I DON’T mean other games that let you build a car from scratch.
I’m looking for other complex open world games that throw you into the deep end without any explanation, and are completely unforgiving when you make mistakes.
Games that even actively hate the player, but give you a deep sense of satisfaction when you finally figure it out.
So no tutorial, no quest markers, no mini-map, no quick-saving, etc.
Bonus points if they also show you a glimpse into a niche culture, like My Summer Car does with rural life in Finland during the 90’s economic depression.
Other examples I can think of are Kingdom Come Deliverance in hardcore mode and Dwarf Fortress. Which ones do you know?
Project Zomboid has a tutorial, but it’s strictly optional to play. You can absolutely just dive straight in to it.
Knox County, Kentucky, 1993. The zombie apocalypse hits. As far as you know, you’re the last person alive on earth. It’s all up to you, and you alone, to keep going.
The game’s default settings are plenty brutal, but you can tweak them to an insane degree, and anything the settings don’t cover, someone’s probably made a mod for that. I highly recommend the Bandits mod, which adds hostile human NPCs in to the mix of all the things that will kill you.
One setting I recommend, though maybe not for the first time, is turning the infection timer, or whatever it’s called, to 0. In vanilla default settings you may be infected when bitten, but not always. There’s no cure, so you’re just waiting to find out if you’re infected, and it takes a while. At first it just looks like it could be a normal infected wound, but things keep getting worse. The standard “solution” at this point is to drink some bleach to die and start over. I prefer to skip all the waiting and have it instantly kill me if I get infected.