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Simulation reviews

186 Simulation games reviewed and scored, best first.

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186 reviews

Immersive SimWindows PC

Deathloop

Arkane's stylish time-loop shooter won Game of the Year honours from multiple outlets in 2021, but sits Mostly Positive across more than 30,000 Steam reviews — a notably wider gap between critical acclaim and player reception than sibling title Dishonored 2, driven by a real, detailed "undershoots Dishonored and Prey" complaint from longtime Arkane fans, and by a persistent Denuvo DRM and mandatory-online requirement this review can confirm, unlike Dishonored 2's, has not been removed even five years after launch.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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IncrementalWindows PC

Defrag Incremental

A NZ$5.11 incremental about optimising messy hard drives, whose Mixed Steam rating splits cleanly along a timeline rather than a taste — a rocky launch day the developer patched fast, and a slower, still-unresolved design gate that keeps a chunk of players stuck clicking long before the game lets them stop.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Crafting / Management SimWindows PCmacOSLinux

Graveyard Keeper

A medieval cemetery sim with a tech tree the size of a small factory game and a sense of humour about corpse disposal. Also the only game I've reviewed where a player says they finished it out of hatred — and where the community's fix is a mod list that removes the walking.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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SimulationWindows PC

House Flipper

The comfort-game renovation sim that made cleaning and decorating genuinely satisfying — weighed down by a progress-erasing bug reviewers have reported for years and a sprawling paid DLC ecosystem that locks most of the game's achievements behind it.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Incremental SimulationWindows PC

Idle Colony

A fruit-merging incremental that wears its debt to Gnorp Apologue openly and executes the formula well enough to earn Very Positive reviews, undercut mainly by a name that promises more hands-off progress than the game is actually willing to give.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Idle Mining SimulationiOSAndroid

Idle Miner Tycoon

Kolibri Games' decade-old mobile idle didn't just popularise the miner-elevator-warehouse loop, it more or less invented the template every mining incremental since has copied. Ten years and a Ubisoft acquisition later, the loop still works — the monetisation menu and the interface built on top of it are where the wear shows.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Cozy Survival / Farming SimWindows PC

Island Beekeeper

Raise bees on floating islands, crossbreed them for traits, and rebuild a supply of honey for a dying Earth. A lovely, meditative idea shipped without an Early Access label straight into a week of blocking bugs — and patched fast enough that its Steam rating has been climbing ever since.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Incremental / SimulationWindows PC

Leaf it Alone

A solo developer's yard-cleanup incremental turns raking leaves into a genuine tool-upgrade power fantasy — reviewed for whether a two-hour runtime and a single backyard are worth the Overwhelmingly Positive reputation, or just too little game for the price of admission.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Flight SimulationWindows PC

Microsoft Flight Simulator

A genuine technical marvel that recreates the entire Earth in staggering, mesmerizing detail — sold on Steam behind a mandatory external-launcher download that reviewers have documented, consistently and specifically, running out Steam's refund window since launch day in 2020.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Cozy Life-Sim MMOWindows PCNintendo SwitchPlayStation+1

Palia

A free-to-play cozy MMO that survived its own studio nearly collapsing under it — Singularity 6 laid off around 40% of its staff across 2023 and 2024 before Daybreak Game Company bought the studio outright, and the game that emerged is still being patched roughly every three to four weeks in 2026. What it hasn't fixed is a monetisation model that increasingly charges real money to actually use rewards you already earned by playing.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Interactive Drama / Life SimWindows PCmacOS

PatriotMemoirs

A live-action interactive drama about a double-agent infiltrating a collaborationist spy agency in Japanese-occupied Shanghai in 1939, built on genuine branching and a day-cycle resource system, undercut by a narrative its own dedicated audience says leans far harder into romance than the espionage thriller it was sold as.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Construction and Management SimulationWindows PC

Planet Coaster 2

Frontier Developments' theme-park sequel launched into a genuinely well-documented content and feature regression from its predecessor — Steam Workshop removed, core PC1 content resold as DLC, a console-first UI — sitting Mostly Positive across more than 14,000 Steam reviews; this review can confirm, via a sustained year-and-a-half patch cadence through mid-2026, that Frontier did not abandon the game afterward, with a real, credited player-reported turnaround distinct from its rocky launch reputation.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Farming / Ranch Life SimWindows PC

Rancher: A New Life

A first-person ranch sim that spent a year in public demos before its Early Access launch, and it shows — the "done" list is unusually long for a day-one build. What isn't done yet is co-op, and the recommended specs ask for more GPU than a cozy farm game should need.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Tactical ShooterWindows PC

Ready or Not

A tense, tactically excellent SWAT shooter whose lifetime score is still recovering from a massive, well-documented 2025 review-bomb after the developer retroactively censored the PC version to match a new console release — recent sentiment suggests the wound is healing, but slowly.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Management SimWindows PC

Roadside Research

A gas-station management sim where you're secretly aliens gathering intel on humanity — a great hook for a group of friends on a Friday night, let down by how little the alien half actually changes about restocking shelves and running a till.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Document-Inspection HorrorWindows PCmacOSLinux

STAMPED

A psychological-horror bureaucracy sim that asks you to cross-check contradictory paperwork against a company terminal and stamp APPROVED or REJECTED — Papers, Please's mechanic wearing a haunted-office coat, from a developer who shipped two other small horror games the same fortnight.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Gacha RPGWindows PCiOSAndroid

StarSavior

A turn-based hero collector that grafts Uma Musume's training sim onto Honkai: Star Rail-style combat, with presentation to match — undercut by optimisation problems and a PvP ladder that leans harder on spending than its otherwise generous gacha deserves.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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Incremental, SimulationWindows PC

Starvester

A solo-developed space factory incremental with a five-hour campaign and a clean ending instead of an endless ladder. The idea is refreshing; the execution runs out of steam exactly when the prestige system should be taking over.

6.5 / 10

Reviewed

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