- you have a limited amount of some mineral or rock that erodes quicker or slower than others, and you need to move water from one location to another.
- there is a magma chamber growing under a mountain. Move the villagers out of harms way / destroy enemies.
- introduce sinkholes: make as many sinkholes as possible within some period.
Influencing continental drift for strategic purposes would be hard to justify in a realistic/up-to-near-future game, but sci-fi is always there. Or maybe someone needs to try something new, like a 4x game that takes place on an evolutionary scale. Synapsids & Sauropsids. “I‘ve got you down to your last Lystrosaur, bwahaha”
My point was that it is quite trivial (and useful) to seperate the sandbox from the gamification.
Speaking of CS, I wish this simulator had heightmap export.
The story and everything else that later came, was an afterthought. The point is, that it was fun for me and quite a lot of other people, without all that and just the sandbox. But yes, you are excused ...
I might gamify it a little bit more, but personally I love the fun that comes from exploring a set of mechanics by yourself without anyone telling you what you're trying to achieve.
My aim is to build a set of simulation mechanics that are accurate enough to teach you a little bit about how the processes work in real life but also responsive enough to let you play around with them and create what you'd like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk4hRWD6BT8
I played it on the Xbox 360, but it's on Steam as well. https://store.steampowered.com/app/33460/From_Dust/