Build a factory, grow a bee, eat a tree
Today, when we receive daily reports of the next adversity and destruction, it is extremely important to have the opportunity for creative work - even if it is virtual. In addition, summer, summer season - it's time to build something! And if manual labor in the country is not your choice, then there is nothing reprehensible in this: doing peaceful construction in video games is already a good start! In today's selection, we have selected for you 7 little-known, but very exciting games about how not to break, but to build!
Timberborn
Game Page: Steam
Urban planning strategy with an interesting nuance: in the title role - thinking and very active beavers. The case takes place against the backdrop of the apocalypse that happened, as a result of which toothy and hardworking animals suddenly found themselves the crowns of creation. The gameplay is vaguely but surely reminiscent of Cities: Skylines, the main distinguishing features are mainly aesthetic: beavers are divided into different factions, they look funny and work funny, and besides, they live from flood to flood, which also affects the gameplay. The game is still in early access, but it is already clear that it has a place of honor in the not very prolific genre of urban strategy - clear gameplay, original external, democratic price. Well, beavers, of course.
APICO
Game page: Steam
The closest relative of Apico among the games that took place is perhaps Stardew Valley. Camera scale, pixel graphics, agricultural theme... The main difference is the bees! In Apico, the economic activity of the players revolves around building and developing their own apiary, breeding various types of bees, and, of course, collecting honey. To get acquainted with the game, knowledge of English is vital: in order to be able to fully perceive the numerous (more often ridiculous, and therefore especially funny) jokes on bee themes.
Atrio: The Dark Wild
Game page: Steam
A strange but very charming hybrid of Factorio, survival games, and your nightmares! Half the time we build a spooky amusement park, collecting resources with names like "blood ore" with a laser. The other half of the time we spend on expeditions into the blackness of nightmares surrounding the game map. Giant yellow eyes look out of the darkness, alarming rain is falling all the time, and miniature kamikaze TVs are attacking from the darkness - and these are just the starting enemies. Tellingly, the protagonist is a homunculus dummy whose main goal in life is to die gloriously while completing a task in order to be immediately replaced by the next dummy. This world has long needed an extremely dark factory building simulator - and Atrio has every chance to fill this niche when it leaves the early access stage.
learning factory
Game page: Steam
The complete opposite of the previous game. Learning Factory is an unbeatable construction simulation game. The main risk for the player is to upset the seals, the main and only visitors to the department stores in the factory of the future (for some reason located on Mars). Imagine Factorio without bugs, power systems, and other disasters, but with cats and (somehow) elements of machine learning - this is the Learning Factory. On top of that, the game is saturated with postmodern references to cultural pillars ranging from The Godfather to Roadside Picnic. But most importantly, this is really a very relaxing and win-win game - you can leave it to work for hours and then, when you return, enjoy the results of progress: for example, buy fashion accessories for the hero and/or his cat with the accumulated money.
Kapital: Sparks of Revolution
Game page: Steam
A city-building simulator with an emphasis on the current problems of modern urban agglomerations, namely: social inequality and unrest. The protagonist is the mayor of a once prosperous city destroyed by some unnamed war (judging by the surroundings, the authors hint either at the French revolutions of the 18th century or at the US War of Independence around the same period). The mayor is forced to maneuver between the interests of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the proletarians, but in the end, he won’t be able to sit on all the chairs, and the matter will somehow end in riots, pogroms, and executions of demonstrations. In this environment, the player one way or another will have to build a just society and a brighter future. The only question is at what cost.
Dyson Sphere Program
Game page: Steam
Perhaps the most grandiose of all Factorio clones. This game with Chinese roots is based on a real-life scientific concept called the Dyson Sphere... Its essence lies in the construction of a giant power plant, the source of energy of which is a star - in fact, it is necessary to build a colossal sphere around this very star. But first, you will have to establish resource production chains, first on one, and then on several planets, and link them with a complex system for transporting goods, all this without getting out of a giant humanoid robot. A massive, beautiful, and dreamy game from mysterious developers: Youthcat Studio is not too fond of being in the press and in public, and barely raised money for its debut game on Kickstarter. Now her project has more than 55 thousand positive reviews on Steam, and this despite the fact that the date of the final release has not yet been announced.
dotAGE
Game page: Steam
A modest but very charming exercise on the theme of RimWorld. DotAge tells about the life of a tiny village, over which an ominous curse hangs. Once every few days, the Elder (only the grumpy grandfather is available in the demo version, but they promise to add no less colorful heroes to the release) predicts all sorts of misfortunes and violent punishments for the settlers. It is not yet possible to say for sure what the pixel men were guilty of, but perhaps the point is endemic sodomy: the villagers breed regardless of gender, appearance, and family ties. Except for this circumstance, their life is quite ordinary: hunting, gathering, building huts and wells ... A separate line in the list of daily tasks is taking care of the mental health of the inhabitants. Each bad sign - ranging from the appearance of a black crow to a fiery rain - can shake the psyche of citizens and lead to new unexpected troubles such as theft, epidemics, and executions of unwanted people. The game is turn-based, and misfortunes happen regularly, every few days, so the final version of dotAGE is going to be quite nervous.
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