Recently, I’ve been obsessed with Stardew Valley. If you’re familiar with Harvest Moon, it’s that- but better. In this game you start as a new farmer who was given land in a small town after your grandfather passes. You learn more of the story through getting to know the local townspeople, through interacting with them, giving them gifts, attending town events, even your relationship with one townsperson can shift your relationship with others. Conversely, you have the options to make them hate you depending on how you choose to behave. You can choose a bachelor/ette to marry, you can have children. You can divorce them, you can cheat on them, you can magically turn your children into doves.
Throughout all these in-game relationships progressing or regressing, you make your living farming, raising livestock, mining, etc. You can unlock new areas of the world as you make community upgrades (an island nearby is unlocked faster if you choose to lead your town down a capitalist route rather than a semi-communist society), or create friendships with the townspeople, who will tip you off to how unlock these things.
There are mini-games throughout, fishing, fighting monsters in the mines, arcade games in the bar.
I think this game is what you want to make it. If you don’t care about “advancing” you can live a simple farm life. Or, like me, you can try to get everything you can out of it. I try to befriend every single person, I want to unlock every achievement, I want to get every single item that I can. I want to complete the community requests and all the event scenes. Most of all, I want to humiliate the town mayor, who is hiding his relationship with one of the townspeople because he thinks she’s not good enough to publicly date. Marnie, you deserve better, girl.
Sammy