For most of my life, I’ve played very open games. I’ve played a lot of Rimworld, and I enjoyed the hell out of that shit because you can do a lot of things with all the different systems they offer you. Mods make it a trillion times better in some cases. I don’t play it much anymore because of reasons, but it still influenced my tastes.
That’s all to say I like open, moddable, “We give you a bunch of systems and mechanics, go wild” games, but I want to hear your opinions. Do you prefer more traditional, narrow games, or do you prefer open sandbox-y type games?
I enjoy narrow games when they have a good story or vibe and game mechanic I like (for instance Disco Elysium, though with lots of pathways, isn’t at all a sandbox and has a very well fleshed out social exploration/discovery system that just works unlike any other). What I hate most with “open games” are those that do the kitchen sink mechanic approach just because instead of systems that interlink and support upon each other. Why does your game need a fishing mini game? Because all the other games are doing it? Huh ok… see also games that copied the ubisoft tower map discovery system but didn’t do much to make it interesting, the closest that did was Zelda BoTW only because it made each sheikah tower slightly unique (at the same time I think BoTW and especially ToTK have systems that interlink among each other amazingly well as a open world game).