Summary
- No Man's Sky provides a top space exploration and terraforming experience, with a vast community and continuous updates.
- Terraria offers an engaging 2-D exploring experience with a vast procedurally generated world that players can reshape.
- Minecraft allows players to customize and build in a huge world, with a large player base and endless adventures.
Games that offer players absolute freedom to explore a vast open-world while reshaping the environment as they do so are not easy to find. Some offer limited exploration experience but a complete terraforming mechanic, while others are focused on the opposite.
8 Best Open-World Games If You Don't Have Much Time To Play, Ranked
Open-world games are well known for being time-consuming. However, for players with busy lives, these open-world games offer quick play sessions.
So, here is a ranked list with several titles that combine the best of environmental destruction/reshaping with open-world exploration. From one of the finest space simulators that keeps getting bigger and bigger
6 No Man's Sky
The Definitive Galactic Terraforming Experience
No Man's Sky
- Released
- August 9, 2016
WHERE TO PLAY
No Man's Sky might have had a rough start back in 2016, but nearly a decade has passed, and the game has become the best of the best in terms of space exploration and terraforming. With a huge community and a constant stream of content drops, Hello Games' title has set the bar quite high for other games of the same style.
If players are looking for a game that offers huge worlds to explore that are procedurally generated but completely reshapable, then look no further. The multi-tool system allows players to interact with the environment in dozens of ways, reshaping it, destroying it, and extracting the resources out of it.
5 Terraria
Enormous And Addictive
Terraria
- Released
- May 16, 2011
WHERE TO PLAY
Terraria is proof that an open-world game doesn't need excessive graphics to become engaging and, most importantly, to offer a great experience to the players. The vastness of this game is breathtaking, with its procedurally generated sandbox system and fully re-shapable environment.
7 Best Open World Games Where You Can Glide, Ranked
Gliding across a large open-world map in games like Batman: Arkham Knight or Just Cause 3 often leads to satisfying visuals and gameplay elements.
In Terraria, players will be able to build, explore, and fight their way out of dangerous dungeons. It is the ultimate exploring experience in a 2-D world, and those players who started playing Tibia or Ultima will reckon this is their natural heir.
4 Minecraft
The Most Popular Choice
A Minecraft world is easy to set in, and easier to get lost in. One of the hugest games ever created, with tons of customizable maps full of breakable blocks made with pixel art. This game is so big that its active player population exceeds 50 million. That's nearly seven times the number of players enjoying World of Warcraft daily.
So, if players want a game that lets them dig huge tunnels, construct incredible block structures, and live thousands of adventures in customized servers, then Minecraft is for them. Just make sure to know where the bedrock is.
3 Spore
A Truly Complex Game That Allows You To Shape An Entire Evolution Line
Spore
- Released
- September 7, 2008
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ due to Animated Blood, Comic Mischief, Fantasy Violence
- Genre(s)
- Life Simulation
Spore is a game made by the legendary Maxis, and quite a complex open-world game that allows players to transition from a single cell, slowly evolving into a full living organism, and from there, to a creature populating a planet.
After a while, evolution follows its course, and the species controlled by the player becomes the dominant creature on the planet, evolving into a tribe, then into a civilization, and finally, setting out to discover the stars, terraforming other worlds in the process. It is a huge and really fun game that offers thousands of hours of entertainment.
2 Red Faction: Guerrilla
Though It Doesn't Allow For Terrain Destruction, It Is A Great Game
Red Faction: Guerilla
- Released
- June 2, 2009
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Strong Language, Violence
- Genre(s)
- Third-Person Shooter
Red Faction: Guerilla is one of the best Sci-Fi third-person shooters of all time, and it is an open-world game that has been greatly underrated. With a huge world filled with breakable structures, the game engine allowed players to accomplish warfare objectives like no other game up to its release.
Strangely enough, this title of the Red Faction franchise restricted terrain destruction, but that might be due to preventing players from breaking the game completely. Still, it is undeniable that its open world can be reshaped in the most destructive of fashions.
1 7 Days To Die
The Entire World Can Be A Potential Base, Or Your Tomb
7 Days to Die
- Released
- June 28, 2016
WHERE TO PLAY
7 Days To Die is one of the best Open-World survival games where players are allowed a high degree of freedom in terms of world crafting, terraforming, and construction. If players need a base, they can pick up any of the nearby abandoned buildings, drop a Land Claim Block, and start reinforcing its walls until they have their Zombie Apocalypse Bunkern ready. Or they can simply dig a hole, reinforce its walls, and build a subterranean base.
Be it as it may, every 7 days, the blood moon will make sure that the Zombie horde finds them, wherever they are. The horde can destroy blocks and structures as well, so that makes the game quite interesting. Since there are tons of things players can do with the scenario, from base building to trap crafting, they can get creative and find their ideal way to kill zombies en masse.
22 Best Co-Op Zombie Games
The best co-op zombie games are the ones where players can enjoy hacking and slashing zombies together. Just make sure to be out of biting distance.