Games

Valheim has a lot of that feel to it as well.

Factorio, although it's more about automating those things. Satisfactory or Dyson Sphere Program, which are 3d versions of the same concept.

If you want more of a creating bench style, there's a whole crop of games under the "open world survival craft" genre such as valheim, raft, rust, project zomboid, green hell, and so on.

Vintage Story. It is a survival game built by former Minecraft modders. It has pretty detailed metal crafting. You have to forge your items and then shape them on an anvil

…Minecraft. No, really. It’s actually good.

In case you didn't see already, Portia has a sequel that's at very late stage early access.

The whole pantheon of Factory games fill a similar itch like some others have mentioned.

I've very recently started playing Dinkum which is a bit more Portia/Stardew/Animal Crossing like, with running around to harvest and mine then crafting and selling to buy things to build your island.

A bit less purely crafting but a good game with similar spirit is Graveyard Keeper.

Some of the survival games have decent crafting mechanics. Like 7 days to die you can turn down the zombie part and spend some hours running around and getting material to build a base and fix vehicles and stuff. Also Raft and Volcanoids are some other crafty survival game.

Don't know about the best, but I detest games around crafting and I absolutely loved Subnautica. The whole experience become one of my video games.

Found it to be intuitive and streamlined. They tell you everything through the menus, so you don't need to run to the wiki for recipes (albeit I did use the wiki for coordinates on where to find certain things) and it has a story/events that push you further.

The gatekeeping isn't just to pad out the game, but it actually makes sense narratively (i.e. you need to go deeper and deeper as the game progresses so you'll be needing new material occasionally. You can't just avoid the crafting and complete the story.

You'll be constantly building a stock of raw materials and transformed ones as you need to improve your things but also produce fuel/energy, build/improve your base and there's even gardening (the latter is optional).

They also offer multiple modes. I played the one where you don't need to eat or drink, but otherwise is the same experience. But they also have a survival one where you need to eat and drink and another where if you die, it's game over. Adicionally there's also a creative/sandbox mode.

Kenshi. Take a look at it. You control people in a very active world, but you build settlements and mine iron, stone and copper and build things, and explore to get more research to build better things and improve your people so they can build even bigger and better things. Deep lore if you like that as well, but easy to ignore.

If you can handle breaking the Geneva code, rimworld. If you add mods, the sky becomes the limit tbh. Only your imagination will stop you.

I don't think it aged well but haven and hearth blew my mind years ago how immersive and in depth it was.

Project zomboid doesn't have smelting right now but it it will eventually, but the crafting / gathering loop is pretty good and complex.

Minecraft

You gotta check out Satisfactory. That's the whole game.

Deep Rock Galactic? It has the mining component....that's about it though. It's co-op mining along with first person shooting combat.

I know it's not exactly what you asked for but I thought I'd throw it out there.

I liked how crafting in Shroud of the Avatar was setup somewhat realistically, even if it was tedious as fuck. Real life is also tedious as fuck. Like you actually put the metal in a forge, heat it, pound it, etc. Like all the steps for making the thing you're making from mining the ore, smelting and refining it, and then using the metal to make stuff.

Try Stationeers, if you like difficulty. Smelting single metals is easy, but having to smelt ores at a specific temp and pressure to create alloys is hard, especially if you have to first manufacture the gas that heats it.

Vintage Story!

If your into the space vibes Empyrion Galactic Survival is a great one that goes from mining by hand to mining vehicles to asteroid mining with huge ships!

The only one I liked is the Monster Hunter series.

For actually digging topsoil or making tunnels to reveal a resource, Space Engineers.

For picking up resources in the woods or a mine and processing them Primitive Technology style into tools, Medieval Dynasty.

For putting an automatic miner down and working on the factory, Satisfactory.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/824840/Oi_Innkeep/

This comes to mind

I've identified good progression systems as the main thing I like about games with crafting. You make something which enables you to get the next best thing, repeat.

Notable examples are Terraria, (modded) Minecraft to some degree, Runescape (no bias towards OSRS or RS3), Monster Hunter series, various MMO's, Subnautica, ARK and Forager.

I haven't played the games I'm about to recommend.

1. Sengoku Dynasty - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1702010/Sengoku_Dynasty
2. Medieval Dynasty - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1129580/Medieval_Dynasty

Is it Life Simulator type games you're interested in? Or just specifically those concerning mining, smithing, and forging?