We all know the classics, Mine Craft, Rust, Stardew Valley, etc. What are some one’s you see people less aware of are self hostable?
We’ve spent last few months playing Enshrouded. The dedicated server is a resource hog tho, even on an empty server it’d use a ton of CPU time. Still lots of fun with a few friends exploring and building stuff
I’m amenable to luanti with voxelibre.
Though I don’t like the rebranding. Luanti sounds like a product you’d hear about in a drug commercial. “Side effects of luanti may include chronic flatulence, erectile dysfunction, and death”
Bit old, but pretty much everything Source Engine is self-hostable isn’t it? Most of them even come with a pre-configured SRCDS (SouRCe Dedicated Server) you can download and run right from the steam launcher.
I know I ran a GarrysMod server for quite a while; piling a shit ton of mods on it. Plus any source game you’ve got installed, Garrys Mod can and will use the resources/assets from.
Veloren has been a blast on my family’s self hosted system.
Project Zomboid is a blast, especially when you really dig into the options for changing game rules. You can basically craft your own custom zombie apocalypse. You can decide how the virus works, whether zombies are slow or fast, whether they have good eyesight, good hearing, how strong they are, where they spawn. You can change loot rarities, how long it’s been since the outbreak started, when the power gets shut off, etc, etc.
Im kinda confused there. On steam the devs recently posted an update, that MP is now available, but it seems that it has been for a while?
Was it in beta up until now or was it fan made?
So, they had multiplayer, and it worked very well, but then they went through a whole bunch of major reworks to underlying systems that broke multiplayer, and they basically went “Yeah, that’s gonna stay broken for a while until we get all this shit done, please be patient.”
The devs typically take a long time between releases, and the latest version, build 42 came out this year (4 years after build 41), and initially this new version didn’t have MP support. So the recent announcement is about adding MP for build 42, but MP was already available in previous versions.
Aaah, that makes sense. Thanks for explaining
They are between builds.
B41 stable has been out for ages with multiplayer support. It’s the current version and what you get if you don’t opt in to experiential builds.
On unstable builds, the devs remove multiplayer initially until they think it’s good enough. B42 unstable is in active development and just recently added multiplayer support.
B42 is still a bug-ridden crapshoot though, stick with 41 if you want to play online.
Yeah, the Steam update got me thinking MP was totally new, so I was planning to try that with some friends. Guess I’ll set up an B41 Server then, thanks!
Factorio
Palworld and Terraria, particularly with Tmodloader, are fun options.
Vintage Story with mods. Vintage Story is a minecraft-like wilderness survivor game focusing on long term survival, not just “eat berries”. it’s under active development. https://mods.vintagestory.at/vsds the server docker image if interested.
Space Station 14 is a blast. If you’re really interested in hosting it though you might need a larger friend group. I think you’d need maybe 10 or so people before it actually feels interesting.
Edit: There are plenty of public servers to play on too.
UT2004
I need to do this, good memories!
It might get a little simpler to host and busier to play again in the not too distant future if the announced free fanmade re-release works out!
In the style of those games, self hosting a Vintage Story server is extremely easy to do. Extremely easy to customize, well documented wiki.
I’ve been running mine for over a year with zero hassle on a tiny server.
Could try hosting a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD). I tried to host an Evennia server last year but could never get it to work properly. Wasn’t a big deal though cause it’s not like I had any friends who wanted to play, lol.
Every now and then I will jump back into whatever flavor of MUD seems interesting for a few weeks. They’re so much fun but like you say, nobody plays them.
I set up a BBS with legend of the Red Dragon! Only runs locally right now but pretty cool to see running.
Haven’t heard Red Dragon referenced in a very long time. Loved that game.
I’ve been thinking about hosting a Quake II server, lately.
EDIT: Or Unreal Tournament. Both were my jam back in the day.
I’ve had a blast with AssaultCube couple of years back.
Spun up a server, played with some friends, then random people started showing up and we played with full server for hours.
It was so much fun, I hope I find free time to do that again.











