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Comment by rubyist5eva | Hacker News Reader

I think Euro Truck Simulator was the first game of this sort that I can think of that really had some kind of broad-ish appeal to it. Not necessarily “mundane chore” but more like “job is a game” game.

My father in law is a trucker and the only video game he plays is the Euro/American Truck Simulator games. Which I find interesting because I don’t think I would ever be interested in a game where you write computer software as the main goal.

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There are several games like this in the "Zachtronics" genre, like Shenzen I/O or Exapunks. They revolve around programming puzzles, often with very low level languages or with other constraints. They can be a lot of fun, especially because there is often a real sense of progress. The story evolves after each puzzle you solve, instead of just "there is another ticket waiting for you in JIRA" style tedium that a programming job can be like.

Even Factorio was too much like programming to me and I had to stop playing because it became too much like work. I can’t imagine a game where I actually have to write anything closer to software than that.

I know of a lot of software developers who LOVE Factorio, because it ticks the boxes that their day job doesn't while using the same problem solving whatsits.

I guess I'm lucky that I personally feel like I have a job that ticks the boxes, so I can focus on "non-boxes" outside of my day job :)

I will show my age, but did you try core war [1, 2] ?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War [2] https://www.corewar.io/

TIS-100 may still be of interest to you. It involves a highly-constrained development environment, with very clear goals, on a very unfamiliar style of system.

It's more of a puzzle game with programming elements, than a programming game. Understanding how code works simply makes it easier.

Maybe you like factorio? That is surprisingly similar to software dev IMHO.

i'd argue factorio is closer to electrical engineering than software dev, but it definitely scratches the same itch of a well-engineered solution to a novel problem.

I had to stop playing Factorio because I felt it was too much like work. The “obsessive refacoring and optimization” aspects of the game are like crack cocaine to me.

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