crane and vehicle to break down boulders for example.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/824840/Oi_Innkeep/
This comes to mind
