You remember Oblivion from back in the day. It's worse than Morrowind in a lot of ways but the real-time day-night cycle and the NPC movement was engrossing. Quests where you have to go find people, and they can be in tons of locations are so interesting. Sometimes you have to figure out when someone goes home, Idk. Also characters would occasionally exhibit quirky behaviours. Every subsequent Bethesda game diminished this aspect hugely, it's one of the things I hate about Skyrim most.
Another series where the games never hit an early height of world sim again is Pokemon. Gold & Silver introduced day and night cycles that would have NPCs appear or disappear, wild pokemon encounters change, radio stations come on or off, certain items show up. For a system with 32kb of ram, it slapped. Other games have the cycle system but it's easily the most pronounced in G/S/C.
The "life sim"/'you are a loser farmer' genre as pioneered by Harvest Moon (and now happily overtaken by Stardew Valley and its ilk) have always had this kind of system, and I do like those a lot but if a game's not "about" its scheduling, it seems like they're more likely not to have it nowadays. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequels had day/night at least, Metro did not... So if you know of any recent games that have really cool scheduling or realtime or day/night mechanics, hit me up. Also don't say Cybertruck'd 2077, game is boring and stupid :)
You should deffo look up Stalkers A-Life system, and especially mods that restored many of the A-Life features that were dummied out of the production release's code. A-Life had a lot of stuff going on with NPC stalkers taking on quests, animals moving from region to region. I think they turned it off because it made the game unpredictable to the players in ways that weren't fun. Things like you get to an outpost and everyone's dead because mutants killed them when the player was somewhere else, but from the player's perspective a bunch of NPCs died for no reason.
Cepheus protocol has something like this. The player is part of a government agency that has to fight zombies in order to find a cure and stop patient zero. The player controls squads of soldiers and scientsts, builds fortifications, builds refugee camps to manage civilian evacuations, captures points in the city to get resources.
The zombies have an AI RTS engine going. They start out in one part of the city and over time they send infection units to increase the infection level in a given city district. Civilians are actually a re-source that the player and the zombie AI are fighting over - The zombie AI tries to take over districts of the city and as it converts more civilians it's able to send more zombies at the player as well as infect other parts of the city. The player, meanwhile, wants to evacuate civilians from the city to deny the zombie AI more territory and more zombies. Managing civilian evacuation is one of the game's most unique aspects. The player can build refugee camps, screen incoming civilians for zombie infection, shoot anyone who is infected, and evacuate survivors out of the city. You're dealing with tens of thousands of civilians so it's a significant infrastructure task and civilians on the move are vulnerable to attack. It's usually in the players interest to build large numbers of shelters safely behind protected walls so the player can screen civilians and put them in a safe fortress where there's little risk of them turning in to zombies under the AI's control. You want to get all those people on helicopters ASAP. You can also massacre civilians as an evil way to stop them from being infected which will make some AI factions turn against you. I think your own soldiers have some kind of morale mechanic, too, that makes massacres an extreme option instead of just a lol evil gamer thing.
In my campaign I ended up in a losing numbers battle against the zombie RTS AI. Due to lack of experience and some iffy game mechanics I was only able to evacuate and control small parts of hte city while the infection had completely overtake significant areas. I bombed the bridges between islands where the infection was strongest but I was still getting gradually over-run by increasingly evolved zombie enemies. It got to the point where I was only holding one district because I had a gauntlet of tanks and machine guns that could fire down one long, narrow street with high walls on either side that the zombies had to move through. Once they found a way to flank me I was forced to evacuate the whole district. The math was simple; The infection was overwhelming me and infecting civillians far faster than I could stop or contain it. In the end I had to load all my soldiers on to the aircraft carrier that acts as your home base then use LCAC hovercraft to launch a beach assault on the zombies primary stronghold. I abandoned the city to make a last-gasp decapitation strike against the super-powered Patient Zero AI because there was no way I could win a drag out boxing match.
All in all it was very cool with game systems interacting to create an emergent narrative. From what I understand the game has enough depth and variables that different campaigns can play out in wildly different ways based on the game's starting conditions and the player's tactics, skills, and knowledge.
A-Life my beloved! I guess it might be time to install some mods and do a playthrough, I forgot or did not know that you can restore the AI fully. Very nice.
Cepheus Protocol sounds pretty neat too, never heard of that one...
It's very neat. very small indie studio, the game is under active development.
Dorf Fortress. I'm not aware of anything that goes as deep or as hard as Dorf Fortress.
Behind the scenes there wasn't really simulation going on in Oblivion. All those character actions were scripted - Go to work at x time, go to the park, go to the tavern, go home to bed. I made a lot of them while modding back in the day. Like they'd eat food off the ground, but that was part of a script that searched for objects around them to interact with rather than a simulation system where they'd get hungry or pick up valuables.
Kenshi has a good bit of simulation - characters have complicated health, damage, food, and other states that get tracks. It's not nearly as detailed as something like DF though.
Behind the scenes there wasn't really simulation going on in Oblivion.
Not in the strict literal sense yeah, because Bethesda has never been good, so it's all schedules. But they put in the work to make it seem like the world was simulated, and it would often add flavour and the world did in fact move when you weren't there, things went on. Also I know "radiant ai" is fake but you do have things like M'aiq can go look for calipers, and he can go anywhere on the map to get to them. They can do stuff. Proper simulation of hunger levels or whatever probably would have been easy to add, but it's not about literally simulating people, it's about simulating the idea that the world moves on its own, I guess.
This is why I think fhings like Harvest Moon, Animal Crossing or indeed Dorf aren't what I'm getting at - if you stop interacting with the townspeople or your dwarf fort, things will stop functioning pretty quick. Whereas Hoothoot always only comes out at night regardless of your input, and certain Skingrad residents will always visit the skooma den even if you're just standing around 24/7. I wanna find interesting things happening, I am forever fascinated with the Living Desert mod for New Vegas.
Kenshi is actually a decent answer since a lot of its faction stuff is very organic and lots of funny things can happen out of your view.
Makes me think of Majora's mask. Instead of a single night/day cycle, a 72 hour repeating cycle where certain quests where you had to talk to one person at a specific time range on a specific day to causing someone to be at a specific place at another time, and so on. Even OOT had a basic day/night cycle, but MM took that idea much further. Far from a recent game though.
Far from a recent game though.
Even the kinda bad 3DS remake is almost 10 years old
Ay that was the game that brought this on, I was watching Rosencreutz' video on Majora's Mask. It's very cute, I dig it.
lots of funny things can happen out of your view.
I did greatly enjoy coming across some bizarre scene out in the desert where clearly something had happened because everyone was dead, but it'd be like a faction from the other side of the content and there'd be no evidence of what happened to them except one unimpressed, slightly injured goat.
Shenmue.
Didn't come out in the last 10 years, but the third installment did
Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdon has a good day/night cycle, and the NPCs often follow schedules. You can follow them around town and see their daily lives, and even many of the overworld NPCs seem to have destinations and jobs
Rimworld is just barely too old for your criteria, apparently having been released initially in 2013. The day/night schedule of your colonists is under your control subject to their needs and breaks, and the world outside your base is doing stuff which affects you over time.
Dorf Fort but not as much :3 I do respect those types of games. I would consider them to be games "about" their scheduling a la Harvest Moon tho.
I've recommended it here so many times but check out Amazing Cultivation Sim! It has a system where NPC factions are constantly assassinating each other's elders, stealing artifacts, exchanging knowledge of the supreme laws, etc. on top of the management system for your own folks. I think the disciples in ACS aren't as deep in terms of their personalities and autonomy as DF, but their relationships to masters and fellow disciples has mechanical consequences.
The sequel is coming next year and I believe it's gonna expand on those systems a lot, so worth keeping an eye out. Amazing things are happening in China.
I think about Oblivion and it's NPC scheduling far too often. It feels like the missing piece in otherwise amazing games like Deus Ex MD or Pathologic 2.
I remember MGS V had elements of this. Guards would patrol, be relieved at certain times, there was scheduled transports of prisoners and resources. If you knocked out an entire base of guards at night eventually the morning shift would turn up and start waking them up, putting the base on alert.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I just remembered Shadows of Doubt, I think that's the most recent game with this system that I've played. It has proc gen cities where every citizen has a job and a sometimes spontaneous daily routine. Every few days a citizen will murder another one and leave behind a trail of evidence. It's supposed to hit 1.0 this month as well.
Very raw and buggy in places but in ways that leads to more hilarious outcomes. You hide in a freezing vent waiting for someone to head out to the club for them to apparently decide nah not tonight 2 seconds after leaving the building and catch you in the middle of reading their emails.
Bear website talk about elder scrolls without getting mad at people for liking morrowind challenge: not possible
I literally like Oblivion and think it's fun, to me the lost bits from Morrowind (stuff like spears, many different armour parts, levitation and magic, etc) was mostly made up for by the new focus on physics, dialogue (even if it kinda sucked) that wasn't like reading from an encyclopedia, and yes the NPC scheduling. Nobody in Morrowind moves at all, and objects are 100% static; now you can knock stuff off of shelves and watch people move. People speak!!
So this isn't even like I think Oblivion is bad, I have some criticism for it but it's stilll pretty much good. I noticed in my Skyrim thread that people get REALLY bent out of shape if you say Oblivion was a step down from Morrowind
Rain World has this but for ecosystems. There is a whole dynamic predation hierarchy that changes according to how dangerous you are known to be or how much you have tamed certain creatures, there are tribes of intelligent creatures that you can trade with or fight with or be attacked by depending on the reputation you develop with them over the game, there are food sources that cannot be repeatedly visited but must be rotated through to give them time to regrow.
Finally it's the ecosystem simulation every open world game bragged about, for real! I've been eyeing this game for a long time.
Just know that it's hard to get into. There isn't really any strong narrative pushing you along, and it's a lot more about learning how to exist in the specific ecosystems you encounter as you progress through the game. There are a few linear difficult stealth & platforming sections around the midpoint but the early game is very open.
'River Town Factory' is enjoyable. It combines stardew valley with... I think factorio? The game with all the conveyer belts and factories that automate shit for you.
It's got a bit of the wuxia element to it, some simple combat, some life Sim, some light puzzle mechanics, and even some optional tower defence.
'Hero's Adventure Road to Passion' is also enjoyable too. It's a sort of isometric turn-based wuxis rpg where you take a weak peasant and turn him into a martial grandmaster or probably die trying.
Way out of date vs your request, but MMOs have this to a degree, in Everquest for example some npcs/events only happen at certain days or times of the week, then there's actually people too you can watch and maybe even interact with. Its something to see all the differences on each server's community, different unspoken rules, economies, etc. One of my favorite things in MMOs is to fuck with their markets once I'm high enough level to do so, its remarkable to see how like IRL it makes people's behaviors change and can either alleviate or cause drama.
Oblivion was supposed to use way more radiant AI then it ended up doing a lot less since the engine couldn't handle npcs having full lives (even to this day AI overload is a thing for modders to think of), and AI would be busy stealing food from each other and dying horribly to the psychic guards
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