gunnervi

I think the genre you are looking for is “immersive sims”. Notable historical examples are Thief, Deus Ex, and System Shock.

Its the same design but with 2020 aesthetics instead of 2005 aesthetics

I can’t really recommend this because its more or less a dead multiplayer beta that’s not even legitimately available anymore but Shattered Horizons was a microgravity first person shooter that was really cool. So, uh, if there are any indie devs in this chat, uh, please steal this dead idea!

Some of them are. IMO the best are Way of Life, Holy Fury, Conclave, and Old Gods. If you want to play some who isn’t a Christian King, such as a Christian merchant or pagan/hindu/muslim king, you’ll need to get the expansion for that. Respectively, those are The Republic, The Old Gods or Holy Fury (either will unlock Pagans), Rajas of India, and Sword of Islam. That being said, if you like playing a Christian, Sons of Abraham is worth picking up. Finally, if you’re the type of person who really likes optimizing these sort of games, then you’ll probably want Legacy of Rome, which adds retinues, customizable standing armies that let a skilled player solve the combat system to punch way above their weight

honestly i think having been in on the ground floor makes things easier. its way easier to learn the changes to mechanics you already understand than it is to learn mechanics that were designed to be, in almost all cases for Stellaris, more complicated than the original, already complicated mechanics.

Paradox put a lot of effort into making Ck3 more accessible, and I think largely succeeded. of course its still a massively complicated game, but strategy fans are generally willing to put up with that. its being obtuse and impenetrable and confusing that’s the problem

3/4 but i can see why you went with universe sandbox; paring it down to 5 words was tough

Fight on both screens simultaneously

Explore a toybox solar system

Push logic like blocks

Die while climbing a mountain