So, I’ve spent over 2 hours on Steam searching for a nice game to play. But it’s all junk, as far as I’m fed with Steam recommendations.

Steam does many things well, but its recommendations system is one thing that, in my experience, really falls flat on its face (which surprises me, because they have enough information to do what I would think would be fantastic recommendations).

For finding games on Steam, I've had the most luck simply sorting by user rating (which is a pretty darn good metric of what I'll like, in my experience), and then using the tags to look for games in a genre. There has been one or two times that it's led me astray, but in general, an Overwhelmingly Positive game is something that I'll get a ton of fun out of, and a low-ranked game will rarely be a lot of fun.

Sometimes I've had luck with looking at "similar games" to a game, which are shown on that game's store page.

But the recommendations queue is just awful, in my experience.

Check out Elin.

Basebuilding/dungeon crawling/pixel art/roguelike. Kinda like ADOM meets stardew, but weirder and more Japanese. Weirder how? Here's the wiki entry on the chaos shape race, which you can play as.

VERY in depth systems in the game. Mutations, crafting, prayer, it's a deep game.

Have you tried persona 5? Great jrpg I think the new clair obscur expedition 33 looks really good for single player too

Aviassembly.

Its fun in the way that building airplanes in KSP is fun. The game is small, and the physics are simple, but for $10 its a good value.

A classic one would be to go for BG1 and BG2
Then either play the enhanced editions with EET or play the originals with Baldur's Gate Trilogy to allow you to play all three games as a singular campaign (as well as running BG1 in the same engine as BG2 if you go for the originals)

Going Medieval is a pretty great building/management type game! It gets updated often with new content too

You build your castle and manage the sims in their daily jobs. There's a great building system, farming, defense against raiders, mining, a good crafting pipeline. It's a lot of fun

I'll go with some classics if you haven't tried them yet. Planescape: torment is a really engaging crpg if you don't mind old graphics and dig lots of lore and dialogue. Morrowind if you prefer first person for another old school rpg with lots of stuff to discover in a weird surreal environment. Dwarf fortress sounds like another older one you might be into too.

Balatro.
You think it's simple until it's suddenly 1 am and your brain is mush trying to remember what strategy you're currently using -oops lost, ok one more run...

Soma.
If you're in the mood to be hooked on a story. Scary stuff happens, and youll question life a few times.

Pathfinder.
Wrath of the Righteous is the only tabletop pc rpg you'll need agian. Baldergate 3 is the tutorial mission for this monster game.

Rain World.
If you enjoy metroidvanias with new mechanics.

Tunic.
If you enjoy zelda and dark souls. Theres more to it than it looks. I couldn't put this one down either.

X4 foundations is a sandbox RPG in space where you do whatever you want.

• Different factions with their story, political agenda, sub-factions, technologies
• Walk out of your ship on station, all 1:1 size real time, no loading screen.
• Play first person in your ship (pew pew) in the ship of your liking
• Recruit staff members to build your empire / fleet
• Play as a manager (see RTS kind of) from the galactic map, command your empire, fleet of death, traders, miners.
• Build your own stations with their own production pipeline that Maximize the local resources
• Enjoy 25 years of lore building

I am a big fan, as you can see :D

Oblivion Remastered is really good.

Kenshi.

If you can get past the kind of... weird control scheme...

The game is basically a single player mmorpg.

You start off as an absolute weakling, and there is no ... scaling, the way most other rpgs either generally have certain levelled enemies in certain areas, that you progress through linearly or unlock sequentially, or just an outright whole world spanning dynamic level matching kind of system.

You can be battling a small beast... and then a herd of very, very much more dangerous beasts, or slavers, will just happen to pass by, and royally fuck up your day.

Every character in the game, including you, plays by the same rules.

All major NPCs can be killed, the game is also full of varying factions with varying alignments towars other factions, and they will treat your character differently based on your race, the kinds of actio s you do, your reputation with other factions.

The storytelling is ... a sandbox/emergent approach. Not in the sense of 'there are no story lines or quests'... but in the sense of... a whole lot of stuff is out there, but you have to self direct yourself to go out and find it, or randomly encounter it.

Also, you can gain allies, make your own faction, and control a small army... and you can even build your own settlement, and economically interact with the rest of the world.

... Its... kind of hard to describe.

There really aren't any other games quite like Kenshi.

Its got a good sized modding scene, and it incorperates at least some elemenrs of... every game you mentioned.

If you use a mod to up your max follower/faction member count... you can basically play the game as an RTS (with pause). Build a settlement, recruit followers (or enslave them), arm them, fees them, train them up, and go take over a city if you want.

... Or play basically solo, just you and your bonedog, maybe as a bounty hunter for hire, or a hashish smuggler, or get a pack animal and run a trade caravan.

At the thrift store today I picked up an original disk copy of Prey (2006) and the thief trilogy.

It seems like you like games with a lot of replayability, as well as games that make you think a bit. I'm a bit of the opposite (I like shorter, unique experiences), but I also like games that make me think. So here are a few that I've enjoyed that I think fit the bill:

• deck-building roguelikes, like Slay the Spire, Balatro, etc; you can get a lot of hours in it, they generally don't have DLC, and they're more on the "thinking" vs "combat" end of the roguelike spectrum
• Planet Coaster or Parkitect - theme park themed "city builder"; Planet Coaster is a bit of a DLC-fest, but Parkitect only has 2 (and a soundtrack); look around the various "tycoon" games if you like the genre, they can have good replayability
• "coding" games - Human Resource Machine, Opus Magnum, etc; these have poor replayability (mostly just optimizing solutions), but there's a lot of thinking and you can get a lot of hours out of it if you don't look up guides; they're not for everyone, but if they are, they're very satisfying
• Dwarf Fortress - the management game, and perhaps the best in the world at replayability; the Steam version is a huge upgrade, but you can also get the classic version for free, though do be aware that the learning curve is a lot higher than the Steam version
• Sid Meier's Pirates - old game, but I get a lot of hours in it and find it absolutely fantastic; this is more combat than thinking, but it's more thinking than something like Mount and Blade (combat is relatively slow)
• Tropico series - they do have DLC, but you can frequently find a bundle on Humble Bundle or Fanatical or something with all the DLC included for the older games; not as sandbox-y as Cities Skylines, but still largely in that vein

That said, I want to echo what others have said and to recommend branching out. There are tons of great indie games that aren't a total ripoff in a variety of genres, so look around for bundles or something to find something new to try.

Everyone's recommending games but addressing steam recs, there's Backloggd which is Letterbox for games. Sure there'll probably be a similar overlap of games folks love that are not your jam but it'll help you figure out what you like, find something new, and follow folks with similar tastes.

Horror/action: Dead Space.
FPS/time manipulation: Singularity.
Factory/combat(optional): Dyson Sphere Project

Singularity still stands up as it's graphics are decent. Super cheap on GoG. Dead Space if you get the original would be cheap. HD remaster would be more. If you love factory games but have never played DSP god damn do I wish I was you. Recommend playing without combat enabled on first run to just enjoy how gorgeous the game is and to help with learning everything before throwing in combat management

Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2.

I mean Oblivion Remastered just came out.

It's weird replaying Oblivion but it looks like a modern game. All the original audio is there (along with a few new voices to break up the monotony of hearing the same handful of voices over and over again), and all the locations and gear, but it all feels different. Like it's very familiar, but it's still very different from what we remember. Leveling is a bit different this time around as you have seven or so points to divide among your attributes, rather than picking a couple that would get increased by random numbers. I'd recommend trying it if nothing else than to try out the new polished version yourself.

Although some of the jank has been removed from this version, like there are no more items duplication glitches, but the Bound Armor/Weapon glitch works.

Have you tried Kingdom Come Deliverance 2? It’s really good and difficult. It’s a history simulator with a really kick ass story and the hero is just a guy. I really like it a lot.

The Bioshock games are really fun in a very dark way. They are incredibly unique—I haven’t played anything else quite like them. Personally, I liked the first two better than the third one. The first two take place underwater, which sort of creeped me out from the get-go. The third is in a city in the sky.

STARSECTOR

https://fractalsoftworks.com/

Edit: oh someone already said that

BALATRO

Dyson Sphere Program is great, never played satisfactory but I hear they are similar.

If Baldur's Gate 3 is your speed, that game gives me countless hours of trying new ways to change the story and game.

Look into Drova - Forsaken Kin. It’s been great so far.

The Rock of Ages trilogy is fun

Too lazy to check all responses but if you want a nice resource building game then Timberborn could be your jam.

Kenshi