Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead, Dwarf Fortress, Space Station 13 (online), Simutrans, OpenTTD, Battle for Wesnoth

If you’re just looking for critiques there’s plenty of other spaces to post your product. 100USD for the outreach & services steam provide a developer is actually quite cheap in western countries. I could see it being more difficult in parts of the world with lower purchasing power though unless they have some regional pricing scheme.

Prosperous universe might fit the bill depending on how deep into economy sim you want to go. Beware that you have some limitations as a completely free player, that are removed (last I checked) after you’ve made at least one purchase. So think of playing “free” as an infinite demo.

There’s also umu!

It essentially (if I’ve understood things correctly) aims to replicate the behaviour of proton.

Works like a charm, I have a simple alias set up that will run almost any .exe - even installers and stuff. Only thing that hasn’t worked so far was my digital exam software (that is essentially a windows rootkit) because it couldn’t find the cursor images lol.

Minecraft for the fully breakable/buildable procedural open world.

Helltaker - I got hooked on the awesome music and fantastic silliness. (It’s free btw)

Hmm, that’s actually a decent point. I’ve two regular sim slots, so it isn’t really an issue for me.

I greatly prefer physical sim, just because I can control it. If I want it out of my phone, it’s out, if I want to switch phones, I switch. Easy peasy. I really don’t see any advantage to an eSim apart from maybe faster delivery.

Ah man this really is tough, your post details a lot of what’s on my mind, but I think ultimately these three win out;

• Minecraft - especially given the fact that we have access to the entire modding sphere, it’s just plain silly how much creativity has been poured into this, and the game is pure nostalgia for me. I could get lost in it for aeons.

• Dwarf fortress - wins out to CDDA because I’m a strategy nerd. What has ended up killing me in the past with this game is how much time it takes, but on a deserted Island? Well, time isn’t an issue.

The last one is perhaps the most difficult, but assuming that I have access to a sufficiently high-end pc, I’d want KoboldAI (United) with all currently available local models downloaded. This is only borderline a “game”, but I am able to modify the software, and the possibilities are simply endless for creativity. It’d definitely ease up the loneliness a fair bit.

I did pirate the game, and then it was so utterly awesome that I went and bought it shortly after they patched in the epilogues.

One of the reasons I have the steam achievement for finishing the game, but not the one for finishing the tutorial xD