There's a couple US culture maps out there. I like ones like this that break up the big regions into smaller sub-regions

I like the light bit of history this page gives, but I don't feel like it's kept up with our current affairs. https://robslink.com/SAS/democd83/us_regional_cultures_map.htm

Endless Sky looks cool. Definitely going to give it a try.

My two favorite open source games are Thrive and Cataclysm DDA

Thrive is an evolutionary survival game. Similar to Spore, you start as a single-cell microbe. You gather nutrients, evade dangers, and evolve adaptations. Eventually, you can progress to the multicellular stage, then macroscopic, etc. up to spacefaring. Currently everything after multicellular is placeholder, but the cellular gameplay is fun and has enough viable strategies to make replaying interesting. https://github.com/Revolutionary-Games/Thrive

Cataclysm DDA is a zombie-survival rogue-like simulation game. You start as a single survivor and need to scavenge for food, shelter, and protection. If you like games that focus on system/simulation complexity over visuals (e.g. dwarf fortress) I'd recommend this one. For example, the vehicle system allows you to build custom vehicles, which can be anything from a dinky wooden bicycle to a monstrous RV-turned deathdozer+mobile base-on-wheels. https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA

Subserial Network. A weird little pseudo-indie game with an odd retro-futuristic vibe. It mixes cyberpunk post-humanism with web 1.0 nostalgia. You're part of an organization that deals with subversive synthetics, and your task is to locate a leader of this movement by infiltrating their online spaces. The game presents you with a handful of windows (email client, browser, lo-fi media player, etc.) and the gameplay mostly consists of reading to find clues to piece together and keywords to search.
I greatly enjoyed the vibe and world-building, and was pleasantly surprised by some of the reveals. The ending was a little abrupt for my tastes, but overall this has been one of my favorite gaming experiences this year.
I highly recommend it if you enjoy cyberpunk (the literary genre), early internet nostalgia, or epistolary storytelling.

Yeah Gargoyles! My first ascension was Gargoyle Earth Elementist, but I think EE has been nerfed since that ascension.

TF2 comic got an ending https://www.teamfortress.com/tf07_thedayshavewornaway/

Thanks for your post. You've actually somewhat brought me around on AI search with your perplexity example. My previous AI search experiences have been general LLMs like ChatGPT (Opaque source data means I have to verify with traditional web search anyways) and Google's new AI search feature (I'm uncomfortable with google discouraging traffic to the broader web). Since perplexity actually shows and links its sources, I'm going to give a try for the next few days alongside my usual DDG searches.

I would be interested if you have an example of a search with mostly malicious results, since your stated experience seems disproportionate to my own. While I do concur that some results/websites are antagonistic towards my goal of useful information, I'm quite surprised to see someone say that they hate visiting websites in general. (Perhaps I'm missing hyperbole?)

A bit of a digression, but it amused me to see you say you struggle to word your query for search engines, because I've typically had more problems wording my query for LLMs. I wonder if this is could be attributed to communication preferences, or just due to me having used search engines for almost 2 decades.

Silent Storm was a fun turn-based tactics game! Not as polished as something like the Firaxis xcoms, but more complete than a lot of other non-fantasy tactics games I've tried.

Sounds a lot like the TerraFirmaCraft minecraft mod. Actually, after some light searching, it seems Vintage story was inspired by the Vintagecraft mod which was inspired by TerraFirmaCraft.

EU4 is one of mine as well. Been slowly working through the achievements, but they keep adding more!

I've gotten sucked into The X-Com Files. It's a megamod for the original X-Com game from 1994, built on OpenXcom Extended (an open-source re-implementation).
My first attempt at the old X-Com game lost my interest a few years ago, but OXCE brings plenty of QoL changes and the difficulty of the XCF mod ramps up slower than vanilla. Now I'm having a blast hunting cults, cowering from aliens, building bases around the world.

I had mixed reactions about Spore. The ambition/breadth of gameplay was impressive. The creature creator was impressive, and it was fun to see other people's creatures show up in-game. I was disappointed at the shallowness of individual stages, how little earlier stages affected later stages, and the tediousness of space. I think without the pre-game hype, the balance would have been more positive feeling than negative for me, but I mostly remember it as few gems wrapped in disappointment.

Put a lot of hours into Paradox Interactive games

Thanks for the suggestion. Stated playing XCF and I'm hooked. I previously bounced off an attempt at playing open xcom, but XCF has been a good experience so far.