There’s an old adage which states that “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result every time” and boy don’t I feel that.

I had the game Witchspire on my wish list for quite some time because when it was announced I thought it looked pretty cool. You play as a witch who has some [hand waving reason for doing what you’re doing], and also a familiar who helps you in battle or can be assigned to work your facilities. It’s a survivalbox game without the unnecessary weight of eating and drinking, but you do build buildings which is something I really like in games.

Of course, as I do like survivalbox builders, I have, like 16,000 of them in my library. When Witchspire was announced, I didn’t, which now makes Witchspire a lot less attractive than it was when I first added it to my wish list; I have since requested a refund in part because I don’t need another cartoonesque survivalbox builder, but also because it’s one of those games which latches on to the flight sticks to make playing the game impossible with mouse and keyboard so it’s not just me being bitchy.

My question to myself is: why do I have 16,000 other survivalbox builder games yet still look at new ones when they’re announced?

The real question is “what the hell am I looking for, and why are the games I own not providing it?”

Unsurprisingly to many, but annoyingly to me, the answer is that I don’t know that I can play these games solo, so it’s never the fact that I don’t like the game, nor is it that the games aren’t providing me what I’m looking for. The answer is that I tend to stick around way longer with a survivalbox builder game when I’m playing with others.

Yeah yeah yeah queue the “no duh” responses here, but this makes playing these games really difficult because I can sometimes rope @CakedCrusader into buying a game I’m interested in — such as Dune: Awakening or Eden Star or ASKA — but everyone has limits and as soon as I get tired of a game, he doesn’t feel as compelled to continue either. Now we both have games we spent money on, neither one of us wants to play alone, so neither one of us plays.

I like these games for their open world-ness, of course. Being able to roam around a landscape is a freedom that I gravitate towards. I also like creating things and making bases. My bases almost always look like crap, because I suck at design even in an architectural vein, but buildings are always a means to an end: a place to put crafting benches, store stuff, and rest to speed up time.

What if I could get a game without the pressure to “survive”, and just build? Would that work? I don’t think so because of the “ESO housing” factor. I own several houses in the Elder Scrolls Online, but I never do anything with them. Why? The game isn’t abouyt housing, so housing serves very little purpose that can’t be had elsewhere in the game. Without a reason to go home I don’t really want to go there. Survivalbox builders aren’t quite like ESO, as survivalbox games are designed for you to put your crafting centers inside the buildings you build.

That means I need some kind of external stimuli to make logging in worthwhile. Many survivalbox builders have stories, or at least some kind of milestone system which makes me want to progress in addition to creating homes, bases, and facilities.

Removing the story or the reason removes my interest, but I also think that there’s a definite mold that these kinds of games follow; it’s just the look and feel of the building blocks that differentiate them from one another.

See, now I’m just rambling because I want to see how many screenshots from various survivalbox builders I can cram in here, to prove to you how many I have actually played. The count is already in the “many” category, but the games represented here are by no means exhaustive.

I suspect that I’ll keep wish listing these kinds of games, or trying out demos, in the hope that I’ll be able to find one that does things differently enough to keep me engaged whether it’s with others or solo.

I doubt that will be possible. Games of this scope are designed for multiplayer and while we can play them solo, they can be brutal, or just a grind.