To Struggling Citizens: Expand Your Horizons

I made this comment to someone who asked the question: "Well I want to stop playing, but what can replace Star Citizen?"

My answer was this:

I'd say don't limit yourself only to space games. There are so many good games out there. Each genre has it's peaks and valleys as years go by. When you broaden your interests, it allows you to partake in the best games as they come out, regardless of the genre.

I'd recommend trying Oxygen Not Included. It's kind of like factorio, but more... physics-based and it's a lot of fun. The goal is to eventually build a spaceship and colonize other planets before you escape through a wormhole and make it home, but... it's a challenging game. A lot of fun though.

Outer Wilds might be more up your alley. You pilot a small space craft and explore a solar system stuck in a time loop. I haven't fully played it, but it is apparently a very emotional game and is highly praised.

Prey (2017) is a single player game about being trapped in a space-station gone wrong.

Outer Worlds, not to be confused with Outer Wilds, is another single player game based in space. Made by the creators of fallout New Vegas I believe. This won't blow your socks off, but it is entertaining enough.

Subnautica is supposed to be an amazing game (haven't played it). It's not space, but it is deep sea adventures (on an alien planet I think). Again, very highly praised.

Path of Exile 2 just entered early access if you like slaying lots of monsters.

Warframe allows you to decorate the interior of a spaceship. There are even missions where you get to use your spaceship with NPC crew or other real players. However, this game is a pretty large time sink, so keep that in mind. I'm a Warframe fan. It offers a lot of content and allows f2p and pay-to-advance more quickly playstyles. Lots of very welcoming clans (guilds/orgs) as well.

Disco Elysium is very good if you've ever wanted to role play as an alcoholic and ponder the merits of capitalism vs. socialism through the mind of a not-quite-stable person.

Baldur's Gate 3. Dark Souls 3/Elden Ring. Just very solid games.

Oh, one more shoutout of a game I really enjoyed recently: SKALD: Against the Black Priory. Not much to do with space, and its in 32bit style, but the story is very entertaining. It has chuthulu/Lovecraftian vibes.

_____

Feel free to add your suggestions for space games, space-adjacent games, or just really fun games you have played recently.