Patient Gamers

So you want to avoid most of the good games? Wow

The Outer Wilds.

Probably in the top ten games I’ve ever played. Story focused, lite reading, almost no action, maybe some scary elements depending on your personality.

Disco Elysium

If you enjoyed Papers Please, you might enjoy Lucas Pope's other major work, Return of the Obra Dinn. It's a "solve the mystery" game, possibly the best one I'm aware of. It's very engaging, it'll make you feel like a genius, and it has basically no replay value.

One of my very, very favorite games is Subnautica. It is a survival game set on an ocean planet, and few games have captured me the way Subnautica did. I think you should go into Subnautica as blind as possible, but I will reveal a few things about it so you can decide if it's for you: Unlike most survival games it is not inherently open-ended; it has a story that has an end, there is a victory condition to work toward. I would not call Subnautica "a horror game" because horror/scariness isn't the point of the game, but it does have some scary things in it. By its nature it is also a trigger for thalassophobia aka fear of deep water.

You might enjoy Infinifactory by Zachtronics. It has Minecraft-like block placing gameplay, but you are given fixed immutable environments in which to build little assembly lines out of conveyors, welders, pushers, grinders etc. Of the Zachtronics games I think this is the most accessible, though like many of their games I think the difficulty curve is a little steep.

Its kind of a tough list you've made here friend. I am going to recommend outliers and games that break genre rules instead.

You seem to be split on card games but check out Inscryption and slay the spire to see what you think.

Cult of the lamb was also pretty good by the same publisher.

StarDew valley or my time at Portia or Palia (in beta) are nice casual games.

Hades is challenging and hack and slash roguelite but very good with a neat story. Bastion was really engaging but a platformer slash Action RPG and isometric.

Valheim might scratch an itch. It has a bit of fantasy but its mostly Norse mythology based. Survival and base building.

Strange horticulture was nice if you liked the potion master style of games.

Wildermyth is kind of a write your own story adventure and one of my most played, games but its kind of an RPG, just not in the classic sense.

Death and Taxes is kind of like papers please, but also very short.

Tails Noir is a bit if a linear story game. Less text heavy than Disco Elysium and I enjoyed the journey more than the destination but good game.

Anyway if any seem interesting shoot a reply

If you liked the Stanley parable, I feel like spec ops: the line would be up your alley. Quite different games with a common narrative method.

Based on the puzzle games and games with character on your list, it seems like psychonauts would be a good choice. (Its technically a platformer, but so is tomb raider)

The Scribblenauts series is a fun puzzle game that's sort of unique, though it's a side scroller.

Beaming is a racing game that's heavy on the physics simulation side of things.

tetris

CounterStrike 2 came out last Wednesday. Basically the same game as CSGO but with some quality of life and graphical updates. Might be worth taking a shot at getting back into it.

There’s some platforming but Hollow Knight is an excellent game if you enjoy metroidvania types.

If you have someone to play with you may want to give local couch games a try. I’m ignoring a few of your thematic dislikes because they aren’t really a critical part of most of these games.

Games like:

Lovers in a dangerous space time

Boomerangfu

It takes two

Untitled goose game (single player is also fun if you enjoy harassing people as a goose)

Unravel

Duck game

Portal 2 (single player is great)

Cup head (single player is also great)

Seeing as you liked The Stanley Parable you might want to give Antichamber a try. It's also in the mindfuckery category of games. And I didn't see Portal 1/2 on your list, they are in roughly the same area of games, but focused more on the puzzle side of things.

From the looks of your lists of what you like and what to avoid I think you'd like games like the Dishonored series, Bioshock, and the System Shock remake.

I would just recommend you to refer to metacritic and see the best games of all time for PC if you're using PC. My personal recommendation is certainly Baldur's Gate 3. If you prefer multiplayer but would like to avoid the toxic community, then I suggest Deep Rock Galactic.

Since Dishonored and System Shock was already mentioned, I'll also recommend the Thief trilogy (Thief: The Dark Project, Thief 2: The Metal Age and Thief: Deadly Shadows). Thief along with System Shock is one of the series which started the Immersive Sim genre, which Dishonored belongs to also. The third game came out in 2004 but I also recommend the first two because despite a lot less detailed graphics they imo have a lot better atmosphere and objectively better gameplay (a lot of the gameplay depth was cut in the third one to make it more playable on consoles, but it's still a good game).

Another one I always tell people about is INFRA. It's a pretty unknown puzzle/exploration game with excellent atmosphere and very high on my top of all time list. Highly recommend if exploring crumbling or long forgotten urban environments sounds like your thing.

Dredge is a pretty good casual game. Lots of fun to explore and really best played in short sessions.

Rimworld

If you liked red-alert you might like other RTS games such as Age Of Empires 2 (remaster came out in 2019, very active community) or starcraft2.

How bout some Naughty Dog games? The Last of Us us more thriller (not horror), and while it has some scary moments, it happens to be post-apocalyptic, so naturally, the scary thriller aspect is there.

The whole Uncharted series is also great. It's essentially a playable movie with dope character development and direction.

Have you played any of the Red Dead Redemption games? The second one is on PC and doesn't require digging out an xbox 360/Playstation 3 to play the first if you don't want to. You may find the story of the second slightly more rewarding if you are able to play the first, though, as the second game is a prequel to the first. Both are some of the best stories in video gaming, imo.

Please play the souls games.

Dark souls 1,2, and 3. And sekiro.

They are all super good

No microtransaction, good difficulty, and just fun af to play

Not a specific game recommendation, but you should look into Xbox game pass. For $10-15 a month, you get access to a huge library of games. You'll be able to try a bunch of stuff without having to commit to any purchases. https://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-game-pass

If you can get Saints' Row 2 or 3 working you may like them.

I know you don't like management games but you might still enjoy Frostpunk as it's a bit more like an RTS since it's about build order when you really get down to it. It is apocalyptic but it's hopeful rather tgan depressing (for the most part) or "haha you can do anything cus no laws".

Man your list of nos really eliminates most of my repertoire… :P Have you considered XCOM, XCOM 2 or XCOM Chimera Squad?

Oh! Prey (2016) is a good immersive sim you might- oh it's set in a space station, nvm…

Ah! Okay, this is a space game, but since you liked Stanley Parable you might be okay with this… Outer Wilds. Don't look it up, you'll spoil it. Just get it and play it, seriously. Get it on steam and use a timer so you can refund it if you hate it, but you really really really need to give it a shot.

Delayed response, but based on you liking Minecraft, survival type genre might be good.

Valheim and Project Zomboid are great games. Subnautica is very immersive. Stardew Valley is a lot of fun.

BTW, have you tried MineClone2 on Minetest. It's a Minecraft clone so much more fun than Minetest.