2020 was a pretty good year for management games, but nothing released in the past 12 months has impressed us enough to squeeze its way into our best management games list. Don’t worry, though – it’s only because there are already so many classics to choose from. If you’re looking for something to sink into over the holidays, check out our picks below.

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There’s something innately relaxing about farming games like Stardew Valley. They let you take life at your own pace, where the only mission objective is to make a place your own in whatever way you see fit. It’s the reason why so many of us have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours playing Stardew Valley, which is arguably the best farming game you can play today.

Sometimes, though, you want to branch out and try something new – sow some new seeds, so to speak, while still getting that wholesome, cosy feeling you get from playing Stardew. That’s why we’ve come up with this list of the best games like Stardew Valley for farming and life sim fans looking to broaden their horizons. Whether it’s intense agriculture action you’re after or the moreishness of its gentle RPG elements, these are the best farming and life sim games like Stardew Valley you can play right now.

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Management games have been enjoying a bit of a renaissance in recent years, meaning there are now even better, more efficient ways to direct trains, corral visitors, lay down conveyor belts and profit, profit, profit than ever before. To that end, we’ve put on our builder hats and constructed a list of the best management games you can play on PC in 2020. Whether you want to be a budding city planner, wannabe farm herd or survive against the elements, there’s a game for you below.

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Squidgy first-person farm ’em up Slime Rancher is one size bigger and goopier today. Developers Monomi Park have released two bits of DLC, one of them big, challenging and free, and the other one small, entirely cosmetic and paid. Viktor’s Experimental Update is the free expansion, taking players into a world of slime simulation. Slimeulation, even. It’s infested with glitchy, fragmented slimes that you can collect, convert into bug reports and cash in for a stack of new rewards, including some new gadgets. Below, a look at this blankly smiling virtual world within a virtual world.

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Gather, breed, and tend to a brood of mischievous, turd-gobbling cuties in Slime Rancher, the latest game to be given away free on the Epic Games Store. Released in 2017 after a stretch in early access, Monomi Park’s Slime Rancher is a… metroidvania farming game? Gather different species of slimes from around the world, build and upgrade pens for them, feed their poo (plorts) to other species to cross-breed them and create new nightmares, gain access to new areas to get stranger slimes, and so on. It’s colourful, it’s friendly, that thing lurking in the bottom-right corner of your screen is a vacuum to suck up slimes rather than a gun, and oh god those slimes are SUCH adorable nuisances.

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My nerves have been sufficiently jangled and my trigger-finger sufficiently itched by the glut of action games which landed in the closing months of last year. I crave an altogether more sedate beginning to 2018, and so my mind turns to games in which violence, reflex or any other kind of unblinking attentiveness takes a back seat.

Primarily we’re talking violence-free games here, but I wanted to drill a little deeper than that – so nothing that generally requires a competitive streak. I’m chasing a certain feel rather than a certain category. Flying, walking, puzzling, driving, building, dreaming, climbing, stretching, swinging (not like that), swimming, wondering: these are just a few of the ways in which flashing pixels can make you feel a very different sort of accomplishment.

And, of course, these are not even slightly the be-all and end-all of non-violent games on PC – please do nominate more in comments below. (more…)

We’ve already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin’ and a-shakin’ in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol’ Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well – as do a host of other games from 2017’s great and good.

Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you’re so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I’d have gone for in each category. (more…)

I’ve spent a looooooot of time with my slimes in Slime Rancher [official site] and watching them bounce and coo as they wiggle free of my corrals and wobble off like determined balloon-toddlers has been a delight. But how does one convert a ball into a creature with such a strong sense of spirit? How do you keep their little slime modifications from becoming a confusing mulch of wings and ears? What happened to the meteor slime? How does Gremlins figure in the design of Slime Rancher’s monsters? And will anyone listen to me when I tell them puddle slimes are actually cuter than tabby slimes???

Let’s do a slime art and design interview with game designer/Monomi Park studio co-founder Nick Popovich and find out… (more…)

When I go to my exercise class in the evening sometimes the matter of what I do for a living comes up in pre-class chat. Usually I can be like, “This is a credible grown-up profession. I absolutely pinky swear this to be true!” The last few days I have spent 30 hours corralling adorable bouncing blobs and selling their poop on the stock market or funnelling it into science. Maybe I’ll pretend I’ve lost my voice at class this evening. But Slime Rancher [official site] is so cute I also want to tell everyone about it! Here’s Wot I Think… (more…)

G2A, the controversial marketplace for key sellers, will soon require any users hoping to shift game keys to reveal their name and address. “Starting July 1st, 2017, buyers will have access to detailed information about the sellers on G2A.com, including their names and addresses,” G2A told Polygon. This information will be included, among other places, on the bills provided to buyers, allowing them to know exactly who they are purchasing products from. … [visit site to read more]