My Time at Sandrock

A builder RPG in a post-apocalyptic desert town, and the deepest life sim on this list that is not primarily about farming. The core loop runs gathering to crafting to commissions, with desert-adapted planter farming as the supporting system, and it stretches past a hundred hours of story, side quests and unusually well-drawn townsfolk. A separate free download, Sandrock Online, adds four-player sandbox co-op with cross-play.

Critics called it one of the best life sims of its year once the launch bugs were patched away, and the player consensus matches, with warmth for the writing and characters and residual grumbles about performance. It suits players who want a town to matter as much as the harvest; anyone wanting a pure farm-first loop should pick Stardew or Coral Island instead.