Games like Maia
If Maia is your kind of game, the closest matches are Space Haven, Spacebase DF-9 and Planetbase — picked from the ranked list below. Reviewers single out its challenging, cozy and dark. Each pick is ranked by what players of this game also play, shared genres and tags, and review-mined similarity — not a generic popularity list.
Get personalized picks →About Maia: Maia is a colony building game set in the not-so-distant future. Your colonists make planetfall on a hostile world and you must ensure their survival and their safety, constructing their off-world habitat from almost nothing and sheltering them from a dangerous, often deadly environment.
Players who liked Maia also play
Steam players who put hours into Maia also tend to own these titles — a signal called collaborative filtering. imho.run cross-references millions of library ownership patterns to surface games whose real audiences overlap, regardless of whether their genre tags match.
Space Haven
WHY THIS
Shares a challenging mood with Maia.
Top pick for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Maia.
Embark on a space voyage with your ragtag crew of civilians in search of a new home. Build spaceships tile by tile, create optimal gas conditions, manage the needs and moods of their crew, encounter other space-faring groups, and explore the universe in this spaceship colony simulation.
Spacebase DF-9
WHY THIS
Shares a challenging mood with Maia.
Second-strongest match for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Maia.
In Spacebase DF-9, you'll build a home among the stars for a motley population of humans and aliens as they go about their daily lives. Mine asteroids, discover derelicts, and deal with the tribulations of galactic resettlement in Earth's distant future.
Planetbase
WHY THIS
Shares resource allocation and a challenging mood with Maia.
Third-strongest match for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Maia.
Guide a group of space settlers trying to establish a base on a remote planet. Grow food, collect energy, mine resources, survive disasters and build a self-sufficient colony in a harsh and unforgiving environment.
RimWorld
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Maia.
Ranked #4 for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Maia.
A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.
Oxygen Not Included
WHY THIS
Shares a challenging mood with Maia.
Ranked #5 for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
Oxygen Not Included is a space-colony simulation game. Deep inside an alien space rock your industrious crew will need to master science, overcome strange new lifeforms, and harness incredible space tech to survive, and possibly, thrive.
Surviving Mars
WHY THIS
Shares resource allocation with Maia.
Ranked #6 for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Simulation with Maia.
There will be challenges to overcome. Execute your strategy and improve your colony’s chances of survival while unlocking the mysteries of this alien world. Are you ready? Mars is waiting for you.
Stationeers
WHY THIS
Shares a challenging mood with Maia.
Ranked #7 for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
Stationeers puts you in control of the construction and management of a space station to run by yourself or online with your friends. Complex atmospheric, electrical, manufacturing, agriculture, and gravitational systems require your thought and management at all times!
Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation
WHY THIS
Shares a challenging mood with Maia.
Ranked #8 for Maia fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy and Indie with Maia.
Build, scavenge, craft, and perform occult rituals to survive in a demon-infested, post-apocalyptic colony simulation. Will you survive Judgment day?
Cheaper alternatives
Games in the same vein priced at least 40% below Maia at current Steam store prices.
Garry's Mod
WHY THIS
Priced ~80% under Maia on Steam right now. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
Garry's Mod is a physics sandbox. There aren't any predefined aims or goals. We give you the tools and leave you to play.
Lethal Company
WHY THIS
Priced ~60% under Maia on Steam right now. Shares Indie with Maia.
A co-op horror about scavenging at abandoned moons to sell scrap to the Company.
Bloons TD 6
WHY THIS
Priced ~44% under Maia on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Maia.
The Bloons are back and better than ever! Get ready for a massive 3D tower defense game designed to give you hours and hours of the best strategy gaming available.
People Playground
WHY THIS
Priced ~60% under Maia on Steam right now. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
Shoot, stab, burn, poison, tear, vaporise, or crush ragdolls in a large open space.
Vampire Survivors
WHY THIS
Priced ~80% under Maia on Steam right now. Shares Indie with Maia.
Mow down thousands of night creatures and survive until dawn! Vampire Survivors is a gothic horror casual game with rogue-lite elements, where your choices can allow you to quickly snowball against the hundreds of monsters that get thrown at you. Be the bullet hell!
PEAK
WHY THIS
Priced ~68% under Maia on Steam right now. Shares Indie with Maia.
PEAK is a co-op climbing game where the slightest mistake can spell your doom. Either solo or as a group of lost nature scouts, your only hope of rescue from a mysterious island is to scale the mountain at its center. Do you have what it takes to reach the PEAK?
Free alternatives
Free-to-play games that recommended players of this title also tend to enjoy.
Ultimate Custom Night
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Maia.
Welcome to the ultimate FNAF mashup, featuring 50 selectable characters and custom difficulties!
Indigo Park: Chapter 1
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Maia.
Explore the abandoned childhood wonder of Indigo Park! Guided by Rambley the Raccoon, help restore power to the destroyed amusement park while you run from the reason it shut down.
missed messages.
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
‘goth gf’s iPhone’ airdrops you - accept or decline? A love/horror story about life, death, & memes.
Virtual Cottage
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
Virtual Cottage gives you a comfy place to rest and be productive without any distractions. Open the game, set yourself a goal and enjoy the atmosphere.
Magic Archery
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
Train a commoner to become the greatest archer in this short incremental game! Increase your stats, gather wealth from quests, buy upgrades, and infuse your arrows with magic.
The Lab
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.
Welcome to The Lab, a compilation of Valve’s room-scale VR experiments set in a pocket universe within Aperture Science. Fix a robot, defend a castle, adopt a mechanical dog, and more. Still not sold? It’s free!
Z.A.T.O. // I Love the World and Everything In It
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Maia.
USSR, 1986. A girl goes missing in the closed city of Vorkuta-5, yet not a soul seems to be concerned. Uncover the mystery behind her disappearance and transmit your signal to the universe.
Control, I'm Not Coming Back
WHY THIS
Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Indie with Maia.
Control, I'm Not Coming Back is a short and emotional narrative game about a lost astronaut searching for a reason to keep going forward while facing the emptiness of space. Inspired by the Hopecore aesthetic, it’s a story about positivism, friendship and our human connection with Voyager 1.
Narrow it down
Head-to-head comparisons
Plays great on Steam Deck
Valve-Verified or Playable picks from the similar pool — ready to go on Deck out of the box.
Space Haven
WHY THIS
Shares a challenging mood with Maia.
Deck Verified — runs on Steam Deck out of the box. Shares Strategy and Indie with Maia.
Embark on a space voyage with your ragtag crew of civilians in search of a new home. Build spaceships tile by tile, create optimal gas conditions, manage the needs and moods of their crew, encounter other space-faring groups, and explore the universe in this spaceship colony simulation.
RimWorld
WHY THIS
Shares procedural generation and a challenging mood with Maia.
Deck Verified — runs on Steam Deck out of the box. Shares Strategy and Indie with Maia.
A sci-fi colony sim driven by an intelligent AI storyteller. Generates stories by simulating psychology, ecology, gunplay, melee combat, climate, biomes, diplomacy, interpersonal relationships, art, medicine, trade, and more.
Oxygen Not Included
WHY THIS
Shares a challenging mood with Maia.
Deck Verified — runs on Steam Deck out of the box. Shares Indie and Simulation with Maia.
Oxygen Not Included is a space-colony simulation game. Deep inside an alien space rock your industrious crew will need to master science, overcome strange new lifeforms, and harness incredible space tech to survive, and possibly, thrive.
Frequently asked about Maia
- How much does Maia cost?
- Maia is listed on Steam at 24.99 USD (current store price; Steam sales may reduce this temporarily).
- What games are most similar to Maia?
- Based on Steam play patterns and shared genres/tags, the games most often recommended alongside Maia are Space Haven, Spacebase DF-9, Planetbase.
- Who developed Maia?
- Maia was developed by Simon Roth and published by Machine Studios.
imho.run ranks Steam game alternatives using a mix of collaborative filtering (ALS / iALS / EASE / LightGCN), content scoring over genres, categories, Steam tags, developers, and publishers, plus AI-extracted vibes mined from review text. The page above is generated in seed mode anchored on Maia.
For library-aware picks tuned to your specific taste, sign in with Steam on the home page.