8 – Dwarf Fortress
What other game do you know about that generates a whole new world every time you boot it up? Not a whole lot, that’s right. What other game had to fix a bug where cats would start drinking alcohol from the floor and start acting out drunk, and that needed fixing? Pretty sure none. Everybody knows about the legendary Dwarf Fortress, the two-brother epic that kickstarted the whole colony-sim genre, and is responsible for the overuse of the term “emergent gameplay” in videogaming circles since the early 2010s. All jokes aside, Dwarf Fortress is a mountain of a game that will give you thousands upon thousands of hours of entertainment as you try to create your city under the earth, in search of fortune, fame, and lore, all the while avoiding the constant looming threat of giant spiders, antmans, dragons, hydras, just to name a few. Nature itself isn’t too friendly, with floodings (of water and magma) and cave-ins being a near constant threat. It’s the game that popularized the saying of “losing is fun”, and since there’s no “ending” to your game, what’s left but to go back and try again, and laugh while things fall apart all over you?
7 – FTL: Faster Than Light
My love for FTL: Faster Than Light can never be understated, and while I could say this as a disclosure, I don’t think a lot of people will disagree when I say that this is one of the finest sci-fi strategy games ever made. I just had a look at its Steam rating and holy! It has nearly 50,000 reviews with an overwhelmingly positive rating of 95%. Yeah, I don’t think a lot of people will disagree. But what makes FTL so special? Well, for starters, it’s a simple title that anyone can pick up and play in a matter of minutes, and it’s amazing at its premise: You’re the captain of a ship escaping a pursuing fleet, and have to make do with whatever you can find over the star systems you navigate. This can be new crewmates, new equipment, and supplies. The combat is real-time with pause, and is done by targeting the enemy ship’s modules. Since the game is hard as nails, and everything is randomized, you’ll find yourself starting the game over and over again, and even after you’re done with it, you can still scour the depths of space in search of new ships to commandeer.
6 – Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition
If there’s a game that has proven to be timeless and endlessly replayable, it has got to be Age of Empires 2, with its most recent Definitive Edition being the better way to experience this classic. Age of Empires 2 first dropped in late 1999, and in 2026, it still ranks amongst the 100 most played games on Steam, daily. You can only have that if your base formula is strong, Age of Empires 2 perfected the RTS genre, and if there’s enough content to keep players coming back for more. Fortunately, with the Definitive Edition, content isn’t something that has been lacking, with new civilizations and campaigns dropping constantly, keeping solo players and multiplayer aficionados entertained. If, like me, you’re mostly a single-player kind of guy and are done with the campaigns, you can just boot up a skirmish mode and still have a lot of fun. Have you tried turtling? You should!
5 – Dominions 6
I had a write-up done for Europa Universalis V for this spot, but I have decided to give its Steam Page a look and… oh boy. Oh boy. Players are not happy with the most recent developments. So I have decided to replace that mainline title with a hidden gem called Dominions 6. Yeah, I know that some of you have heard about it, some of you even play it, but guess what, some people haven’t, so let’s all shine a light upon it. Imagine this: The turn-based campaign of Civilization- but risk style- and the scale of Total War real-time strategy battles put together (you cannot control your armies, it’s more of an autobattler). Got that? Now imagine that you’re a Pretender wishing to become a God, and there are hundreds of different units, thousands of spell combinations, some of which can be complete game breakers, and can do things like make your armies invulnerable, or wipe out the whole enemy army instantly. What’s the fun part? Getting there! The amount of stuff to discover and experiment with is the kind of content you only see once every blue moon. If the game clicks with you, you’re probably set for life, to be honest.
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