Turning something rotten into something thriving.

The above is my favorite activity in video games. It seems that every other game has you foiling an invasion of evil and saving the world, but very few ones show the place getting any better. Usually you just kill bigger and bigger things until you're informed that things have been fixed.

What games give you the feel of building or rebuilding something worthwhile? What games are the sort where you can stop to look back upon your work and smile?

In particular, I'm curious about games where you fix something smaller than the whole setting. I'm about to start an YKTTW about games where the player's actions visibly heal the world, and I'd like to know what other games give that warm fuzzy feeling.

• X Com: If the game just had fighting aliens and researching better guns, it'd be unremarkable. You start with a radar system that detects UF Os by dumb luck, and horribly underpowered weapons that make your soldiers fall like leaves. But when you do win, you dismantle the alien ships and have your engineers fashion armor out of them. You take the aliens' guns and have your scientists learn how to use them, then use that knowledge to create cannons for your ships. You tap into the aliens' communications, copy their combat robots, turn their psychic powers against them, and use their power crystals for antigravity suits. The game builds a narrative by its mechanics alone. (Rookies still die in droves, but that's what they do.)
• Superhero League of Hoboken. Your gang of idiots with useless superpowers start with slingshots and cyanide-dipped gloves. Graduating to laser guns and saving the day feels much sweeter than it would in an ordinary game.
• Harvest Moon. Most (all?) games are about taking over a decrepit farm and making a fortune.
• Suikoden. At least the first two games feature founding a resistance base and turning into a bustling little place. There's some warfare as well.
• Outpost Two. You begin with a small band of panicked refugees. Technology, population and other factors that persist across mission create a really good sense of turning them into hardy survivors who thrive despite the crisis. (They're sill in panicked flight, though - Grey Goo does that.)

edited 21st Dec '10 7:29:55 AM by Kizor

SimCity is almost entirely creation. The only destruction aspect is totally optional and contrary to how the game is meant to be played (which of course doesn't stop everyone from abusing it every now and then).

edited 21st Dec '10 7:28:27 AM by Cliche

Odd example, but when you're not rampaging around burning towns, Total War can be quite satisfying in this respect. There's nothing quite like getting powerful and rich enough in Medieval II Total War and then setting the tax rates to low, having your family members focus on management, focussing on building, and playing benevolent dictator for a number of turns.

(You still need to be quite brutal in the early phases however.)

edited 22nd Dec '10 12:48:08 PM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

I get that. The series has plenty of what I and a friend call pointless, essential detail. A prosperous region has a number of tiny visual cues, like its roads becoming bustling and well-built. If you're playing Rome, you can smile in the knowledge that your virtual people will be using them through the virtual Middle Ages to the virtual Renaissance.

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I remembered another game: I love the atmosphere of the Civ IV mod Fall From Heaven mod Age Of Ice.

Civ IV and Fall lack a feel of accomplishment: the world is ripe for the taking, reaching out and grasping it is to be expected. Meanwhile Age Of Ice is merciless: the player commands a band of survivors in a supernatural ice age. They're constantly bombarded by barbarians, ice giants, and dead people reanimated by the malign frost. Their early units are dressed in crude animal skins, and their technology and buildings begin from a level below the normal game's start. Most of the map is uninhabitable, and a single source of gems (an ordinary, abundant resource in the normal game) is rare enough to be under fierce guard. The tech tree is a remnant of what it used to be, and while Fall had summoning ent armies and setting deserts on fire, the most magically powerful unit in Age Of Ice can cast fireball.

It is so very satisfying when your armies assemble, wearing their uniforms and with their forged swords and tamed mammoths, and march out to bring spring into the world.

edited 4th Jan '11 4:18:26 AM by Kizor