But if it's just shapes, and I don't have to memorize as many new concepts, maybe the load will be light enough to be relaxing like Mini Metro.
I love them, but the difficulty curve that they give the player just strikes too many similarities with my day job. I feel like i want to play a Satisfactory-lite. Something that gives me the fun of programming without the complexity. Help me build an abomination of complexity that i don't have to maintain. Refactoring shouldn't exist in this hypothetical game, maintenance should never be a concern - just forward movement and the joy of unburdened chaos.
Still scratches the “programming puzzle” itch for me, still complex in the later stages, but more bite sized problems so no refactoring/maintenance to speak of (unless you want to try reimplementing to beat your previous score).
When I started longing for unit testing in a game, that was the end for me
Without refactoring the factory planning phase would be more difficult since I don't want to fill the best places on the map with unmaintainable, non scalable factories. Refactoring should be very easy, e.g. like in Factorio with construction bots: just press ctrl + x and the bad part of the factory is gone.
If you want to build an abomination, try SeaBlock mod [1] for Factorio. You don't have to refactor anything, space and resources are infinite, so just build a new factory next to the old one after you research a new tier of technology.
You know what's funny? I'm a programmer and I think the same of XCOM 2. It's a game where everything's always on fire, everything always goes wrong for you to fix, and there's never enough time to sit back and relax. It was a game about grit and perserverance against overwhelming odds... and it felt exactly like my most previous job as as a Senior SE at a small startup.
No fucking thank you.
It's actually one of the aspects of Don't Starve that I love. Practically everything in the game is some sprites, sounds, and Lua. That makes it fairly easy to extend the game.
When I'm clearing spidertron wears many exoskeletons and I wear many lasers. When I'm building, I put spidertron back in my pocket and switch to wearing many roboports and exoskeletons.
The refactoring thing is up to you, it’s pretty easy to give up on a base and build one next door. Space is pretty much infinite.
Stretching your brain in similar but new ways in not always a waste.
Regardless, you can optimize your builds for symmetry or some other aesthetic goal and come up with some really beautiful designs. Though just like real world programming, lack of planning will result in spaghetti code.