IMHO.

Games like Proto Garden

If Proto Garden is your kind of game, the closest matches are Havendock, Factorio and shapez — picked from the ranked list below. 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 Proto Garden: Factory automation, but the conveyor belts are bees! Gather pollen, automate honey production, and research new flowers to create your own ecosystem from the ground up.

2024Strategy14.99 USDWindows · Linuxby arreyne
Proto Garden — Steam game cover

Players who liked Proto Garden also play

Steam players who put hours into Proto Garden 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.

  1. Havendock

    WHY THIS

    Top pick for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Breathe easy and thrive in this cozy colony sim. Build a haven for castaways, manage resources, live your best life on the ocean. Lead your humble settlement into a high-tech society.

    2025StrategyIndieSimulation19.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  2. Factorio

    WHY THIS

    Second-strongest match for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Factorio is a game about building and creating automated factories to produce items of increasing complexity, within an infinite 2D world. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, and finally protect it from the creatures who don't really like you.

    2020StrategyIndieSimulation35.00 USDDeck VerifiedSteam ↗
  3. shapez

    WHY THIS

    Third-strongest match for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    shapez is an easy-going, minimalistic factory building game about the automation of shapes through extraction and satisfying production lines. Adapt to increasingly complex shapes and grow your factory across an infinitely expanding map. Your only limitation is your creativity!

    2020StrategyIndieSimulation0.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  4. Judgment: Apocalypse Survival Simulation

    WHY THIS

    Ranked #4 for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Build, scavenge, craft, and perform occult rituals to survive in a demon-infested, post-apocalyptic colony simulation. Will you survive Judgment day?

    2018StrategyIndieSimulation19.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  5. Dyson Sphere Program

    WHY THIS

    Ranked #5 for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Build the most efficient intergalactic factory in space simulation strategy game Dyson Sphere Program! Harness the power of stars, collect resources, plan and design production lines and develop your interstellar factory from a small space workshop to a galaxy-wide industrial empire.

    2021StrategyIndieSimulation19.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  6. RAILGRADE

    WHY THIS

    Ranked #6 for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    RAILGRADE is the train RTS game! Construct dense vertical railroads, build cities, construct vast factory chains with train automation! Restore an off world colony's economy all in the intense story driven campaign or relaxing sandbox mode!

    2023StrategySimulation29.99 USDDeck VerifiedSteam ↗
  7. Timberborn

    WHY THIS

    Ranked #7 for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Humans are long gone. In a world struck by droughts and toxic waste, will your lumberpunk beavers do any better? A sandbox city-building game featuring ingenious animals, vertical architecture, water physics, and terraforming. Contains high amounts of wood.

    2026StrategyIndieSimulation34.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  8. Per Aspera

    WHY THIS

    Ranked #8 for Proto Garden fans by collaborative filtering across millions of Steam libraries. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Make Mars your own! Take control of the world’s most sophisticated AI (AMI) and terraform the surface of the Red Planet for a city-building experience on a planetary scale. Transform this barren world into a lush paradise and explore the surface for any ancient secrets that may be waiting.

    2020StrategyIndieSimulation29.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗

Cheaper alternatives

Games in the same vein priced at least 40% below Proto Garden at current Steam store prices.

  1. Sid Meier's Civilization® V

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~50% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Create, discover, and download new player-created maps, scenarios, interfaces, and more!

    2010Strategy7.49 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  2. Slay the Spire

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~58% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    We fused card games and roguelikes together to make the best single player deckbuilder we could. Craft a unique deck, encounter bizarre creatures, discover relics of immense power, and Slay the Spire!

    2019StrategyIndie6.24 USDDeck VerifiedSteam ↗
  3. Inscryption

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~47% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Inscryption is an inky black card-based odyssey that blends the deckbuilding roguelike, escape-room style puzzles, and psychological horror into a blood-laced smoothie. Darker still are the secrets inscrybed upon the cards...

    2021StrategyIndieAdventure7.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  4. Cookie Clicker

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~67% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    An idle game about making cookies! Originally released in 2013 on the web, and actively developed since then. This is the official version for Steam.

    2021StrategyIndieSimulation4.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  5. Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~67% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Zombies are invading your home, and the only defense is your arsenal of plants! Armed with an alien nursery-worth of zombie-zapping plants like peashooters and cherry bombs, you'll need to think fast and plant faster to stop dozens of types of zombies dead in their tracks.

    2009Strategy4.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  6. Your Only Move Is HUSTLE

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~67% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Master your technique, execute flashy combos, and outsmart opponents across the world, frame-by-frame. Slow down the clock to fine-tune your fighting style in this innovative, turn-based combat simulator. Pulverize your friends and choreograph spectacular fight scenes. No training mode required.

    2023ActionStrategyIndie4.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  7. STAR WARS™ Empire at War - Gold Pack

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~67% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Command or corrupt an entire galaxy in the definitive Star Wars strategy collection. It is a time of galactic civil war. Will you take up the reins of the Rebellion, assume control of the Empire, or rule the Star Wars Underworld?

    2010Strategy4.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  8. Nubby's Number Factory

    WHY THIS

    Priced ~67% under Proto Garden on Steam right now. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    A plinko-style roguelike where you work at a number factory. Launch your spherical friend, Nubby, down a pegboard to make bigger and bigger numbers! But beware, if you fail to meet your number quota, the sun will explode.

    2025Strategy4.99 USDDeck PlayableSteam ↗

Free alternatives

Free-to-play games that recommended players of this title also tend to enjoy.

  1. The Looker

    WHY THIS

    Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.

    You wake up, alone, on a strangely familiar island full of puzzles that will frustrate and annoy you.

    2022IndieFreeDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  2. 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!

    2016Free To PlayFreeSteam ↗
  3. Landfall Archives

    WHY THIS

    Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it. Shares Strategy with Proto Garden.

    Break into the Landfall Archives to steal and play previously unreleased games, demos, interactive slide shows, and even an unreleased version of Totally Accurate Battle Simulator from 2017!

    2023ActionStrategyIndieFreeSteam ↗
  4. SuchArt: Creative Space

    WHY THIS

    Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.

    Paint on any surfaces with numerous tools in Creative Space — a free sandbox version of SuchArt: Genius Artist Simulator. Create masterpieces, complete commissions, and decorate your studio in the most advanced artist sim!

    2021ActionIndieAdventureFreeDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  5. Samorost 1

    WHY THIS

    Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.

    Explore the beginnings of the Samorost series in the space gnome’s original bite-sized adventure, formerly released in 2003. Now with remastered sounds, enhanced graphics, and new music by Floex.

    2021IndieAdventureCasualFreeSteam ↗
  6. Outpath: First Journey

    WHY THIS

    Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.

    Outpath: First Journey is a prologue chapter of the main game, Outpath. An experimental clicker base building game. Craft, gather & manage resources, build your base and buy more islands to exploit and expand!

    2022IndieAdventureCasualFreeDeck PlayableSteam ↗
  7. Lily's Well

    WHY THIS

    Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.

    It is a rainy night in the Spring of 2005. Lily is left home alone after her Papa put her to bed. She is awoken by a cry for help outside her window. It is coming from the well. Help Lily gather rope to go down the well and save the poor soul trapped down there.

    2022IndieAdventureFree To PlayFreeDeck VerifiedSteam ↗
  8. DOGWALK

    WHY THIS

    Free-to-play pick from the same recommendation pool — no purchase to try it.

    Explore a hand-crafted winter forest as a big adorable dog and a little kid in tow. A short, free, open source project brought to you by Blender Studio.

    2025IndieFree To PlayCasualFreeDeck PlayableSteam ↗

Frequently asked about Proto Garden

How much does Proto Garden cost?
Proto Garden is listed on Steam at 14.99 USD (current store price; Steam sales may reduce this temporarily).
What games are most similar to Proto Garden?
Based on Steam play patterns and shared genres/tags, the games most often recommended alongside Proto Garden are Havendock, Factorio, shapez.
Who developed Proto Garden?
Proto Garden was developed by arreyne.

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 Proto Garden.

For library-aware picks tuned to your specific taste, sign in with Steam on the home page.

24 Games Like Proto Garden — Ranked for 2026 · imho.run