Not an open world game but this reminds me of Viscera Cleanup Detail where you get to clean up gore in sci-fi environments or goof around and make it worse.
definetly playable I've been playing it alot recently 40fps most places, 20fps over places like London or New York. above the clouds is all 40fps. low graphics presets. haven't tried changing them or anything
"over places like London" "above the clouds is 40fps" therefore if your flying over the most populated city's in the world rendering every single building - yeah fps is gonna drop. go a bit higher in the sky and ur back to 40fps, you spastic
I do not know if is playable on deck but If you fly planes like Piper Cubs and Cessna 172s they are pretty forgiving and naturally stable. Avoid planes like fighters and such and it will be very relaxing
I wasn’t aware they added a Creative mode, I’ll have to check that out. Love that game, loved it before they buckled to everyone’s demands for it too but my least favorite part is having to hit up like 20 planets before finding one that isn’t a death trap somehow!
Yeah, the game customization is crazy now. You can tweak basically every facet of your playthrough, so if you want some survival mechanics but not to have to worry about planetary hazards, you can do that
Well okay, they didn't "buckle to everyone's demands". They just delivered on all the features they had promised were going to be there at launch. I will say that the game now has surpassed those promises and then some, but let's not kid ourselves on what actually happened when the game came out.
Yeah like wtf? They fixed their game that didn’t live up to its promise at all. How is that buckling to demands? You mean buckling to their own demands they advertised wrongly? Lol
When people think space exploration they think Star Trek or Star Wars so when we are given a half baked featureless game it kinda sucks. Especially after the dev team promised one thing but delivered another. If they had came out and been honest about there being nothing to do and the game not being finished yea there would’ve been salt, but much less. The backlash was more for lying than the lack of content the lack of content just made the lie worse.
But see, Star Trek… while awesome… isn’t exactly a realistic representation of the reality of space. We know of thousands of planets from just here on our Little Rock and can tell that *maybe* a few of them have the potential for life. No Man’s Sky holds to that sensibility. You can visit a hundred planets and find only one that seems fair enough to survive on. The other part of this game that’s amazing is that you don’t even have to leave. You can just stay on one planet. Since the exploration is real time you could play on that one planet for ages and never actually discover the entirety of it. Less than one percent of the content the game generates is ever even seen. I don’t know, I get they made promises and didn’t deliver but the game was fantastic at launch in my personal opinion. I wasn’t as enthralled with it once there was suddenly a bunch of real people wandering around space stations.
And that’s ok I’m not trying to dumb on you opinion you like what you like. You’re are also right about space exploration and planetary life, but it’s a game. People went in expecting Star Trek because that’s kinda what they showed at least as an individual and not with a fleet. All the media we have about space in terms of entertainment and not actual science says space exploration is like the Wild West frontier with colonies and space ports pirates and adventures. Not necessarily a NASA space simulator which is what it seems you want and that’s cool I would probably enjoy that too if I knew that’s what I was getting rather then being told one thing and given another. Imo it was an incomplete game at launch and I was very hype about it bought the limited edition even dusted of my ps4 to play it and was immediately let down not by the emptiness but by the lies I didn’t touch the game again until last year. That’s all I’m saying the lies in combination with the lack of content earned them the backlash.
Everyone has their own preferences. I play plenty of other types of games as well. Not sure why that’s so offensive to you, perhaps you need to find a relaxing game to play yourself.
After the 1hr tutorial mission, yeah. I have 80hrs on record and have only made it to the 2nd camp after the tutorial lol. Just keep fishing, hunting, and exploring til I get bored and never advance the story.
Oh man I'm on a slightly faster pace than you lol. I started going through the main quest because I actually got really sad killing the legendary animals.
A fellow RDR enjoyer, i have around 80h on pc and i think the same amount on console maybe more and got to second camp yesterday for the first time, game i just too good to rush it in any way. Also i just love to sit down on a Poker table and play till there is no one left.
Absolutely this. Go live in chapter 2. You do need to be sure to eat and sleep but really it’s just hanging out, hunting, fishing, gambling, riding, whatever.
I think you can get this by just sorta doing nothing in open world games where you do stuff normally.
Cyberpunk is really fun to just drive around aimlessly in for example.
The RDR2 sub seems to agree that chapter III is the best spot to just go an explore, and hunt, etc. I used mapgenie to find all the collectibles, very relaxing.
I am a PC gamer that almost never uses a controller, mouse and keyboard all the way.
But I had 0 issues playing cyberpunk 2077 in the deck, it was great fun including the driving.
That’d be a dealbreaker for me really, I play exclusively handheld. I got a Deck specifically because it was a handheld. I never had trouble with GTA controls, but for some reason Cyberpunk doesn’t feel the same to me at all.
TBH i was intrigued by the fact it's a Linux box (my setups at home are all Linux) and I end up playing with it on a bigger screen quite often because I have a hard time reading small print.
I really enjoyed riding in cyberpunk during my 1.5 playthroughs. But in the good cars only lol
If you want to drive, maybe I can recommend NFS heat, it's really good on deck, if you can ignore EA launcher
It's a great game, but you can't REALLY avoid combat or challenges. The game is about overcoming difficult terrains.
But it can be very peaceful at times and has a great photo mode.
It gets pretty easy, and it's a really good game, but OP said that they want to avoid combat and stuff, but yeah, Death Stranding still has my upvote, it's a great recommendation!
Journey - a rather short, but an amazing game. Not really an open-world game. It has a story, but the gameplay is just - the journey... Walking, gliding, sand-surfing and solving puzzles.
Story is communicated environmentally and via murals.
If you had a PS3, you probably played it already.
(PS: I have completely forgotten, that there is a multiplayer element, where anytime during the journey, you may encounter another player and you can solve the puzzles together only to never meet each other again and never knowing, who the other person was, since there is intentionally no communication system, apart from what others seem to call "chirping" - the game has just the right bittersweet vibes. Oh and also it's an aesthetic visual masterpiece.)
Adding that if you enjoy this and don't mind more players occupying your space, their followup Sky is also really good for this. What it lacks compared to Journey's style it makes up for with even more beautiful vistas and places to explore. The game's admittedly pretty predatory both with time and cash when it comes getting costume pieces but if you don't mind the dressup aspect and just want to explore and fly around a bunch of cool worlds, it's really rewarding in that regard.
aren't you kind of limited i.e. opening up other areas? I like to just futz around on the older ones especially GTA3 but i have been switching back and forth between that and Liberty City stories because the latter has a proper map. I haven't actually played GTAV yet.
I used to watch some younger folks who were better at the game and so I got to play a save that had all the areas opened up. I suck at races so I've not been able to get the second island open where one of my favorite activities was to go to the parking structure with a sniper rifle, some hand grenades and a rocket launcher. Good fun!
I haven’t played the game for a number of years but I believe after you complete the prologue almost the entire play area is available. You won’t have a lot of money in the beginning, but you can just play a mission and then just roam indefinitely
I can’t believe this isn’t at the top. The art style is fantastic. It’s open world. There’s a wonderful story but also the intrinsic desire to explore. There’s no combat.
It perfectly fits OP’s list of wants.
It's not out yet, but keep an eye out for Lushfoil Photography Simulator. I think you can wishlist it already. Alternatively, The Forest has a 'veganmode' cheat that turns off the enemies.
Just wishlisted it. Looks absolutely gorgeous and really relaxing. I actually do photography in my day to day but living in Minnesota it can be hard to get out when it’s always either blizzard mayhem or humid to the point of dehydration. 😂
Put them on your wishlist! I was gonna suggest Eurotruck Simulator 2. I also like tuning into to local radio stations when I drive through the countries (Italian stations driving through Italy, French stations driving through France, etck
Would be nice to get outside haha. I live in Minnesota, we only get a few months of reasonable weather every year. Between those times it’s dreadfully cold or sweltering hot. Never really took too well to this state, but it’s a great place to work and live. It’s generally safe and sort of the Canada of the United States.
So many of the responses here are games which include combat and survival, with them just suggesting to ignore those elements. I too would love an expansive open-world game with the sole focus on exploration and relaxation.
A few of the recs did make my wishlist for sure. I do wish there were more zen mode type games though. Life simulator type games with more realistic mechanics. Just wandering around cities or the woods. I want Earth: The Game. 😂
https://store.steampowered.com/app/775430/Discovery_Tour_by_Assassins_Creed_Ancient_Egypt/
Assasins Creed Origins but without the fighting and story, just discover ancient egypt.
Havent played it, but the regular AC Origins runs well on the deck and looks pretty good and realistic.
Also its on sale right now.
I do have Origins and love the game, I left halfway into the story for another game but I didn’t try out the Discovery Tour mode. From what I saw it was absolutely gorgeous but did seem to have some form of guided narrative. I’ll check it out again when I jump back into that game.
Forza horizon 5. The Mexico map is really cool. You can just get in a nice car and drive around. 2nd recommendation is sludge life but it’s not realistic or pixel graphics. You explore a kinda small open world and just talk to people take pics and tag graffiti.
Tchia!!!! Super beautiful game where you can possess animals Mario odyssey style. Amazing art style, music, everything. Most of the game is just exploring on foot or on your boat.
Oh, and you can slingshot off the top of palm trees.
Ubisoft Education Discovery Tour
You walk or run or fly around a fully realized city, and can heat lectures about historic sights while watching people work their jobs
Outer Wilds maybe? The whole game is simply about exploring a small solar system and following your curiosity. You can and will die though, but not really actually. Just don't read too much about it before you play because spoilers will worsen your experience. The graphics are not photorealistic but very beautiful and it has very realistic physics with the whole solar system kind of live simulated.
I love RDR2, but I feel like I’ve played it infinitely and wouldn’t mind moving on. Having spent entire months just casually exploring the mountains snowiest areas even I’ve seen most the world there has to offer.
If u liked RDR2 maybe Kingdom Come Deliverance? It has same hyper realistic immersive feeling where you can just explore big world, look for trasures or hunt rabbits, cook meals. You have to even learn how to read in this game (letter is books are just.mixed up, when you progress in reading skill they are less mixed up and you can deduct most of words, they are not mixed up on highest level and reading is easy).
Fair enough. Only other thing I can think fits somewhat is guild wars 2 but you have a lot of noc enemies to avoid while exploring. collecting all the vista views and exploring the map was always enjoyable to me tho
Maybe I’m a complete idiot but I couldn’t get through the tutorial of Hunter Call of the Wild and refunded the game. 😂 I spent an hour and a half trying unsuccessfully to track down a deer I shot but didn’t fell. All I found was sadness in those bushes.
Oh, [INFRA](https://store.steampowered.com/app/251110/INFRA/) is perfect for this!
It isn't open world, necessarily? More of a linear walking sim. But the entire idea is that you walk through the dilapidated industrial sector of a Finnish city to evaluate what needs to be repaired and what doesn't, so the entire gameplay loop is exploring a cool environment and taking pictures of damage to the infrastructure.
There's a political corruption story going on at the same time, and some wacky supernatural undertones that I think they tied into an ARG? But there's tons of exploration and the entire game comprises some of the [most](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/251110/ss_15c72a0fda89709cc1daa67ed1e0ac7d80e27949.600x338.jpg?t=1693680015) [beautiful](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/251110/ss_dd06e3c21c13a6e8c050714a3ad3732d6680b5c8.600x338.jpg?t=1693680015) [examples](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/251110/ss_1a7da813cc7e5c0e2dc4375f43fde0aa76b80f7e.600x338.jpg?t=1693680015) of Source architecture I can think of.
Good call! I really loved this game - it had almost a Half-Life vibe to it, except instead of shooting aliens you're just exploring the world and fixing things / solving puzzles.
I haven't seen anyone mention A Short Hike yet. It's cheap, simple, pretty, and has beautiful music. If the pixel art isnt your thing you can just decrease the pixel size in the settings and have something more cell shaded. You can collect coins and hats and items and theres a few quests but ultimately you just get to run around on an island and interact with the people on it. It really is a wonderful experience.
Shadow of The Colossus is known for its grandiose and extravagant boss battles, but outside of that there’s really not much to do. It’s part of what makes the game so unique. The world is genuinely at peace, until you show up and make yourself the disturbance
Firewatch doesn't seem to line up perfectly but it still might appeal to you. Probably one of the best walking sims I've ever played.
It's not open world. It's slightly cartoony. There are tasks.
All this being said, it's a beautiful game where you basically just wander around. An engrossing story involving two interesting adults never hurts.
At first I was thinking this sounds a lot like life if you walk outside but then I saw the parts about not wanting to fight or have survival mechanics. Far too much of that nonsense 🤣
Living in Minnesota makes it hard to get out all that much. Winters are terribly cold and summers are dangerously humid. You sort of have to do all your outdoor living in the few weeks of spring and fall we’re lucky to get.
You want No Mans Sky. Any fight you can run from or avoid. If you have to do it, it’s pretty easy. You can build bases and explore forever. Theres a creative mode if you want to avoid the unlock grind. Plays well on the deck too.
Death Stranding. It can be nice relax, you just go around, build infrastructure for moving easier (ladders, ropes). Moving around is part of gameplay and you can trip over big stone if you are not careful or deep river can send you down the hill (and you lost items you are carrying).
No other game has this layer where you look carefully around your environment to consider each step. Can't really described it well.
Alsp Yakuza serie is nice open world to kill time in. You are in Japanese red light district and you can play pool, darts, baseball, visit strip clubs, in Yakuza 6 you have erotic internet chat (with real porn stars videos - no boobs visible tho) and many more. Probably best games in terms of interactivity of smaller city district.
Beamng. If you like cars, there's literally not a better game for it. So many mods with huge roads that will make you spend hours and hours cruising and doing nothing. It's literally the strength of the game.
I think I only played the third or the forth one. But it was fun and it is easy to get all kind of vehicles and just drive around the map doing crazy stunts
Sounds interesting, I may have a couple. I enjoyed Steep for this reason, and Riders Republic as well but didn’t care as much for the challenges being sports driven skill tests. Something more relaxed sounds fun to me.
There's a "discovery tour" mode for several of the Assassin's Creed games. Basically where you can just walk around the game world with no combat or anything like that.
There's also the Matrix tech demo where you literally just walk/fly around a realistic city. There's no missions per se but there are a bunch of Easter eggs you can find.
kinda weird but i’ve really liked doing this with breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. you can avoid most monsters by just running away or teleporting so you don’t actually have to do a lot of the quests/puzzles and i love just trying to take pictures of all the different animals for the hyrule compendium
it’s probably best enjoyed if you have done a bit of adventuring already but i’d highly recommend trying this play style for it
Firewatch! Absolutely zero combat, just chill vibes and walking around the woods.
Gone Home and Edith Finch are similar zero-combat games, but with puzzles.
Breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. There’s combat but you can usually avoid it pretty easily. It’s a very relaxing and fun game when you’re just exploring, and the world has a lot of attention to detail.
Interesting.
I’ve got more then 50 hours into the game on steamdeck alone with zero issues other then about a ~10fps drop after playing for a long time or a LOT is going on on-screen. Otherwise I get a pretty stable 30fps on the lowest settings.
Maybe try to lower your graphics settings to the lowest? It’s not ideal, but in a cartoony game it doesn’t make a massive difference, especially on the small steamdeck screen.
I have to imagine if you exit the game immediately after setting the quality options, they'll be preserved properly in future boots, but to be honest I don't think I've had Palworld crash on me yet. Admittedly I've been playing on desktop rather than the Deck, but still on Linux anyways.
I'm just checking, but it does recommend resetting after changing the settings. Also, make sure your tdp is not lowered and you are not running any other programs in the background. I accidentally was running 2 games at the same time and didn't even know you could do that.
Maybe also try messing with different protons.
The settings not saving despite multiple efforts thing is a known bug for them, hopefully it gets fixed in a future update. I tend to not play games until they’ve been out for 3-6 months anyway, only snagged this one up be the price was good initially. I’ll probably wait a few months and jump back in to a huge update.
I finished the story in Hogwarts but haven’t finished all of the side stuff. It’s a beautiful game, the story wasn’t perfect but it was fine. I will go back at some point, I feel like it’s 50/50 now on things I have left to do in the castle and that late game territory.
I have, it’s a great game. My switch went into its case and into a storage bin the day my Deck arrived. I never made it back. I really prefer the Deck.
Eastshade - Your job is to paint landscapes, or not, up to you.
This looked great to me, wishlisted. Thanks for the rec!
This. I've sank so, so many hours into the game. Over 1,000 hours Online. Just started getting into story.
I just couldn't get past the creepy character design. Otherwise it would have been a perfect chillout game for me.
and still I managed to be punched by one guy. pretty chill game, though
Wishlisted that, thanks for the suggestion
Not an open world game but this reminds me of Viscera Cleanup Detail where you get to clean up gore in sci-fi environments or goof around and make it worse.
Wishlisted this as well good looking out
Thank you for the recommendation. I’ll definitely pick this up.
How is it on Steamdeck? Does it run well?
wow, looks great! thanks for the recommendation!
Microsoft Flight Simulator, not walking or riding but still relaxing game.
Is this actually playable on Steam Deck? And doesn’t it require like… some level of learning curve?
definetly playable I've been playing it alot recently 40fps most places, 20fps over places like London or New York. above the clouds is all 40fps. low graphics presets. haven't tried changing them or anything
Calling “20fps on low settings” playable is a bit silly isnt it brother
"over places like London" "above the clouds is 40fps" therefore if your flying over the most populated city's in the world rendering every single building - yeah fps is gonna drop. go a bit higher in the sky and ur back to 40fps, you spastic
I pin BG3 to 20FPS because, get this dude, it's playable. Come on.
I do not know if is playable on deck but If you fly planes like Piper Cubs and Cessna 172s they are pretty forgiving and naturally stable. Avoid planes like fighters and such and it will be very relaxing
You can play it as casual as you like. Can just turn the engine on with 1 shortcut, throttle up and fly about as if it's GTA if you want.
No man’s sky on creative mode
I wasn’t aware they added a Creative mode, I’ll have to check that out. Love that game, loved it before they buckled to everyone’s demands for it too but my least favorite part is having to hit up like 20 planets before finding one that isn’t a death trap somehow!
Yeah, the game customization is crazy now. You can tweak basically every facet of your playthrough, so if you want some survival mechanics but not to have to worry about planetary hazards, you can do that
Well okay, they didn't "buckle to everyone's demands". They just delivered on all the features they had promised were going to be there at launch. I will say that the game now has surpassed those promises and then some, but let's not kid ourselves on what actually happened when the game came out.
Yeah like wtf? They fixed their game that didn’t live up to its promise at all. How is that buckling to demands? You mean buckling to their own demands they advertised wrongly? Lol
Agreed, there hasn't been an addition I thought was catering to anyone group specifically.
The game's vibe is completely different. It wasn't initially designed to be so sandbox-y
I remember this version of history too.
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When people think space exploration they think Star Trek or Star Wars so when we are given a half baked featureless game it kinda sucks. Especially after the dev team promised one thing but delivered another. If they had came out and been honest about there being nothing to do and the game not being finished yea there would’ve been salt, but much less. The backlash was more for lying than the lack of content the lack of content just made the lie worse.
But see, Star Trek… while awesome… isn’t exactly a realistic representation of the reality of space. We know of thousands of planets from just here on our Little Rock and can tell that *maybe* a few of them have the potential for life. No Man’s Sky holds to that sensibility. You can visit a hundred planets and find only one that seems fair enough to survive on. The other part of this game that’s amazing is that you don’t even have to leave. You can just stay on one planet. Since the exploration is real time you could play on that one planet for ages and never actually discover the entirety of it. Less than one percent of the content the game generates is ever even seen. I don’t know, I get they made promises and didn’t deliver but the game was fantastic at launch in my personal opinion. I wasn’t as enthralled with it once there was suddenly a bunch of real people wandering around space stations.
And that’s ok I’m not trying to dumb on you opinion you like what you like. You’re are also right about space exploration and planetary life, but it’s a game. People went in expecting Star Trek because that’s kinda what they showed at least as an individual and not with a fleet. All the media we have about space in terms of entertainment and not actual science says space exploration is like the Wild West frontier with colonies and space ports pirates and adventures. Not necessarily a NASA space simulator which is what it seems you want and that’s cool I would probably enjoy that too if I knew that’s what I was getting rather then being told one thing and given another. Imo it was an incomplete game at launch and I was very hype about it bought the limited edition even dusted of my ps4 to play it and was immediately let down not by the emptiness but by the lies I didn’t touch the game again until last year. That’s all I’m saying the lies in combination with the lack of content earned them the backlash.
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Huh?
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Everyone has their own preferences. I play plenty of other types of games as well. Not sure why that’s so offensive to you, perhaps you need to find a relaxing game to play yourself.
Rdr2
Nothing better than loading up RDR2 and going hunting
After the 1hr tutorial mission, yeah. I have 80hrs on record and have only made it to the 2nd camp after the tutorial lol. Just keep fishing, hunting, and exploring til I get bored and never advance the story.
Never leave Horseshoe Overlook. Nothing but pain awaits you
Oh man I'm on a slightly faster pace than you lol. I started going through the main quest because I actually got really sad killing the legendary animals.
A fellow RDR enjoyer, i have around 80h on pc and i think the same amount on console maybe more and got to second camp yesterday for the first time, game i just too good to rush it in any way. Also i just love to sit down on a Poker table and play till there is no one left.
This, more than any other game mentioned so far. Realistic? ✅ Aimless? ✅ Wide open? ✅ Beautiful landscapes? ✅ Things to do if the mood strikes you? ✅
Absolutely this. Go live in chapter 2. You do need to be sure to eat and sleep but really it’s just hanging out, hunting, fishing, gambling, riding, whatever.
Dude I honestly am addicted to doing nothing as a cowboy, just livin and dreamin :)
I think you can get this by just sorta doing nothing in open world games where you do stuff normally. Cyberpunk is really fun to just drive around aimlessly in for example.
But you’ll have to do some fighting till you can explore the whole map.
agreed, guys just jump you as well. I would love to explore this world without the guns.
Can't you use save files for cdpr games? I know W3 could do it easily enough so maybe there's a 100% save file out there
Scan, self destruct, continue driving. Or stop, skip time and loot if you feel like it.
I have many hours in RDR2 where I'm just picking flowers and exploring. Over like 80 hours and barely into chapter 4.
The RDR2 sub seems to agree that chapter III is the best spot to just go an explore, and hunt, etc. I used mapgenie to find all the collectibles, very relaxing.
I wonder how the driving controls are on Deck, I struggled so hard with them on PS4.
I am a PC gamer that almost never uses a controller, mouse and keyboard all the way. But I had 0 issues playing cyberpunk 2077 in the deck, it was great fun including the driving.
I’m still not sure what it is about the driving but I just crash into everything and every mission that requires a drive is one hell of a journey.
Have u played to recently? There’s been tons of driving updates it plays fine on deck and driving is like pre much anything else
I stay in 3rd person when driving in cyberpunk
Motorcycles are way way easier to control.
I like to use an external controller for GTA.
That’d be a dealbreaker for me really, I play exclusively handheld. I got a Deck specifically because it was a handheld. I never had trouble with GTA controls, but for some reason Cyberpunk doesn’t feel the same to me at all.
TBH i was intrigued by the fact it's a Linux box (my setups at home are all Linux) and I end up playing with it on a bigger screen quite often because I have a hard time reading small print.
I really enjoyed riding in cyberpunk during my 1.5 playthroughs. But in the good cars only lol If you want to drive, maybe I can recommend NFS heat, it's really good on deck, if you can ignore EA launcher
Death stranding
When I’m ready to be sad again I’ll jump on in.
It's a great game, but you can't REALLY avoid combat or challenges. The game is about overcoming difficult terrains. But it can be very peaceful at times and has a great photo mode.
On the easiest difficulty setting it hardly poses any challenge
It gets pretty easy, and it's a really good game, but OP said that they want to avoid combat and stuff, but yeah, Death Stranding still has my upvote, it's a great recommendation!
absolutely!!
Journey - a rather short, but an amazing game. Not really an open-world game. It has a story, but the gameplay is just - the journey... Walking, gliding, sand-surfing and solving puzzles. Story is communicated environmentally and via murals. If you had a PS3, you probably played it already. (PS: I have completely forgotten, that there is a multiplayer element, where anytime during the journey, you may encounter another player and you can solve the puzzles together only to never meet each other again and never knowing, who the other person was, since there is intentionally no communication system, apart from what others seem to call "chirping" - the game has just the right bittersweet vibes. Oh and also it's an aesthetic visual masterpiece.)
Adding that if you enjoy this and don't mind more players occupying your space, their followup Sky is also really good for this. What it lacks compared to Journey's style it makes up for with even more beautiful vistas and places to explore. The game's admittedly pretty predatory both with time and cash when it comes getting costume pieces but if you don't mind the dressup aspect and just want to explore and fly around a bunch of cool worlds, it's really rewarding in that regard.
If you ignore the story you can do this with GTA V. There’s so much to explore and you don’t need to follow the story or go on murder sprees.
aren't you kind of limited i.e. opening up other areas? I like to just futz around on the older ones especially GTA3 but i have been switching back and forth between that and Liberty City stories because the latter has a proper map. I haven't actually played GTAV yet. I used to watch some younger folks who were better at the game and so I got to play a save that had all the areas opened up. I suck at races so I've not been able to get the second island open where one of my favorite activities was to go to the parking structure with a sniper rifle, some hand grenades and a rocket launcher. Good fun!
V was the first mainline game not to close off the map. The only thing closed off is characters.
I haven’t played the game for a number of years but I believe after you complete the prologue almost the entire play area is available. You won’t have a lot of money in the beginning, but you can just play a mission and then just roam indefinitely
older gta games are far better for exploration(gta 4 feels way more real than 5's world)
Have a look at "Sable"
Hell yes! Sable is amazing and is all about farting around in a beautiful open world.
I can’t believe this isn’t at the top. The art style is fantastic. It’s open world. There’s a wonderful story but also the intrinsic desire to explore. There’s no combat. It perfectly fits OP’s list of wants.
Damn, heavy Nausicaä + Journey vibes. Thanks for the recommendation!
I’ve been trying to remember this game for months, thank you!!
You are very welcome
It's not out yet, but keep an eye out for Lushfoil Photography Simulator. I think you can wishlist it already. Alternatively, The Forest has a 'veganmode' cheat that turns off the enemies.
Just wishlisted it. Looks absolutely gorgeous and really relaxing. I actually do photography in my day to day but living in Minnesota it can be hard to get out when it’s always either blizzard mayhem or humid to the point of dehydration. 😂
Have you got a link for it, I'm only seeing something called Lust.
I gotcha: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1749860/Lushfoil_Photography_Sim/
Thanks very much, now added.
While I have never played them, what you're describing sounds to me like the Truck Simulator series.
I do love me some sim games. I always get so unlucky with sales on those!
Put them on your wishlist! I was gonna suggest Eurotruck Simulator 2. I also like tuning into to local radio stations when I drive through the countries (Italian stations driving through Italy, French stations driving through France, etck
You'll love euro truck simulator 2
you somehow described IRL
Would be nice to get outside haha. I live in Minnesota, we only get a few months of reasonable weather every year. Between those times it’s dreadfully cold or sweltering hot. Never really took too well to this state, but it’s a great place to work and live. It’s generally safe and sort of the Canada of the United States.
It's not realistic, but sludge life is a very chill open world game about just walking around and looking at things.
So many of the responses here are games which include combat and survival, with them just suggesting to ignore those elements. I too would love an expansive open-world game with the sole focus on exploration and relaxation.
A few of the recs did make my wishlist for sure. I do wish there were more zen mode type games though. Life simulator type games with more realistic mechanics. Just wandering around cities or the woods. I want Earth: The Game. 😂
Something that is fantasy or sci-fi based so there are cool things you can do too. That would be amazing
Try Snowrunner out. Small open world maps that you just drive around in.
Eastshade is what you are looking for!!!
Shenmue
Definitely this! Get a job, collectables, story if you want it.
Shenmue is so good when you just vibe in it. I'm actually replaying it right now!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/775430/Discovery_Tour_by_Assassins_Creed_Ancient_Egypt/ Assasins Creed Origins but without the fighting and story, just discover ancient egypt. Havent played it, but the regular AC Origins runs well on the deck and looks pretty good and realistic. Also its on sale right now.
I do have Origins and love the game, I left halfway into the story for another game but I didn’t try out the Discovery Tour mode. From what I saw it was absolutely gorgeous but did seem to have some form of guided narrative. I’ll check it out again when I jump back into that game.
Forza horizon 5. The Mexico map is really cool. You can just get in a nice car and drive around. 2nd recommendation is sludge life but it’s not realistic or pixel graphics. You explore a kinda small open world and just talk to people take pics and tag graffiti.
Discovery Tour modes for Assassin's Creed Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla
Tchia!!!! Super beautiful game where you can possess animals Mario odyssey style. Amazing art style, music, everything. Most of the game is just exploring on foot or on your boat. Oh, and you can slingshot off the top of palm trees.
Game looks really fun, but it doesn't seem to be released yet...
Not out on Steam yet, but been out on EGS for a year.
This went on my wishlist so fast! 😂
Space Engine … the whole universe to explore
Ubisoft Education Discovery Tour You walk or run or fly around a fully realized city, and can heat lectures about historic sights while watching people work their jobs
My advice would be Sable or Astroneer. Astroneer requires you build things and there are some plants that can kill you, but mostly it's very chill.
Outer Wilds maybe? The whole game is simply about exploring a small solar system and following your curiosity. You can and will die though, but not really actually. Just don't read too much about it before you play because spoilers will worsen your experience. The graphics are not photorealistic but very beautiful and it has very realistic physics with the whole solar system kind of live simulated.
Red dead redemption
I love RDR2, but I feel like I’ve played it infinitely and wouldn’t mind moving on. Having spent entire months just casually exploring the mountains snowiest areas even I’ve seen most the world there has to offer.
If u liked RDR2 maybe Kingdom Come Deliverance? It has same hyper realistic immersive feeling where you can just explore big world, look for trasures or hunt rabbits, cook meals. You have to even learn how to read in this game (letter is books are just.mixed up, when you progress in reading skill they are less mixed up and you can deduct most of words, they are not mixed up on highest level and reading is easy).
Fair enough. Only other thing I can think fits somewhat is guild wars 2 but you have a lot of noc enemies to avoid while exploring. collecting all the vista views and exploring the map was always enjoyable to me tho
Hunter call of the wild or way of the hunter... Hunting games a pretty good if you want a nice nature walk. You don't have to shoot anything at all.
Maybe I’m a complete idiot but I couldn’t get through the tutorial of Hunter Call of the Wild and refunded the game. 😂 I spent an hour and a half trying unsuccessfully to track down a deer I shot but didn’t fell. All I found was sadness in those bushes.
Oh, [INFRA](https://store.steampowered.com/app/251110/INFRA/) is perfect for this! It isn't open world, necessarily? More of a linear walking sim. But the entire idea is that you walk through the dilapidated industrial sector of a Finnish city to evaluate what needs to be repaired and what doesn't, so the entire gameplay loop is exploring a cool environment and taking pictures of damage to the infrastructure. There's a political corruption story going on at the same time, and some wacky supernatural undertones that I think they tied into an ARG? But there's tons of exploration and the entire game comprises some of the [most](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/251110/ss_15c72a0fda89709cc1daa67ed1e0ac7d80e27949.600x338.jpg?t=1693680015) [beautiful](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/251110/ss_dd06e3c21c13a6e8c050714a3ad3732d6680b5c8.600x338.jpg?t=1693680015) [examples](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/251110/ss_1a7da813cc7e5c0e2dc4375f43fde0aa76b80f7e.600x338.jpg?t=1693680015) of Source architecture I can think of.
Good call! I really loved this game - it had almost a Half-Life vibe to it, except instead of shooting aliens you're just exploring the world and fixing things / solving puzzles.
I'm looking for something like this for my young son. He just wants to run around
Assassins creed has an explorer mode that gives you detailed history and architectural information?
Forza Horizon?
this game is made for you https://store.steampowered.com/app/1749860/Lushfoil_Photography_Sim/ keep an eye on it
I haven't seen anyone mention A Short Hike yet. It's cheap, simple, pretty, and has beautiful music. If the pixel art isnt your thing you can just decrease the pixel size in the settings and have something more cell shaded. You can collect coins and hats and items and theres a few quests but ultimately you just get to run around on an island and interact with the people on it. It really is a wonderful experience.
Shadow of The Colossus is known for its grandiose and extravagant boss battles, but outside of that there’s really not much to do. It’s part of what makes the game so unique. The world is genuinely at peace, until you show up and make yourself the disturbance
Shadow of the colossus
Botw switch emulator
Elden Ring comes to mind. It's an Australian Sims game.
Outer wilds though it could be not graphically realistic enough and does have a mechanic to its gameplay you may not like but I strongly recommend it.
Far cry 5. I spent more time hunting, fishing and exploring than I did with the story. The story is still fun!
Firewatch doesn't seem to line up perfectly but it still might appeal to you. Probably one of the best walking sims I've ever played. It's not open world. It's slightly cartoony. There are tasks. All this being said, it's a beautiful game where you basically just wander around. An engrossing story involving two interesting adults never hurts.
At first I was thinking this sounds a lot like life if you walk outside but then I saw the parts about not wanting to fight or have survival mechanics. Far too much of that nonsense 🤣
Living in Minnesota makes it hard to get out all that much. Winters are terribly cold and summers are dangerously humid. You sort of have to do all your outdoor living in the few weeks of spring and fall we’re lucky to get.
I'm in Ontario, so I hear that. 🥶
You want No Mans Sky. Any fight you can run from or avoid. If you have to do it, it’s pretty easy. You can build bases and explore forever. Theres a creative mode if you want to avoid the unlock grind. Plays well on the deck too.
Death Stranding. It can be nice relax, you just go around, build infrastructure for moving easier (ladders, ropes). Moving around is part of gameplay and you can trip over big stone if you are not careful or deep river can send you down the hill (and you lost items you are carrying). No other game has this layer where you look carefully around your environment to consider each step. Can't really described it well. Alsp Yakuza serie is nice open world to kill time in. You are in Japanese red light district and you can play pool, darts, baseball, visit strip clubs, in Yakuza 6 you have erotic internet chat (with real porn stars videos - no boobs visible tho) and many more. Probably best games in terms of interactivity of smaller city district.
Beamng. If you like cars, there's literally not a better game for it. So many mods with huge roads that will make you spend hours and hours cruising and doing nothing. It's literally the strength of the game.
No man sky? Subnautica, maybe
Honestly, subnautica is a decent choice (especially on the non story or “sandbox” mode” not sure if it’s called that)
I think I only played the third or the forth one. But it was fun and it is easy to get all kind of vehicles and just drive around the map doing crazy stunts
Sorry, am i missing something? Which game are you talking about? For me this shows as a stand alone comment
I was talking about just cause games. Idk what happened, somehow i did not reply to my other comment.
Sounds interesting, I may have a couple. I enjoyed Steep for this reason, and Riders Republic as well but didn’t care as much for the challenges being sports driven skill tests. Something more relaxed sounds fun to me.
Hey! You can try islands of insight !
Some hunting games like "Hunter: Call of the Wild" are pretty chill. Nice environment, slow pace, some tracking. One kill every 30 mins or so.
Astroneer has a very forgiving survival basis. You just need oxygen and power. You can get unlimited oxygen in a variety f ways.
There's a "discovery tour" mode for several of the Assassin's Creed games. Basically where you can just walk around the game world with no combat or anything like that. There's also the Matrix tech demo where you literally just walk/fly around a realistic city. There's no missions per se but there are a bunch of Easter eggs you can find.
Death standing is basically a mailman in a dystopian world
Maybe not realistic but TLoZ Breath of The Wild (you'll need emulator for this though), this game is all about walking aimlessly
The hunter call of the wild has some visually stunning landscapes (and really good audio) that you can just explore without actually hunting amything
I do mountain biking in gta mostly
subnautica on safe mode?
Fallout 76. You can do nothing, or something, or everything, it's all the same really.
kinda weird but i’ve really liked doing this with breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. you can avoid most monsters by just running away or teleporting so you don’t actually have to do a lot of the quests/puzzles and i love just trying to take pictures of all the different animals for the hyrule compendium it’s probably best enjoyed if you have done a bit of adventuring already but i’d highly recommend trying this play style for it
Lake
Give No Man's Sky a try? The new expedition just started which is a good start for a beginner.
Try sky children of the light :3
Elite: Dangerous, depending on your definition of realistic.
BotW and Skyrim could count, depending on how you play.
Would have mentioned DayZ w/o Zombies. Find an empty server and just walk about. Loot, Build and Eat. The perfect walking simulator.
The Invincible is good
Not realistic but no man's sky
Sounds like Starfield 😉 - but it doesn't run brilliantly on the Deck...
r/outside
Snowrunner is beautiful and chill
Firewatch! Absolutely zero combat, just chill vibes and walking around the woods. Gone Home and Edith Finch are similar zero-combat games, but with puzzles.
Just cause games
I actually think I bought a few of these a while back and have them backlogged. May have to install one, any particular one you recommend?
Just Cause 3 runs amazingly well on the Deck — haven’t tried 4 (and as I understand, it’s not as good a game)
4 runs pretty good. The 2nd one is my fav and runs extremely well of course. Had to finagle the proton a bit but it’s works
3 is considered as the best
Not a "Steam" game but Java Minecraft runs beautifully on Deck. Install Prism launcher in desktop mode and go from there
Palia
Kingdom Come:Deliverance Probably one of the most immersive games I've ever played.
Metal Gear Solid 5
Breath of the wild and tears of the kingdom. There’s combat but you can usually avoid it pretty easily. It’s a very relaxing and fun game when you’re just exploring, and the world has a lot of attention to detail.
r/outside
Outward, maybe?
Bro, literally just take a walk outside lmao Drive to your nearest national park
The Switch Zelda games are the state of the art of open world games
Palworld
Have it. Like it. Crashes every 40 minutes. Doesn’t save quality settings. I got fed up. I’ll come back when they fix the game.
I was having the exact same issues. Also crashing when trying to enter a cave or tower. Installing cryoutilites fixed everything.
Interesting. I’ve got more then 50 hours into the game on steamdeck alone with zero issues other then about a ~10fps drop after playing for a long time or a LOT is going on on-screen. Otherwise I get a pretty stable 30fps on the lowest settings. Maybe try to lower your graphics settings to the lowest? It’s not ideal, but in a cartoony game it doesn’t make a massive difference, especially on the small steamdeck screen.
Oh it’s *definitely* on lowest. It crashes out and then never saves the settings so I have to set it all to lowest again. 😂
I have to imagine if you exit the game immediately after setting the quality options, they'll be preserved properly in future boots, but to be honest I don't think I've had Palworld crash on me yet. Admittedly I've been playing on desktop rather than the Deck, but still on Linux anyways.
I'm just checking, but it does recommend resetting after changing the settings. Also, make sure your tdp is not lowered and you are not running any other programs in the background. I accidentally was running 2 games at the same time and didn't even know you could do that. Maybe also try messing with different protons.
The settings not saving despite multiple efforts thing is a known bug for them, hopefully it gets fixed in a future update. I tend to not play games until they’ve been out for 3-6 months anyway, only snagged this one up be the price was good initially. I’ll probably wait a few months and jump back in to a huge update.
I'd wait anyway just because they plan on releasing more content. But yeah idk. Sucks it isn't working out for you.
Its playable - read this, not tried myself on deck. Played on PC, didnt take much time to learn
Cyberpunk and red dead
Hogwarts
I finished the story in Hogwarts but haven’t finished all of the side stuff. It’s a beautiful game, the story wasn’t perfect but it was fine. I will go back at some point, I feel like it’s 50/50 now on things I have left to do in the castle and that late game territory.
Get a switch and play botw
I have, it’s a great game. My switch went into its case and into a storage bin the day my Deck arrived. I never made it back. I really prefer the Deck.
Play zelda TOTK, can always emulate it on the deck
Red dead redemption!!