Stonehearth was eventually abandoned, unfortunately, but the game is very much playable. The devs didn’t just ghost the playerbase but had a kind of transfer of knowledge with the modders and the game lives on.

What’s great about Stonehearth is it’s multiplayer. A multiplayer colony management sim where two players can build an interconnected city (technically 2 separate colonies) and command an army to fend off increasingly difficult waves of goblin raids.

I’ve had so many fun games with my wife, we’ll settle next to a cliff side, she has hearthlings (i.e. hobbits) and me as dwarves. I’d take care of mining and build all into the mountain, make us the best weapons with world-class smiths and she’d take care of the food, amazing cooks, animal husbandry, etc.

The Pillars and Pathfinder games are both relatively daunting in terms of world size and, at least for Pathfinder, the rules are much more gritty… remember Pathfinder is a spin-off of DnD 3.5e and sticks relatively closely to that. While BG3 is based on the much more “friendly” DnD 5e rules. Pathfinder is much closer to BG2 than BG3 is, gameplay wise.

The big differences between BG3 and the other modern CRPGs is that BG3 does an exceptional job at presenting unprecedented player choice in traversal and combat. Other games have dialogue skill checks and all that but traversing the world is flat, literally practically menu driven and combat is all measurements and numbers. BG3 has free-form qualities that, in the world of video games, have so far only been utilized in immersive sims like Deus Ex and, oddly enough, I’d say the modern 3D Zeldas.

I have both.

I’ve had my switch for many years at this point, while my SteamDeck is barely 1 year old. I probably wouldn’t buy a switch today if I didn’t already have one but since I already have one I still use it very occasionally for exclusives I’m excited for (well, actually used it a ton for TotK recently). I don’t have my Switch hacked and would just rather not go through the hassle of finding clean roms to download. The only Switch game I played on my Deck was Diablo III (because the PC version has no controller support or controller-friendly UI) but with Diablo IV now it’s unnecessary.

All that being said, there’s very few Switch exclusives I’m interested in for $60 anymore, even on the horizon, Zelda was probably the last one unless Mario Odyssey 2 is released before the end of the system’s lifetime. And Zelda TotK was honestly the first game I bought for Switch in probably the last 2+ years… my wife played a few things on it but I had switched to PC exclusively (+Steamdeck) and PS5

There’s not a game I prefer on the Switch over the Deck but I do think both systems have their merits. I’ve played through Zelda TotK on Switch recently and play my Deck more often (lately a lot of BG3)

The Deck is honking huge, while the switch is small. I much prefer the size of the Deck to the Switch but there’s a an easy argument to be made there for portability.

The Switch is just more dock-friendly. Any serious Switch owner (who would care about docking) owns a Pro Controller. Docking to and undocking from a TV just works perfectly 100% of the time. You can buy a dock for the Steam Deck and you could Bluetooth a controller but it’s definitely more finicky - specifically with some games especially.

Multi-person household. I have a wife and a kid. I’m very fortunate and my wife has her own Deck but we do share a Switch and a PS5. There were dozens of times I would have played Zelda or FF16 but my wife was using the console so I settled with my Deck. I could easily see the opposite happening if we didn’t each own our own Steamdeck

I had pre-ordered prior to release and got it last July. The 256gb model but I’ve upgraded to a 1TB since then. I’ve had issues in the past with Heroic and debated simply running the game through Windows or installing GOG through Lutris but luckily Heroic worked.

Have you considered trying to just install GOG through Lutris? I run Diablo IV like that (via Battle.net of course) and it’s simple enough.

I’ve been playing BG3 and perhaps I’m misunderstanding but you only have one action and one bonus action per turn and you only have so many spell slots per caster. Unless you have a leveled spell as an action and a separate leveled spell as a bonus action and enough spell slots for both you’d be hard pressed to cast more than a single spell per turn per character

I don’t have an exact answer for you but I can 100% confirm it works through Heroic.

Switch to desktop, install heroic launcher, install BG3 with default options to internal SSD, launch with Proton Experimental, it will say you need .net so accept the dialogue and download the exe, use Heroic to install the .net exe to the game’s prefix, go to the configuration again and add --skip-launcher (two hyphens at the beginning) to the launch commands.

That’s it, I did that and ran the game from desktop and then used heroic to add it to Steam. Now I launch the game straight through Game Mode. I also added Heroic as a non-steam game so I can launch it occasionally for patches.

Skipping the launcher is important, as is installing the correct .net exe. I’ve read that some folks had the game claim to be installed but then realized it never actually completed successfully because they ran out of disk space during the final step. It’s a very large install. I also read a one-off comment that power tools can break it, if you have that installed through decky loader.

To be honest, I’ve never been able to get over the hump in ONI. I play for hours, have a blast but eventually things start falling apart and I’m not usually able to recover. That being said, I know there’s been some updates since last I played so I may go back to it soon.

Back in 2011 or so I got really into Minecraft mods. I think it was literally just Buildcraft and Industrialcraft. It involved many steps, putting folders inside the Minecraft JAR file, deleting meta INF files, etc. I stuck with it for a few years during which the scene exploded. I actually paid to host a website for my friend’s only server that just included links to the specifics mod versions and step by step instructions how to install them. It was around the same time FTB modpacks came out that I fell off, I played one or two SP worlds with FTB Infinity Evolved and had a lot of fun but Factorio and eventually Satisfactory scratched that same itch.

They’re called management sims, or in the case of Factorio a factory builder.

Rimworld is a colony management sim… check out Dwarf Fortress or Oxygen Not Included for similar games

Rollercoaster Tycoon is a theme park management sim, the obvious suggestions are Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo but also check out City Skylines.

Factorio is a factory builder, I would recommend Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, there’s a few handfuls of those types of games. If you want to get a little wild look into Minecraft (Java edition) w/ mods - most easily something like the FTB Infinity Evolved or one of the new Direwolf packs, it’s arguably where the factory building craze started.