There are a few sandbox games that fit the bill:
SimEarth.
Another (less popular) 35 year old Will Wright sandbox game based on James Lovelock’s (1919-2022… that’s right, he lived to 103) Gaia Theory, it encourages players to terraform a planet by adjusting various foundational variables that impact other variables like atmospheric composition, air pressure, sea levels, population of organisms, biomes, and so-on. It’s largely based on a highly simplistic take on earth life, breaking it down into different Prokaryotes, Eukaryotes, Radiates, Arthropods, mollusks, insects, fish, etc… with everything above mollusks being capable of civilization… which then goes through Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age,, all the way up to Nanotechnological age. Civilization can be treated as both a treat and a disaster since there is a fairly good chance they will create the largest mass extinction event on the planet… or they may and/or head to another planet and leave the world back to the surviving life.
Dwarf Fortress.
For a game with so many clones and vertical slices, there sure is nothing quite like this sandbox. Most people who are even aware of this game are familiar with “Fortress Mode” and how you control a series of dwarves, give them orders, and they build stuff. But it goes quite a bit deeper than that:
1. You have a world map, all the weather patterns, life, and civilizations are procedurally generated.
2. You don’t just stop with one fortress, you move on, build another. You can do this when your old one breaks (more on that) and things go insane and crash it… or you can simply move onto somewhere else when your fortress is sufficiently good… building a civilization.
3. The age system brings on different features, for example, in the first age there are still many hidden divine beasts in the world, they haven’t been killed off yet. Age of Legends are when these mega beasts still shape the world. Age of Myth when hidden ones still exist, but they are no longer shaping the world as much as the rest of the wildlife and civilization. Then when they are mostly dead (or all dead) the “racial” ages begin, and those focus on which breed of civilized creature dominates. There are other events that create unique ages, and also an “age of emptiness” which occurs if undead wipe the populations of the world out.
4. There is also adventure mode, where you can play a character and explore your world on foot with a party and resources… kinda like Wizardry.
5. In fortress mode, you can wage war, expand your civilization… or be the point that breaks your civilization, the opportunity for another dwarven civ, or a different breed of creature to take your territory.
6. Create great people, works of art, great crafts… and even play with pantheons of gods, and run an army of vampires to take out your enemies (you’re playing with fire… effective fire).
7. Every very character has psychology, they react to stresses, annoyances, social situations.. and much like more recent psychological climate/spectrum models like OCEAN and HEXACO, these psychologies can move, and psychological disorders can develop. You can put them to work in ways to benefit them and the people, but conflict in your city can happen… ideologies can spread…. This can even lead to the demise of your city.
8. If it is not clear, unlike RTS games, the characters are autonomous, you give them directions, but they are not necessarily going to follow them right away, and maybe not in the exact way you planned out for them. Psychology plays a role in that.
9. Emergent storytelling is this game’s claim to fame. Lots and lots of text heavy events string together to form a bit of a novel… with side branches and such. You can read every character’s profiles, histories, and so on giving you a wealth of knowledge as deep or shallow as you wish to go. Players often intersperse this with their narration to form YouTube videos on the history of their dwarves.
10. The game was in pre-release for two decades… and then the devs gave it official graphics.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
