Stellaris
by LepcisMagna

I don’t really like Civilization. While the idea of controlling an empire through the ages sounds good in theory, the amount of time you have to spend doing it mostly outweighs the amount of fun to be had. While this may be an inherent flaw of 4X games, I had high hopes for Stellaris anyway since I’m a bit of a sci-fi nerd (actually, that’s a lie: I’m a lot of a sci-fi nerd).

Stellaris has been sitting in my queue for ages, and when I first took a look at it I put it into Tier 1 after playing for an hour; admittedly, this was not a fair shake. But with a lazy Sunday afternoon ahead of me and having been reminded that I still hadn’t played Stellaris by a board game I played with Chezni, I sat down determined to play a game. I got up 8 hours later, having played about half a game and realizing I just didn’t care anymore.

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Zach-Likes
by LepcisMagna

Or: Opus Magnum, TIS-100, and Shenzen I/O

I’m putting the Zachtronics studio and all their games into Tier 1, alongside Obsidian Entertainment (makers of Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, and the only good Fallout). I can confidently say that any game made by those studios will be at least entertaining, if not extremely good. Zach-likes tend to be puzzle games with very similar concepts, but with just enough theming and execution differences to make each one feel unique. Perhaps the best part of these games is the moment when you discover a unique solution that gives you the same feeling as if you’d just solved an interesting math problem or figured out a clever programming solution at work. If neither of those sound fun, I would highly recommend running away from these games.

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