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Of the games in this list, I've only played Stardew Valley, Craft the World, and Banished, so I'll talk a bit about those.
Stardew Valley... Steam says I've played this one for 27 hours so far, but out of all that time, out of the dozen or so times I've started a new game, I think I have only managed to make it past the first spring of the first year only once. The game is great... but the game is also nigh overwhelming, at least for me. There's the farming stuff, of course, which branches out when you can get livestock (I've never gotten that far yet, myself). There's the social stuff, i.e. talking to your neighbors (of which there are over 30, each with their own likes, dislikes, schedules they follow, places they go, etc.), giving them gifts, potentially romancing one of them, etc. There's the occasional festival where normal activity stops for that day and you go and do that stuff. There's the mine that opens up soon after the game starts, which is like a whole other game almost, where you're dungeon crawling, fighting monsters, gathering ore and such. There's the community center, which, if you find/grow the right items, will unlock other gameplay stuff. There's fishing. There's foraging. There are other areas, like the desert, which I haven't even seen yet, as I haven't yet gotten far enough into the game to unlock them. Yeah... the game is great, unless you feel like you have to try to do everything at once, like I usually do when I play it. Advice is to just relax, take it a day at a time, and not try to rush through. I keep meaning to actually follow that advice every time I start a new game, but I eventually just feel overwhelmed and uninstall again.
Craft the World... Steam says I've played this one for 299 (!!!) hours so far. That number seems simultaneously shocking to me, but also kind of "Eh, it makes sense, I guess." Out of all the times I've played this one, I've only ever completed the first level (there are four in the campaign, which get progressively bigger and progressively more difficult) a grand total of two times (and after the first time I stupidly deleted the save entirely which required me to restart from scratch on level one, rather than restarting new games from the second level). So, yeah. In this game, you control a team of dwarves, just one dwarf to start, with more coming in as you level up. You chop down trees, you dig up rocks and dirt, and you mine for minerals. You build houses (or, in my case, usually one big house on the surface, with several levels of "basement" underneath). You build furniture. You build tools. You build workbenches and forges to build more advanced furniture and tools. And, of course, you kill monsters that you find in the depths of the ground or that invade you at night or that really invade you when the portals open at night every 45 (realtime) minutes or so. Those portals are what typically spell my doom in whatever game I'm playing, as they get progressively worse as time goes on. I've heard advice to, later on, just cordon off your dwarves via your own portal spell in a safely inaccessible area for the night of the invasion, given that most of the monsters will just leave or die once the morning comes, and it's not like they can do anything to your stuff, besides just destroying doors, which are fairly easily replaced. But I never actually tried that, yet. I've always tried to fight them (because you get stuff from the monsters you kill), and the game doesn't really end, per se, if all your dwarves die. It just takes forever for them to repopulate. But I'm the kind of gamer that if I lose even one dwarf, that's usually when I give up and stop. This is a game that I have added to, removed from, added to, removed from, repeat several times, my "Hidden Games" list on Steam, because I'd always swear I'd never play it again, and then, a few months/weeks/days/sometimes hours later, I'd be reinstalling it yet again. >_>;
Banished... Steam says I played this one for 61 hours. Haven't played it for over four years now. This one is somewhat, vaguely similar to Craft the World, except that it's top down, instead of side-view. Also, it takes place all on the surface of the world, rather than mining downward. It's also less personal, in that you don't really manage individual characters so much as just let them do their own thing with you giving broad-strokes commands. So... in this game, you start with a dozen or so villagers (with more arriving later in immigrant waves or being born into existing families), exiles from another land who are starting new. You tell them to cut down trees, dig up rocks, hunt, forage for herbs, raise livestock, build houses and other functional buildings, trade with the trade-boat that shows up every once in a while, and so on and so forth. There are also disasters that can happen, like tornadoes, fires, disease, etc. But... I have to admit that every time I've played the game, I've always turned those off in the settings. Which is probably why, the one time I finally got a mostly self-sustaining little town, the game got a bit boring to me. If I ever play this again, I might try it with the disasters turned on, for a change.
So, yeah. Those are my mini(-ish) reviews for those three games.
And if I were making a list like this myself, I'd have probably added Slime Rancher and maybe Gnomoria, as well. (I won't go into writing big reviews for those, but they're pretty good, too.)
Stardew Valley... Steam says I've played this one for 27 hours so far, but out of all that time, out of the dozen or so times I've started a new game, I think I have only managed to make it past the first spring of the first year only once. The game is great... but the game is also nigh overwhelming, at least for me. There's the farming stuff, of course, which branches out when you can get livestock (I've never gotten that far yet, myself). There's the social stuff, i.e. talking to your neighbors (of which there are over 30, each with their own likes, dislikes, schedules they follow, places they go, etc.), giving them gifts, potentially romancing one of them, etc. There's the occasional festival where normal activity stops for that day and you go and do that stuff. There's the mine that opens up soon after the game starts, which is like a whole other game almost, where you're dungeon crawling, fighting monsters, gathering ore and such. There's the community center, which, if you find/grow the right items, will unlock other gameplay stuff. There's fishing. There's foraging. There are other areas, like the desert, which I haven't even seen yet, as I haven't yet gotten far enough into the game to unlock them. Yeah... the game is great, unless you feel like you have to try to do everything at once, like I usually do when I play it. Advice is to just relax, take it a day at a time, and not try to rush through. I keep meaning to actually follow that advice every time I start a new game, but I eventually just feel overwhelmed and uninstall again.
Craft the World... Steam says I've played this one for 299 (!!!) hours so far. That number seems simultaneously shocking to me, but also kind of "Eh, it makes sense, I guess." Out of all the times I've played this one, I've only ever completed the first level (there are four in the campaign, which get progressively bigger and progressively more difficult) a grand total of two times (and after the first time I stupidly deleted the save entirely which required me to restart from scratch on level one, rather than restarting new games from the second level). So, yeah. In this game, you control a team of dwarves, just one dwarf to start, with more coming in as you level up. You chop down trees, you dig up rocks and dirt, and you mine for minerals. You build houses (or, in my case, usually one big house on the surface, with several levels of "basement" underneath). You build furniture. You build tools. You build workbenches and forges to build more advanced furniture and tools. And, of course, you kill monsters that you find in the depths of the ground or that invade you at night or that really invade you when the portals open at night every 45 (realtime) minutes or so. Those portals are what typically spell my doom in whatever game I'm playing, as they get progressively worse as time goes on. I've heard advice to, later on, just cordon off your dwarves via your own portal spell in a safely inaccessible area for the night of the invasion, given that most of the monsters will just leave or die once the morning comes, and it's not like they can do anything to your stuff, besides just destroying doors, which are fairly easily replaced. But I never actually tried that, yet. I've always tried to fight them (because you get stuff from the monsters you kill), and the game doesn't really end, per se, if all your dwarves die. It just takes forever for them to repopulate. But I'm the kind of gamer that if I lose even one dwarf, that's usually when I give up and stop. This is a game that I have added to, removed from, added to, removed from, repeat several times, my "Hidden Games" list on Steam, because I'd always swear I'd never play it again, and then, a few months/weeks/days/sometimes hours later, I'd be reinstalling it yet again. >_>;
Banished... Steam says I played this one for 61 hours. Haven't played it for over four years now. This one is somewhat, vaguely similar to Craft the World, except that it's top down, instead of side-view. Also, it takes place all on the surface of the world, rather than mining downward. It's also less personal, in that you don't really manage individual characters so much as just let them do their own thing with you giving broad-strokes commands. So... in this game, you start with a dozen or so villagers (with more arriving later in immigrant waves or being born into existing families), exiles from another land who are starting new. You tell them to cut down trees, dig up rocks, hunt, forage for herbs, raise livestock, build houses and other functional buildings, trade with the trade-boat that shows up every once in a while, and so on and so forth. There are also disasters that can happen, like tornadoes, fires, disease, etc. But... I have to admit that every time I've played the game, I've always turned those off in the settings. Which is probably why, the one time I finally got a mostly self-sustaining little town, the game got a bit boring to me. If I ever play this again, I might try it with the disasters turned on, for a change.
So, yeah. Those are my mini(-ish) reviews for those three games.
And if I were making a list like this myself, I'd have probably added Slime Rancher and maybe Gnomoria, as well. (I won't go into writing big reviews for those, but they're pretty good, too.)
