I had the same experience with Graveyard Keeper but gave it another try a few years later. Either they balanced it more or it bothered me less, but the second time I was able to complete it without ending up hating it :D

Gives me Strange Horticulture vibes

This is sad. For the same reason I can’t play Half Life 2, Portal and Talos Principle >.<

I haven’t played since they added a bunch of updates and features but a while back it lacked the deep bonds you can forge in Stardew Valley but they added more content to this part of the game so I guess it became better in this regard. Collecting pets is likely still the main focus.

You start in a base island where you can forage building material and start collecting pets. You then build flying objects (I think you start with a kite?) to leave and discover other islands with different pets and different difficulties (finding out the difficulty is through fuck around and find out afaik).

The building is besides some very basic objects entirely optional but having a barn fit your pets it’s very important. But then you can go out, discover islands and collect pets.

What felt a bit annoying was that there are specific items needed to open dungeons on some of these islands and these items may only appear during a specific season. I was a bit frustrated when I finally found the summer dungeon and it just became fall.

Writing this made me want to replay it since they added a bunch of interesting stuff. But even in it’s unfinished state I would have recommended it.

Oh boy, I had the same issue with Staxel and I don’t get it… why? This annoyed me way more than I expected

I guess no cuteness / anime excludes the rune factory series so I’d go with the following recommendations:

• Stardew Valley is an all time favorite .
• Kynseed feels like the fever dream of someone who once heard of these kind of games. But you can decide for yourself if you want to focus on questing, farming, becoming a business mogul or whatever. Time is not really relevant in this game since you character doesn’t have to sleep and you can just get kids or adopt them and continue you game with them if your character gets old.
• Graveyard Keeper has a very different spin on the whole genre, it has a dark sense of humor and not knowing what to do, when the bodies pile up can be stressful but I enjoyed it a lot.
• Travelers Rest is a game where you build your own tavern. I only played it for a few hours in early access but it felt relaxing and looked nice so far. It’s out for a while now but I haven’t returned yet (stupid sexy Hades II… )

There are also cross overs with other genres like Moonstone Island which combines building your own home and collecting pets and discovering new islands with their help.

My giant Steam Backlog says it’s still on my to play list. I’ll look into it!

That person tactics! This game was my gateway to the amazing world of SRPGs (⁠灬⁠º⁠‿⁠º⁠灬⁠)⁠♡

TGV: Am I a joke to you??

I interpreted this more like a reference to the original developer of God of War who was pretty vocal about not being happy with the new games.

Your question makes it sound like Epic is a small new player at the market and they are trying their best and both is not true.

Epic is actively working on enshittification, Steam, at least for now, isn’t. For me it’s easy as that.