Games with base building!

[Sofly]

Oh hey hi

I've been thinking lately about base building, that mechanic some games have where they give a base, home, room, etc and provides you of different furniture and decorations to make it your place, it's a feature i haven't seen a lot recently, and that i really wish i could experience more

I think the only game i actively play and has a system like that is Stardew Valley, where you can buy furniture, wallpapers, and the likes for your home, it even gives you an item that gives you access to every single furniture item, which is absolutely welcome

There's also the social aspect, what's a nicely decorated room for if you're the only one who can see it?; browser MMOs from ye olden days used space customization as a feature, although generally a heavily paywalled one, the only example of that spirit i can think of now is Habbo Hotel, and we all know how the ability of making your room is used in there 

What are your experiences with base building?, maybe you created a space that you felt proud of as a kid, or maybe even today and there's a whole community for a game i missed out on!, feel free to share as much as you like

[tazzy]

Hello!

I really love base building games also. Especially, when you start off with nothing and you have to work hard to collect and progress to get better loot and decorations.

Some games I have played like this are:

- Stardew Valley (as you mentioned)
- Dragon Quest Builders 1&2
- Siralim Ultimate (this game is really designed to be played forever and there is so much to do in this game, its also a monster collection game and castle builder. You collect monsters and level them up to fight for you, at the same time, you complete quests and build and decorate your castle).
- Animal Crossing
- Rune Factory Games (not quite base building but does have Stardew Valley type vibes)
- Terraria (addictive, addictive, addictive)
- Also, Rimworld! A colony building game. You can play this for thousands of hours.

 

[Fish]

Rimworld is probably one of the best ones out there not to mention the modding scene is insanely good. Some of the mods just function more as unofficial DLC 

Its a very dramatic game and I mean that in a good way. Its really something to get attached to a small colony and just watch them grow and develop overtime. Rimworld can either be a very wholesome game or a dark game depending on how you wanna play

I also have vague memories of building my base in pokemon alpha sapphire. No pictures sadly. 
Does den customization in Animal Jam count? That stuff was pretty fun and it was always really nice to just see what type of stuff people could decorate their homes with :)

[Lyonid]

So much love to DQ Builders, Siralim, Terraria and Rimworld - I spent SO many hours in those.

Some blunt additions:

• Subnautica: Beautiful deep sea exploration, thrilling story, novel mechanics. It has such a perfect mix of getting the spooks as you dive deeper and deeper and feeling the hearth of your base. I LOVED building little settlements in all those cool biomes.
• 7 Days To Die: I used to really fear those surival zombie games, but something about the rawness and incompleteness of this game really makes me fall in love with it. You have a very fun map to explore where you can turn any a little structure into a home to protect yourself from the hoard. Kind of tough to get into at first, but it gets so much fun when you get the ball rolling. Pretty tough at times, though!
• Dark Cloud: A PS2 classic! It is an RPG but the base building is very much flipside of all the dungeon crawling. If you ever feel like brushing up on those weirdly fascinating oldies, this one will definitely be refreshing from all those PC base builders.

Whenever games give me this feeling of home, I fall in love with them. It's why Animal Crossing will be forever in my heart, but also my very first MMORPG. In general, games balancing the threat with some place to feel at home at are very powerful to me.

[xXWebMasterXx_Gina]

I would highly recommend Kenshi! It's not the most traditional game of those with base building mechanics, but I do enjoy how open ended it is. You could buy a simple home or build your own farmstead out in the wilds. But maybe that's not enough for you? Why not build your own town; how about two? What about a whole empire? 

It's hard to explain the gameplay of Kenshi in a few brief sentences; but I would call it a hardcore sim. You can create and control one or multiple characters. Each character has roughly the same potential and skills are improved through application. This might lead you to think it's a solo or party based RPG; but it's not quite so simple. You can't really become all powerful as you would in an RPG. One super skilled up character will still likely be overwhelmed if attacked by a group.

I can't really do it justice. It's a game I've been following since it went into alpha funding all the way back in 2011! If you can appreciate a unique game and don't mind the jank that comes with ambition; I say give it a shot! 


Now if we are reminiscing on the MMOs of yore; I have to mention Whirled! While limited to the second dimension as a Flash based game; there were a lot of cool things you could add to make your rooms really stand out! Retrospectively, I've come to think of rooms in Whirled almost like little personal websites the way so many people would add gifs and pictures everywhere. There was also a unique aspect of interactivity to some rooms in the form of "entity" objects. I'll always admire Whirled for its choice to use Flash; there was so much you could do with it back in the day! 

[Max_Starlight]

Hi! I would recommend Project Zomboid, it's a zombie survival game with many complex systems, one of them being base building. You can take over a house and make it your base, or you can build your own from the ground up. You can scavenge decorations while exploring and bring them back to your base, there is also an expansive modding community, so I'm certain that you could find some base building centered mods. However it can be a little frightening sometimes, so it might not be what you're looking for.

[j]

Streets of Rogue 2 is purportedly going to be open world with base building elements, if you're into roguelike RPG dungeon crawlers where the dungeon is actually a city!

https://www.sor2game.com/

SOR was so insanely good that it's my favorite game alongside Barotrauma; I have something like 100 hours in the original now :)

http://streetsofrogue.com/

Barotrauma is worth mentioning, too. Instead of permanent base building, you have the opportunity to build, wire and pilot your own submarine through the murky depths of Europa on a long journey to the core of Jupiter's icy moon. I have around 300 hours sunk into this beautiful game, too, so I definitely recommend it for its sandboxiness. I'd still class it as base building because you get very used to the confines of your small steel box as it sails the currents.

https://barotraumagame.com/

[rhenn]

I've been playing Animal Crossing lately, so I can second that the home/area building mechanics are pretty fun there!

No Man's Sky also has a pretty good base building mechanic - the game itself is mainly based on exploration but it has a sandbox mode where you can build pretty much anything you want. Some of the community featured builds are pretty impressive; I was always too distracted by the other gameplay to spend a ton of time on it though.
The base decorations/structures are all pretty nice but by the looks of it there are mods to add extra items if you want more variety.

I do miss old online games and mmos like Club Penguin, etc. I've played Palia though which is pretty fun (and cooperative!). The only problem is that resource farming for extra rooms on houses can get quite grindy, so you end up spending more time collecting items than anything else.