10. Don’t Starve
The fun art style is as recognisable as it is deceptive, giving the impression of a simple bit of fun. Only that behind its cartoony facade, Don’t Starve is actually a game of life and death, with fire, disease and insanity lurking just around the corner. That sounds harsh, but the game is a lot of fun in how it applies real-world rules to its virtual landscapes. Would you normally make a campfire this close to a row of trees? Would you really stand that close to a herd of beefalo? (They’re a thing, look it up.) You wouldn’t, now, would you.
So it’s upon you to find out what is dangerous to you and when, and how to use that to your advantage. It’s difficult, no doubt, but your first few crafted items are as much a necessity, as they are a triumph – another way to eek by.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, Android
9. The Forest
Fear is a powerful thing, and the most entertaining games are those where you might drop dead at any minute. In crafting games you’re more likely to slowly waste away, but not in The Forest, because here you start eating others before you starve to death. You can spend more than enough time doing nothing but building a surprisingly elaborate, beautiful dwelling and roasting the ol’ forest animal or two, but it’s the horror elements that makes everything from crafting to resource gathering pretty unique and pretty hard to stomach at times (literally!).
Venturing into a cave or out into the night is more terrifying than you would think possible seeing the lush forest during the day, but here we are, doing truly disgusting things in the name of survival and crafting with the very ingredients other games make a wide berth around.
Available on PC, PS4
8. ARK: Survival Evolved
By now you’d think this list had covered every scenario, right? Wrong. One word – dinosaurs. Rideable dinosaurs. ARK: Survival Evolved has you starting off with nothing, and you build yourself a hut with a nice roof and some weapons to clobber dinosaurs over the head with.
You can either use them for resources (of course) or tame them. Like with Minecraft, the base game has grown into something that isn’t just about crafting – it’s a great community experience. By now, ARK: Survival Evolved has Battle Royale servers and many servers dedicated to roleplaying and building huge dinosaur farms.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, Android
7. Dragon Quest Builders 2
Combining the sprawling Dragon Quest JRPG franchise with a sandbox builder doesn’t seem like a very intuitive thing to do, but perhaps it’s that mix of opposites that makes it so successful. You have an island to shape in whatever way you please and specific building quests besides, so you can be sure to craft everything the game has to offer at one point or another.
Since crafting is block-based, you can, of course, start to go absolutely crazy, but it’s really the story that makes Dragon Quest Builders 2 such a standout. In a genre full of survival, tower defence and general killing sprees, a real, heartfelt story, not to mention one of JRPG proportions, is simply so very hard to come by.
Available on PC, PS4, Switch
6. Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley rekindled everyone’s obsession with Harvest Moon-style farming, and when I say everyone I mean everyone – across six platforms it has by now sold 10 million copies, an unbelievable success story for something made at home by a single person. The secret doesn’t only lie in the charming pixel art with its fat chickens and deliciously coloured fruit, there’s simply so much to do that Stardew refuses to get boring, as much as you’d love it to around 3 am.
From fishing to exploring an old mine to dating your favourite villager, you will sink hundreds of hours into this game, only to come back and do it all again in multiplayer.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, Android
5. Starbound
There are a lot of games on this list that ran with the style of gameplay and presentation that originated with Terraria, but none do the formula justice as well as Starbound does. No wonder – after all it initiated with one of Terraria’s original creators. As the name suggests, Starbound is all about exploring different planets, and developer Chucklefish has crafted a number of quests and background as diverse as the different planets and biomes.
What Starbound has over Terraria is a story - one that fits into things so seamlessly that you can engage with it at your own pace. Simply craft items and build your base at your leisure and you may stumble upon quests that give you something interesting to do next.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One
4. Subnautica
It’s not always better where it’s wetter – there’s still plenty under the sea that can kill you, but Subnautica lives not so much of the excitement of clashing with the marine populace, mostly because more often than not they come out clearly victorious.
Instead, you want to craft equipment that allows you to explore more of its beautiful alien ocean, for longer. You may be going out to find resources to enhance your base but oops, you fled from an undersea monster to God knows where or an interesting bit of undersea landscape caught your eye.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One
3. No Man's Sky
Thanks to the huge updates Hello Games implemented, crafting is one of the aspects in No Man’s Sky you can keep busy with for hours. You’ve always had ample options for upgrading your suit, multitool and ship, but now you can also put work into your exocraft and a base worthy of a hardworking astronaut. The number of blueprints and ingredients is huge, so you will definitely find multiple uses for whatever you pick up and even refine further in a multitude of ways. Essentially No Man’s Sky is about two of the great joys of gaming – exploring landscapes until you fall off a random cliff and lining your pockets with all types of stuff the use of which will not become apparent until much much later.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One
2. Terraria
Don’t accept anything but the original. Chances are if you’re one of the 20 Million people who have bought Terraria since its release in 2011, you haven’t had much of a need for any other crafting game since, not just because the updates steadily kept coming over the years. Every aspect of Terraria is enhanced through the crafting options, so if crafting is what you enjoy most, it hardly gets more varied and intricate than this.
One on the other side of the crafting medal is battle that is as manic as it is difficult, making Terraria great for all those who love the relaxed atmosphere of crafting but don’t want to boot up another game to have a go at SNES-era 2D combat a la Mega Man.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, Android
1. Minecraft
Some games start a genre but don’t stick around long enough to see it grow. Others will be replaced by better games. But not Minecraft. By now this game is a symbol for the ingenuity of millions of diligent crafters around the world, and no less than an absolute pop cultural phenomenon. With the AR spinoff Minecraft Earth in early access, the story of the main game continues, not that it ever went anywhere. With most of the over 170 million (double that if you’re counting the free Chinese release) enjoy the block builder that started everything. It’s a crafting game for everyone, not only because the only violence you find here is the fantasy kind – it’s simply the best game to create something of your own. If you can think it, you can build it, and it’s as much fun to play yourself as it is to watch others create.
Available on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch, iOS, Android
