There are a lot of video games that insist on holding your hand. Be it through ever-present waypoints, companions who not-so-helpfully point out the solution to a puzzle if you take more than a minute to solve it, or cutscenes that tell you exactly how to fight an enemy before you even get a shot at them, it can be frustrating when a game doesn't trust you to figure things out on your own.
5 Building Games That Let You Be More Creative Than Minecraft
Nothing fully tops Minecraft in terms of freedom and creativity, but these games do excel over it in a couple of ways.
That's not an issue with these next games. Sure, they still have a tutorial to show you the ropes, and occasionally they'll toss up a waypoint to indicate something important, and maybe they'll explain the best time to craft something specific, but they largely trust their players to create their own solutions. It might come through crafting, creative thinking, or mastering a multitude of systems, but it all comes down to you to reach the end goal.
Satisfactory
Elaborate Systems Built To Your Specifications
Satisfactory
- Released
- September 10, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence
- Developer(s)
- Coffee Stain Studios
- Genre(s)
- Simulation, Sandbox, Base Building, Open-World, Management
Satisfactory is a game that provides you with one big task — broken up into smaller steps — and then lets you figure out how to accomplish it. You are an unnamed pioneer sent to a planet that's loaded with resources. You're then asked to refine those resources for a company called FICSIT, and then ship them off-planet via a space elevator.
While FICSIT will guide you through the initial process of collecting materials and building components, the actual structure of your refinery and its eventual automation are entirely up to your own design. Efficiency, organization, and creative thinking are all positive traits to incorporate into your design process. Satisfactory is a complex game rife with intricacies and opportunities for innovation, but those are all up to you to discover and implement.
The Planet Crafter
Turn This Ugly Planet Into A Home
The Planet Crafter
- Released
- April 10, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Miju Games
- Genre(s)
- Open-World, Survival
The point of The Planet Crafter is right there in the name. Your job is to take the lifeless rock you start on and turn it into a living, breathing world. To do so, you'll be harvesting resources, building machines to generate power and produce oxygen, and eventually, introducing plants and animals into the ecosystem.
Much like Satisfactory, the goal in The Planet Crafter is a big one, but the process of how you accomplish it is largely up to you. That goes double once you complete the first planet and progress to its two moons (and later, the Humble DLC). While the process of terraforming the moons is the same, you'll have all the tools and components unlocked ahead of time, giving you free rein to terraform them in whatever way you see fit.
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom
Ultrahand It All Together
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
- Released
- May 12, 2023
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- Rated E for Everyone 10+ for Fantasy Violence and Mild Suggestive Themes
- Developer(s)
- Nintendo
- Genre(s)
- Adventure, Action, Open-World
If there's one game that exemplifies the idea of "building your own solutions," it's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. While Breath of the Wild also offers a lot of freedom in how you solve its hundreds of puzzles, Tears of the Kingdom is on another level, and that's almost entirely due to the introduction of the Ultrahand mechanic.
The Ultrahand allows Link to pick up, move, rotate, and tether objects together, literally opening the door for you to build anything from a bridge to a hovercraft to a Flying Dutchman ship that actually flies. There are some limits to the size of what you can make (this is still a Switch 1 game, after all), but beyond that, the only thing holding you back is your imagination. You can imagine, with a vast open world like Hyrule, that there are countless ways to solve just about any problem, from traversing a tricky obstacle to solving a complex puzzle.
Baba Is You
Goal Is Win
Baba Is You
- Released
- March 13, 2019
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- e
- Developer(s)
- Hempuli
- Genre(s)
- Puzzle
Taking a bit of a different approach, Baba is You does ask you to build solutions in a manner of speaking, but in this case, you're building gameplay rules that you then use to complete each level. You do this by pushing words — usually nouns — around each level and attaching them through a verb modifier (like "is" or "has") to create a rule. The level then operates with those new rules in place.
For example, each level starts with the rule "Baba is You," giving you control of the game's little protagonist, Baba. Typically, "Flag is Win" is the victory condition, meaning if you reach the flag, you win. However, those words can be moved around. You can create the rule "Rock is You," and suddenly you're controlling a rock. Creating the rule "Rock is Win" means touching a rock will win the level. While the early challenges have set solutions, the game very quickly broadens its scope, and pretty soon, there are multiple routes to victory, all based on how you reinterpret the game's rules to suit your needs.
The Long Dark
Intense Survival Without Help
The Long Dark
- Released
- August 1, 2017
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T For Teen due to Blood, Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Hinterland Studio
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
There are survival games, and then there are survival games; games where you don't just have to scavenge for food and water, but also need to manage your body temperature and calorie intake. The Long Dark is an example of the latter. This is an intense survival simulation where your every decision must be carefully calculated to ensure the best odds of survival. Even then, things can go awry.
The Long Dark: 8 Most Dangerous Regions, Ranked
The Long Dark is full of many deadly areas to explore and survive, but these are the most dangerous in the game by far.
The thing with The Long Dark is that you can't just craft whatever you want whenever you want. You'll need materials, and often a workbench or forge, to make what you need. When things get dire, you won't always have everything on hand to craft the ideal solution. That's where improvisation comes in. Maybe you can't build a coat to keep yourself warm through the night, but if you build a fire and keep it burning, that might be enough. Maybe you don't have the First Aid tools to treat a wound, but if you can fashion a bandage from some moss, that'll do for now. It's moments like these where the game looks at you and says, "Figure it out." How well you do that will determine how long you survive the harsh Canadian tundra.
Minecraft
Invent Some Problems, Then Invent The Solutions
Minecraft
- Released
- November 18, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
Minecraft doesn't so much present you with problems to solve (although it can, depending on the game mode you choose and any mods you install) so much as it gives you a vast world made up of materials and lets you do what you want with them. The second part of that is key: do what you want with them. There's a world here that's at your disposal, and it's up to you to decide what you're going to do within it. It's the ultimate sandbox.
Your goal could be as simple as building a shack or as complex as crafting a massive underwater mansion that farms sugar cane. Whatever task you set out for yourself can be accomplished so long as you have the dedication to see it through. The bigger the project, the more work it will take, but there's nothing in Minecraft that will hold you back from creating whatever is in your imagination, and that includes the solutions to any roadblocks you come up against along the way.
Raft
Surviving On The Sea
Raft
- Released
- June 20, 2022
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- t
- Developer(s)
- Redbeet Interactive
- Genre(s)
- Survival
Similar to The Long Dark in some ways, while completely different in others, Raft casts you adrift on the vast, endless ocean. You start with nothing but a 2x2 piece of wood to float on and a hook you can cast out to gather materials as they float by. You then use those materials to expand your raft, and it can get elaborate pretty quickly.
8 Open-World Games With The Most Dangerous Seas
Open-world games often stop at the water's edge, but these games allow players to venture into and onto the oceans, no matter what the cost might be.
While Raft will more or less guide you through progressing the campaign — which bosses to fight, which places to explore, and so on — there's no timer for when you tackle those quests. Instead, you can just work on your vessel, increasing its size, adding fishing nets, a steering wheel, and more. These improvements (and how you use them) will solve your moment-to-moment problems, like finding food or warding off sharks, allowing you to focus on progressing through the campaign when you're ready.
Fantastic Contraption VR
Build It In Your Living Room, Then Turn It Loose
|
Platforms |
HTC Vive, Oculus Quest 2, PlayStation VR |
|---|---|
|
Released |
April 5, 2016 |
|
Developer |
Northway Games |
|
Genre |
Simulation, Crafting, VR |
Let's close things out with something a little off-beat. Instead of building solutions being one part of the experience, in Fantastic Contraption, it's the entire game. Played through VR either solo or in a group, you are presented with a puzzle. Usually, it involves moving across an area or moving an object from one place to another. Then, using a combination of beams, wheels, and more, your job is to create a contraption that can accomplish the task set out before you.
Once you've built your contraption and set it loose, you can't control it, so any functionality it requires needs to be built right into the design. However, thanks to the perspective adjustment that's possible in VR, it's easy to make minute changes to the balance or weight to get things working as best as they can. Fantastic Contraption is the kind of game that is perfect for VR, allowing you to design whatever solution you come up with using your own hands, and then watch how it plays out in action.
Open-World Games With The Best Crafting
Craft weapons, armor, and more in the best open-world crafting games on the market. In some cases, the options feel limitless.