7 Games Where The World Is Yours To Control

In our day-to-day lives, there are a lot of things we can’t control. When the weather’s going to take a turn for the worse, for instance, or our internet going down during a particularly crucial time for work. There are games, of course, that force players to act within strict parameters and/or follow well-defined linear routes, but others try to do the opposite, to give us back some of the control we may lack in our everyday lives.

Players who want to really take control of their gaming experience, whether through taking the reins in a god game or by solving a problem in their own way by manipulating the very world itself, are sure to appreciate this selection of games.

The Sims

Their Lives, Your Way

Since the original title in the celebrated series, The Sims has been about one thing: crafting and controlling little virtual lives. The trope of players sending their Sims off to swim and then deleting the pool’s ladder is all too well-known, and it speaks of the devious level of influence fans can have on every aspect of their Sims’ lives. It’s possible to design a Sim’s appearance, or that of a whole Sim family, to an exacting degree.

Whole neighborhoods can be customized, and via settings and mods, players can ensure that their characters do nothing at all until explicitly and directly instructed to. In this way, it’s possible to take absolute control of their careers and family lives, right down to each interaction with every appliance in the kitchen. All of which, of course, the player chose and placed in its exact spot, if they wished. Decades later, Project Rene might be a little disconcerting, but the series is as liberating as ever.

Dungeon Keeper 2

Pure Malevolence, Pure Fun

The slogan of this classic PC strategy series, “Evil is good,” immediately made it clear that things were about to be very different here. In order to wage war against the heroic defenders of this fantasy world, the player, as an overseeing Keeper (hence Dungeon Keeper), must carve out each realm as they see fit, build up their dungeon beneath the surface, and recruit an army of hideous dark creatures. It’s for the player to decide how they make use of the space available to them on each map, and tools from outright brute force to sneakier traps and spells can be used to foil opponents.

Dungeon Keeper 3 was teased but ultimately canceled, sadly. The second game, however, took the player’s control of the world much further than the initial outing, with My Pet Dungeon mode providing unlimited time, manual enemy spawns, and a huge amount of destructible land for players to transform into their dream dungeon they can essentially control at will.

Spore

One Of The Industry's Most Fascinating Experiments

Spore is a game that’s infinitely more than the sum of its parts. A separate mission in this Maxis-developed god game might involve something relatively minor like selling some spices, but that’s when it hits the player: Their customer was another Space Empire, they’re an intergalactic traveler, and they started this whole experience as nothing more than a two-eyed organism in the Tidepool. Watching this life form develop from that stage to a land-dweller, then taking control of a full tribe and advancing further out into space, is truly engaging.

8 Best Space Games That Let You Build An Empire

Exploring space is all well and good, but these games take things a step further and let players establish massive intergalactic empires.

Posts 5

By Mac Wheeler

The critical thing is that it’s not a passive experience, either: Not only can the player design the appearance of their emerging creature and all manner of other things in the game, but they can shape its personality, behavior, and traits through Consequence abilities. This classic experience is what you make of it, and that’s sure to be different for everyone.

Terra Nil

An Interplanetary Clean-up Operation, Your Way

We’re all becoming much more aware of the extent of the climate crisis, and the innovative technologies that are battling to help us limit its effects. 2023’s Terra Nil highlights all of this in a very unique way: It presents ecosystems that are dangerously polluted and close to collapse, and tasks players with regenerating them using a combination of tools. It’s a puzzler in that you’re limited with how much you can place to achieve the needed results, but the renewal of each stage is entirely up to you.

Machines and other resources are placed in a means that will be familiar to any fan of city-builders, and when implemented effectively, they’ll purify water, remove toxins from the air and land, and more. As they do so, you’ll be treated to the sight of greenery and, eventually, wildlife returning. Players can change biomes by, for instance, causing the growth of new forests, influencing the map’s atmosphere itself to make it most suitable within Terra Nil’s parameters. The player is given absolute control of the ultimate state of each ecosystem; as a result, to the extent that all machines deployed are withdrawn and the map is left exactly as they wanted it at the end of each stage.

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator

Creative Carnage

So many of us have wondered who would win certain fantastical battles. Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, whatever its name may suggest, isn’t the most scientifically accurate way to settle a Vikings versus Blackbeard-era pirates or dinosaurs versus prehistoric warriors skirmish, but it’s undoubtedly a hilarious one. There aren’t many funnier sandbox titles around. The physics and visuals are wonderfully silly, and the powers, such as flight and the ability to mix-and-match units from all sorts of eras into one force, give almost endless appeal.

20 Best Tower Defense Games On Steam, Ranked

Steam's selection of tower defense games is great for players looking to try something new in the genre.

Posts

By Sid Natividad

Players can control time and the camera to watch the action as they wish, or take charge of a unit themselves for a more direct approach. It’s not all silliness for the sake of it, either: When playing the Campaign, there’s a vital resource-management element to consider in order to defeat the gathered forces that lie ahead.

Scribblenauts

Drawing the answers to all your problems into existence

Scribblenauts, in a way, has a lot in common with Totally Accurate Battle Simulator. It’s a game about seeing a problem in front of you (whether that problem is a broken bridge you’ve no way of crossing or an angry raptor army) and using your unprecedented options and level of control over this odd little corner of the universe to resolve it. Scribblenauts first arrived in 2009, and was revolutionary for the sheer number of ways it allowed the player to manipulate the world for their own ends. The physics, powered by the Objectnaut engine, allow players to write an object’s name on the screen to produce it. It’s for them to decide what to create, based on what they’re trying to do.

If the Starite needed is in a tree, for instance, there are all manner of solutions to that, from simply creating a ladder and climbing to something far wackier. The franchise has grown to include several games (the latest being 2018’s Scribblenauts Showdown), each with more inventive scenarios. There are still few other series that give the player so much control in their approach to a dilemma. Thinking outside the box is the key here.

Minecraft

Creative Freedom, Block By Block

When it comes to control over a wider world, there’s still almost nothing that comes close to Minecraft, even though it launched all the way back in 2011. Enterprising streamers have ventured all the way to the seemingly impossible far reaches of the Minecraft-verse, and the most elaborate structures have been built on the surface, and stunning caverns have been dug out beneath it. It’s a game that looks almost laughably simple at first glance, but which has almost limitless creative potential and depth if players have the skill to make use of all the tools its deep base-building mechanics have to offer.

Depending on how you wish to play, it can be quite an intense survival game, or it can simply be a creative experience in which fans revel in manipulating the building blocks (quite literally in this case) of their very environment for hours on end. This is how the game remains so enduringly popular.