Looking for the love child of Tower Defense & Minecraft with a story

Colony Survival?

Try 7 days to die it’s a sandbox game with tower defense.Its a zombie game that lets you build a base,wonder the world or just hunt things.It has traps,guns,turrets you name it.On the 7th day that’s when the tower defense starts because on that day a horde of zombies come looking for you and can and will destroy your base so you have to defend against a wave of them.

I always wanted this but never found it, but I do suggest checking out Kingdom New Lands.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/496300/Kingdom_New_Lands/

It's literally 1D with controls for left/right and give a coin to order a peasant action, but like minecraft, it makes the simplicity really work in an incredibly fun game with great music.

Empyrion galactic survival

What about Sanctum (2)? It's a first person shooter tower defense mix.

edit: Never played it, but there's probably not a whole lot customization/building like in Minecraft.

FortressCraft Evolved might work, though it is similar to minecraft in terms of resources being mined and such.

Space Engineers

You don’t need food or water or anything to survive. On a planet you just need energy. Give yourself a start with a nuclear reactor and some uranium, and energy won’t be a problem.

This is essentially the same as my ideal game too. I've toyed around with making something like this but always thought that nobody else would like that.

Basically existing in a voxel world where e everything is destructible and the goal is to build a good enough base to withstand the punishment that the game throws at it. And/or having other players as other teams. AI could be fun for co-op base building situations, I think. Similar to how most Tower defense and zombies games have waves of enemies.

However it's set up, it should be focused on the building aspect of fortifying a defensive base. Enemies could use projectiles that are physics based that would inflict damage on the structure in a physical way. Resources could be grinded for at the start of a match until it could be automated to an extent. But the way you manage your time is important since there are soon to be waves of enemies. Spying on the enemy could be an option, but every choice is kind of a cost/benefit choice.

Rimworld if you make killboxes is the closest game I can think of.

Its not exactly like you are describing but i enjoyed MarZ: Tactical Base Defense, theres a free 3 level demo on steam you can download to try it out.

its base building tower defense, good graphics, comes with a story. Its not open world but it is 3D and its not got a fixed grid. May not be exactly what you're after but it might be a good fun game to try out, also has had good reviews.

How about don’t starve. It’s a survival game with a lot of base building and fighting enemies. It’s not grindy at all but it might focus a bit to heavily on the survival aspect for your liking. And it’s a genuinely challenging game as well.

... You sure you just don't want to play some Starcraft 2 arcade games. Sounds like 'Cat and Mouse' or 'Direct Strike', in some ways.

They are billions, tower defense feel with RTS elements as you said. Not very Minecraft like though

I can't remember the name, but there's a guy that has been hanging out here once in a while that it working on something like it. Not same level of detail as Minecraft in the building aspect, since the main focus is more on defending against waves. The building is more utilitarian than aesthetic. Plus, what he showed off was some very early alpha work. I hope someone else will be able to remember it. I looked over the dev tag list, but couldn't pick out which one it was.

Other than that I can't think of anything that comes closer to your description than the suggestions you've already gotten.

EDIT: Oh, maybe "The Forest"? Building system is very different from Minecraft, but it may scratch the same itch. Or "Conan: Exiles" with the purge timer cracked to maximum.

I am working on a game with some of these aspects, although it's going to be quite a while before its released. I'm focusing on PvE with co-op. It does have colony management but I'm aiming for more set-and-forget gameplay rather than constant micromanagement. I haven't got the game to a stage where it can be demonstrated just yet.

One challenge I have is how to design traps to be somewhat effective without having too much "lane" design for AI to follow to guide them into traps. It sucks when a game has traps but the odds of them being triggered are so low that there's not much point in using them.

My game world is voxel-based to allow for shaping of the terrain including to build defensive features. Significant terrain modification is relatively expensive so you need to build up and support a workforce for that.

I'm always interested in hearing ideas and feedback for game mechanics even if it is a bit early in my game's development.

There is a game being developed but development has slowed. https://edenstargame.com/ It's Minecraft with build able turrets, resource gathering, etc. You can build any size bases you want. Still a WIP tho.

-JaY

Fortresscraft Evolved

It's voxel based like Minecraft, but it's more like Factorio than Minecraft in gameplay (production chains, logistics, base building), and you must fend off alien attacks that get progressively harder

Dwarf Fortress