When you’ve got friends who play video games, chances are you’re always trying to find time to play something together. You might find that your preferences clash - and while you might prefer to play a multiplayer shooter game, your friend might want something else.
An easy compromise tends to be resource management games. You can find lots of gameplay styles in this genre, to suit everyone’s tastes. See if there’s anything here you can compromise on, and go enjoy some time playing together.
10 Farming Simulator 22
A long series of games precedes Farming Simulator 22, all the way back to the first release in 2008. Farming Simulator 14 was the first to introduce multiplayer, and ever since, you’ve had the option of enjoying a realistic farming simulator with friends.
Go through every step of farming, from buying and planting seeds to fertilizing and harvesting, with fully functional farming equipment you’d find in real life. You have to find vendors to sell your crops to as well, keeping the cycle moving as you shift through the seasons and keep your farm growing.
9 Rust
Rust pits players against each other and the environment in its post apocalyptic setting. Starting with only a rock and a torch to your name, you must collect resources in order to upgrade your tools and build bases, but also to manage your hunger, thirst, and health.
Despite the open-world concept, there are many areas more dangerous than others, including radioactive terrain, so you have to keep collecting resources in order to keep exploring. It’s best to make or join a clan with your friends, as your chances of survival are better the more people you work with.
8 Grounded
The backyard has never been a more dangerous place than in Grounded. This survival game shrinks you and your friends down to the size of ants and sets you free in a backyard, where even the grass towers above you. You’ll have to learn how to use the surrounding resources, building with grass, weeds, and pebbles, as well as drinking from puddles and dew drops, and cooking bugs to eat.
Uncover the story with your friends and work your way up to the harder areas, including nests full of spiders and others overrun with towering bugs.
7 Raft
In Raft, the world has almost entirely flooded, leading players to reuse whatever resources they can scavenge from the world before as they float past it on their raft. You and your friends will start on a simple 2x2 raft, and will have to collect resources to keep expanding it.
All the while, your own food and thirst are constantly a problem that need to be addressed. A shark is constantly circling around you too, chewing on the edge of your raft to get to you. You have to navigate this ocean biome, and as you keep upgrading, you'll experience more difficulties.
6 Terraria
2D sandbox game, Terraria has a wide array of options for you and your friends. Its gameplay relies on many things, including exploration, building, crafting, combat, survival, and mining.
Starting out with basic tools and an NPC to guide you, you must explore and craft to boost your health and mana before you take on one of the game's many bosses. With lots of areas to explore and get resources, as well as complex crafting trees in order to get the items you need, there’s a lot for you and your friends to do.
5 Don't Starve Together
Witness a spooky parallel world in Don’t Starve Together. Players must fight to survive, making sure they stay well fed and mentally stable as the supernatural takes over and tries to devour you. Each world is randomly generated when you begin, giving you the daytime to explore and gather resources while night becomes more deadly.
Survive as long as possible while the game keeps track of your time, and make sure you have enough resources to defend yourself and to stay well fed.
4 Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley is a great farming sim for people looking for something a little more casual and laid back. You and your friend can start a new life together in the valley, reviving the old family farm and making it look good as new.
Spend your days farming, fishing, or collecting wood - and if you’re really up for it, you could go into the mines for ores and fighting. There are also a ton of NPCs waiting for you to meet them, befriend them, and maybe you’ll find someone special to romance. There’s never a dull day in the valley.
3 Factorio
The sandbox construction and management game, Factorio follows an engineer who crash-landed on an alien planet. The goal is to build a rocket to let you leave the planet, but you have to harvest the resources and create an entire industry to do so.
Starting from next to nothing, you and your friends must locate and harvest resources to begin building various tools and machines, all of which help you manufacture better materials. As you build up your factory you’ll start automating necessary processes and creating new technologies to help you get home.
2 Satisfactory
Work never ends in Satisfactory, where you and your friends are dropped off on an alien planet with the goal of building a space elevator to supply your company with resources from the planet. Choose from one of four starting locations to affect what your surroundings look like and what kind of resources you’ll see early on, and then salvage your own landing pod for parts to get the game going.
You'll need to build up your factory and work towards making every single aspect of it completely automated. All the while, you'll have to scavenge the world for supplies and fight off some hostile aliens getting in your way.
1 Minecraft
Minecraft has inspired many of the titles on this list. In survival mode, everything is about collecting resources. Chop down trees, go mining, and fight off monsters to collect the resources you need. As you get better tools to defend yourself, you and your friends might even start to feel adventurous.
With many biomes and several randomly generated structures, there’s a lot to explore. Don’t forget about the Nether and it’s biome expansion, as well as the End and everything you can keep exploring even after killing the Ender Dragon.