Another "Help me find a Game like This"

[Vern5]

I'm feeling lazy right now. Tragically lazy. After burning my brain out playing League of Legends for a while, I've found myself in the mood for something simple.

The kind of game I'm thinking of is something like a city-builder. It's the kind of game that you can leave on for about half an hour, come back, find that something has gone wrong, correct it in a few minutes and then go off to do something else again. It's the kind of game that almost plays itself. Think of a bonsai tree reformatted into a PC game.

So, any ideas?

 

[Batou667]

Sim City? Or is that too obvious?

Civilisation?

 

[Akytalusia]

Sim City? Or is that too obvious?

Civilisation?

too much micromanaging for what he's talking about.

OT: farmville is the only thing i can think of. not so much a recommendation as a painful memory from hard times. >.>

 

[evilneko]

OpenTTD if you feel like playing with trains instead of buildings. You also have influence over the growth of cities by serving or not serving them.

Along similar lines though... I'd like a SimCity-like that was basically SimCity 2000.. I can't get SC2K's sound to work in dosbox, which is kinda annoying. I also hate the later SC games, especially 4.

 

[Vern5]

Sim City? Or is that too obvious?

Civilisation?

too much micromanaging for what he's talking about.

OT: farmville is the only thing i can think of. not so much a recommendation as a painful memory from hard times. >.>

Haha, farmville would be the absolute, unnecessary extreme of what I'm thinking of.

As for OpenTTD, it looks interesting but I'm not so sure about making a trading empire rather than just a functioning city.

 

[kebab4you]

OpenTT-

OpenTTD if you feel like playing with trains instead of buildings. You also have influence over the growth of cities by serving or not serving them.

Along similar lines though... I'd like a SimCity-like that was basically SimCity 2000.. I can't get SC2K's sound to work in dosbox, which is kinda annoying. I also hate the later SC games, especially 4.

Son of a *****! ... Well what she said.

 

[Sajuuk_Khar]

If you don't mind something historical rather than modern you could always try one of the games from the City Building series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Building_Series

I've always enjoyed Pharaoh, you'd just need to disable the pop-ups if you want to leave it going unattended.

 

[Vern5]

If you don't mind something historical rather than modern you could always try one of the games from the City Building series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Building_Series

I've always enjoyed Pharaoh, you'd just need to disable the pop-ups if you want to leave it going unattended.

I've played through that series. From Caesar 3 to Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom. Not bad, but I've already been there.

 

[kebab4you]

If you don't mind something historical rather than modern you could always try one of the games from the City Building series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Building_Series

I've always enjoyed Pharaoh, you'd just need to disable the pop-ups if you want to leave it going unattended.

Was a while since I played it but didn't you get attacked quite a bit in Pharaoh? As such leaving it unattended would most likely destroy your city.

 

[Sajuuk_Khar]

If you don't mind something historical rather than modern you could always try one of the games from the City Building series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Building_Series

I've always enjoyed Pharaoh, you'd just need to disable the pop-ups if you want to leave it going unattended.

Was a while since I played it but didn't you get attacked quite a bit in Pharaoh? As such leaving it unattended would most likely destroy your city.

I'm sure there are quite a few peaceful scenarios that you can play, so short of summoning the displeasure of the Pharaoh or the gods you'd be quite safe without an army/paying attention for a while.

I'm feeling lazy right now. Tragically lazy. After burning my brain out playing League of Legends for a while, I've found myself in the mood for something simple.

The kind of game I'm thinking of is something like a city-builder. It's the kind of game that you can leave on for about half an hour, come back, find that something has gone wrong, correct it in a few minutes and then go off to do something else again. It's the kind of game that almost plays itself. Think of a bonsai tree reformatted into a PC game.

So, any ideas?

You could also try the tropico games, they're on Steam, they have a sand-box mode which you can play, otherwise have a look at this list of games:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_city-building_video_games

 

[Timedraven 117]

try Travian.us Its pretty fun and you can leave it unattended for hours at a time no need to log in! you just gather resources, join a caln and fight pillage and expand!

 

[Xeros]

I'm feeling lazy right now. Tragically lazy. After burning my brain out playing League of Legends for a while, I've found myself in the mood for something simple.

The kind of game I'm thinking of is something like a city-builder. It's the kind of game that you can leave on for about half an hour, come back, find that something has gone wrong, correct it in a few minutes and then go off to do something else again. It's the kind of game that almost plays itself. Think of a bonsai tree reformatted into a PC game.

So, any ideas?

Have you ever played a Roller Coaster Tycoon game? That'd be great for something like that. Sometimes, I used to leave it on while I slept, wake up, fix things up, and continue about my day while it ran.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Black and White 2

You can literally win by doing nothing but building. Your enemies will just go "huh?" as their dudes will migrate to your city.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

If you don't mind something historical rather than modern you could always try one of the games from the City Building series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Building_Series

I've always enjoyed Pharaoh, you'd just need to disable the pop-ups if you want to leave it going unattended.

Wait a minute, you mean there's games in that series that don't focus on the Roman empire? I never knew that. I spent about as much time on Caesar II as I did the original Sim City as a kid, and I was incredibly happy when I recently came across a copy of it in a thrift shop. Those are some pretty cool games. A lot of micro-management, though; between the combat and the frequent crises that hit your city if you don't really know what you're doing (fires, plagues, civil unrest...), it's not really something you can just walk away from and leave running.

OT: Any game that has the option to speed up or slow down time to get past the boring parts would probably fit the bill, assuming you leave it on a slower setting. While most of the games I can think of that allow this are either sequels to or clones of Elite, there's a flash game called Pandemic 2 that fits the bill quite nicely -- except instead of building a city and keeping the inhabitants happy, you play the part of a disease (either bacterial, viral, or parasitic in nature), that is trying to wipe out all human life on earth. Just watch out for Madagascar; that country is almost impossible to infect.

 

[Sajuuk_Khar]

If you don't mind something historical rather than modern you could always try one of the games from the City Building series: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Building_Series

I've always enjoyed Pharaoh, you'd just need to disable the pop-ups if you want to leave it going unattended.

Wait a minute, you mean there's games in that series that don't focus on the Roman empire? I never knew that. I spent about as much time on Caesar II as I did the original Sim City as a kid, and I was incredibly happy when I recently came across a copy of it in a thrift shop. Those are some pretty cool games. A lot of micro-management, though; between the combat and the frequent crises that hit your city if you don't really know what you're doing (fires, plagues, civil unrest...), it's not really something you can just walk away from and leave running.

True, you might be to set it to easy or something to reduce the chances of a crisis happening.

Also I quite enjoy playing a free build map of The Settlers IV, no enemies, no disasters, just a land mass waiting to be colonised, the gods to be worshipped and some rather relaxing background music. The main downside is that there's no sort of gauge of success in this mode. Good for the lazy/relaxation though.

 

[Michaelis96]

Have you thought about DragonVale on the iPod/iPhone/iPad? It's a bit like Sim City and Rollercoaster Tycoon, except it's a dragon park and you have to breed eggs, collect coins etc.

 

[veloper]

Tropico (1, 3 or 4).
I don't think there's any game where you can walk away for half an hour with nothing breaking, but Tropico does give you plenty of time to think strategy and just let you watch stuff happen, when you leave the game in slow mode.
Tropico still manages to be entertaining and challenging unlike most builder games.