You remember Oblivion from back in the day. It’s worse than Morrowind in a lot of ways but the real-time day-night cycle and the NPC movement was engrossing. Quests where you have to go find people, and they can be in tons of locations are so interesting. Sometimes you have to figure out when someone goes home, Idk. Also characters would occasionally exhibit quirky behaviours. Every subsequent Bethesda game diminished this aspect hugely, it’s one of the things I hate about Skyrim most.
Another series where the games never hit an early height of world sim again is Pokemon. Gold & Silver introduced day and night cycles that would have NPCs appear or disappear, wild pokemon encounters change, radio stations come on or off, certain items show up. For a system with 32kb of ram, it slapped. Other games have the cycle system but it’s easily the most pronounced in G/S/C.
The “life sim”/‘you are a loser farmer’ genre as pioneered by Harvest Moon (and now happily overtaken by Stardew Valley and its ilk) have always had this kind of system, and I do like those a lot but if a game’s not “about” its scheduling, it seems like they’re more likely not to have it nowadays. STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequels had day/night at least, Metro did not… So if you know of any recent games that have really cool scheduling or realtime or day/night mechanics, hit me up. Also don’t say Cybertruck’d 2077, game is boring and stupid :)
Dorf Fort but not as much :3 I do respect those types of games. I would consider them to be games “about” their scheduling a la Harvest Moon tho.
I’ve recommended it here so many times but check out Amazing Cultivation Sim! It has a system where NPC factions are constantly assassinating each other’s elders, stealing artifacts, exchanging knowledge of the supreme laws, etc. on top of the management system for your own folks. I think the disciples in ACS aren’t as deep in terms of their personalities and autonomy as DF, but their relationships to masters and fellow disciples has mechanical consequences.
The sequel is coming next year and I believe it’s gonna expand on those systems a lot, so worth keeping an eye out. Amazing things are happening in China.