I tend to put the most hours into Minecrafty-type survival games like Starbound or Don't Starve. I like the feeling of discovery in games, and I like the feeling of building up from barely surviving to having a sustainable homebase.
Light-hearted fantasy, anything with strong and fun characters, and autobio when it's well done and funny.
They have to be used thoughtfully, or else they become dull. Look at Starbound vs. No Man's Sky -- two games about exploring infinite space. Before Starbound came out of early access, it actually started out with a lot of the problems No Man's Sky released with -- the idea of a completely proceedurally generated world sounds infinite and exciting to explore, but in practice that level of randomness results in everything feeling sort of same-y, with a few different pieces swapped out, and not much point to any of it. Adding more thoughtful design to the procedural generation made a HUGE difference -- once caves weren't just a random scattering of tunnels, but instead could open up into several different slightly random huge dungeons with specific thoughtful elements to make the dungeons feel like real buildings, exploring caves became much more fun because you knew you could find treasures and hints of civilisation. Having every creature be random is boring; having some designed creatures mixed with some random creatures makes it feel more purposeful.
Adding purpose to procedurally generated things is probably the biggest challenge. If everything's random, then what's the point? One of my favourite things that Starbound added in its 1.0 release was the ability to generate quests based on landmarks of the planets -- NPC civilisations that you find on a planet (or settlements that you yourself build) have an awareness of notable locations on the planet, and can send you to specific places to fight specific monsters or retrieve certain items. Doing quests can bring new people into your settlements and convince NPCs to join your crew, so there's a reward for doing it and it gives even more purpose to exploring new planets and makes the civilisations feel like more than just random window dressing.
If they're short! I also really like games that are short, carefully crafted experiences, like Journey, Inside, Braid, Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide... even Undertale, though that one's less polished. I obviously don't put tons of hours into them, but they're probably my favourite games when it comes down to it.
I don't tend to be interested in long games with lots of content and a full, rich story -- I just don't have time. I'll watch a Let's Play instead! If I'm playing, a more contained challenge where I don't feel like I have to "get through" the whole thing to fully enjoy it, like Don't Starve, is a lot more attractive to me.
hmmmmmmmmmmm
I think most of the sorts of games that I play wouldn't tie in well to a webcomic; the short, contained game work better as, well, contained stories, and it would just feel like a marketing tie-in to have a minecraft-style game with the characters of a webcomic I like, haha. Though if the game had as much personality as Don't Starve, there's a possibility that could work??
But the easiest answer is, I do like the few visual novels I've played. You could definitely get me to do that, because it's a chance to interact more directly with my favourite characters!
Nope! My favourite multiplayer game is probably still starbound, but things like Smash Brothers and Mario Kart are the kinds of multiplayers I enjoy the most.
As an aside, I would totally enjoy a smash brothers-style fight game of my fav webcomics, but that'd be, uh, perhaps unfeasible xD
within a single game -- yes! I like exploring a world, and there's no sense of discovery if it's just "re-enter the area and there's different stuff there."
across multiple games -- no! If I restart a game I want to explore a new world! It's boring if it's the same every time. Stuff like starbound, where coordinates are the same across games but individual games start on different planets -- that kind of thing is fine, but not really important to me.
inventory limits are usually just inconvenient honestly. Like, limiting how much stuff I can carry isn't actually limiting how much stuff I can have, it's just forcing me to make extra trips back and forth to carry everything to my homebase/the store/etc. If limiting how much I can have actually affects gameplay in a meaningful way -- like, "you can only carry x amount of food which limits how far you can travel before you run out," (a quality I like in the early stages of starbound -- you really have to think of your mining expeditions as trips) or "you can only carry 3 things so you'd better pick the best weapons for this scenario," then that can be fun and interesting!
hmmmmmmmm.... currently I have so little money that it's tough for me to justify donating to anything, honestly. But if I had extra money lying around, I could see myself wanting to give something to a game that I really enjoyed playing to get some extra goodies. Or if there was a particular character model I REALLY WANTED or the ability to put a character I loved on my team or something like that.
I can't imagine a card-game-style surival/exploration game, but y'know what, i guess anything is possible.
