Creative games to exert your mind

Cities: Skylines

Price $ 10.49 on Steam

"I can design a better city than this!" is quite possibly a common saying among the denizens of Dhaka city. Well, get ready to put your money where your mouth is because this game lets you do exactly that. Cities: Skylines is a modern take on the classic city simulation games where you build a city from the ground up. As the immortal mayor of "garbagelandia" or whatever you wish to call your city, you make every decision regarding your city's grown and expansion. This means you decide everything from the placement of residential zones to the size of the roads, to whether damming the city's sewage to generate power, smell be dammed. Multiple expansion packs add much more complex gameplay mechanisms and assets to an already complex game, while there is enough user-made content on the Steam Workshop to completely change the game inside and out. So, if you ever wanted to one-up our city officials, this is the game to try. 

Automation - The Car Company Tycoon Game

Price $ 10.49 on Steam

If there one thing petrolheads are known for, it's their love of vehicle customization. We will take a run-of-the-mill sedan and will eventually end up changing 50% of it. From tires to an entire engine, we will change anything our budget and imagination will allow. Because in our minds, we are all Enzo Ferrari's who are on our way to create the next generation of supercars, only held back by the roadblock of reality.  Automation lets you sidestep this roadblock, and puts you in charge of a virtual car company. You are tusked to build everything, from chassis type to engine cram profile, to what type of taillights looks best on your million-dollar supercar that surely won't fly off the test track. Speaking of the test track, the major drawback of this game is that you can't drive the vehicles. You can, however, buy another game called BeamNG.Drive ($25 on steam), where you can import and drive your prototypes. So, if you ever wondered what a K-20 based mid-engine Honda supercar would be like, grab this game and start making it yourself.

Oh, and upload the finished car to Steam workshop, I want to drive that.

House Flipper

Price $ 8.19 on Steam

If you ever had a knack for interior decorating or real estate, House Flipper is a great way to get your feet wet. The game is a house renovation/interior decorating simulator where you, a handyman realtor, buy a depilated house, clean it up, renovated it, and then sell it for a profit.  The game gives you a massive variety of tools for renovation, where everything besides the outside walls can be changed to your heart's content.  There are tons of furniture and other fittings as well, giving you the option to design your perfect kitchen, living room, and even a mancave, providing you buy a house with a large enough basement. Overall, if you are starting to find the inside of your house boring and wish to redecorate without the taxing physical labor, this game is your escape route.

Subnautica

Price $8.49 on Steam

Virtually all Survival games have the same premise. The player is going somewhere, stuff goes wrong, there is a big crash in the middle of nowhere and the player is the sole survivor. Well, the premise of Subnautica is mostly that, but instead of the usual jungle, the player's ship crashes down in a giant water world filled with all kinds of alien ocean life. After surviving the crash, the player must learn to survive, build a base operation, solve a million-year-old mystery and scrounge up parts to build a small rocket so he can leave his aquatic mansion and finally return to his mundane job of planet surveying. During his adventure, the player will encounter various unique and fantastic sea life, from the cute but slightly creepy Eyefish to absolutely terrifying and lethal 50-foot-long Reaper Leviathans that chew everything into tiny little pieces. If you are a fan of good science fiction mystery and fascinated by sea life, you will love this game.

From the Depths

Price $ 8.19 on Steam

From the Depths (FTD) is a game where you design and build giant weapons of war to fight other similar creations in a total war scenario. The game provides you with a plethora of building material and propulsion to built your war machine, and there is no limit to what you can build. From a swarm of steam-powered wooden attack jet to a fleet 200-meter long battleship that shoots lasers from all of its orifices, anything is possible in the crazy world of FTD. And after you are done with your crazy science projects, you can take them into games multiple campaigns, each containing a massive map for you to dominate and conquer. Your mad science project will face against eight uniquely themed factions, each equipped with dozens of user-created designs fielding different tactics and with varied strengths and weaknesses.  So, if you are a mad scantest who wishes to vent their frustration through the art of destruction, this game is for you. Just be careful of the learning curve, the games do not mess around when it comes to engines and weapons design.  

Alternatively, if you're looking for creative games to play with your friends, be sure to check out our story on online-shooter alternatives to share with your friends