It's difficult to explain but think of it as Lego with monsters (although you can turn the monsters off). Beware that you will need the Wiki to get anywhere. The crafting is incredibly deep and complex but there's no tutorial and much of it is counter-intuitive. You can find servers everywhere, I play on the PC Gamer server.

I would also recommend Introversion's Prison Architect. You run a private prison and have to do everything from build the place to staff it to organise supplies. The catch is that you can run the place however you like. If you want to do a prison that specialises in healing, rehabilitation and education, you can do that. If you want a fascist prison that keeps the inmates in line through fear and intimidation, you can do that too. Despite both approaches being viable, it's very, very hard to keep the place running properly and profitable (which may be a meta-comment on private prisons generally).

If you have a joypad (game controller) for your PC (you can play them with keyboard but it's more difficult), I'm a huge fan of Traveller's Tales franchise of Lego games. The basic premise is that they recreate popular movie series with Lego characters. Any violence is just done to Lego bricks who fade out. They're designed for kids but epitomize "fun for the whole family". I'm 38 and love them to bits. The third installment of Lego Batman is out soon.

The venerable Civilization series is now on it's fifth edition and more complex, time-sinky and maddening (in a good way) as ever. You pick a nation, covering everything from the Aztecs to the Iriquois, each with their own bonuses. You start out with one settler, who can found a city. Then you guide the nation to it's future, controlling everything from what gets built (will you concentrate on public education or build a huge army?), political policies, diplomacy, resource harvesting and religion. You can pursue a path of peace through diplomacy and mutual regard, you can raise armies and conquer your way to victory (although it's incredibly difficult to do the latter).

Finally, I'm a huge fan of the Thief games. You play a snarky criminal called Garrett who lives in a weird medieval/steampunk city. You steal things. You do this because it's the only thing you're good at and you need to pay the rent. Now, it is possible to kill everyone in sight and loot their corpses but Garrett is not much of a fighter and the game penalizes you for taking that route. The gold standard is the "ghost run", where no-one sees you or detects your presence and people only know you've been there when they discover their valuables missing.

There's five for you. All except Minecraft are available on Steam (huge online game store/community) for reasonable prices. Hope that helps, and have fun!