They are related, but different genres. According to Wikipedia:
"Incremental game": just clicking to progress, perhaps not even that (just wait while the game plays itself, hence the "idle" moniker).
vs.
"Construction and management simulation". Requires -somewhat- more thought / planning about what resources are needed to achieve specific results, how to optimize use of those resources & so on.
I read this as: the latter is more interactive (choice-based, perhaps some strategy) than the former (thoughtless clicking / tapping or just wait).
Sub- & related genres emphasize different aspects of this process.
What comes to mind: how does this game compare to Factorio? What feature(s) might cause one to prefer one over the other?
I propose this game intends to point directly at Factorio as a dressed-up incremental game, with all the negativity that implies.
Someone once suggested to me that Factorio was a classical example of a non-programming weekend hobby.
That sounds like banal small talk, and it was. But it hit me hard. Why would pseudo-programming with no actual payoff or learning along the way be desirable over...just doing what you want, programming?
Hobby programming on a passion project is a fun game, but real-world programming jobs usually come bundled with a bunch of programming-adjacent non-fun activities.
100%, nail on head. Conversation was more or less me poking at "real" work is pathologized at upper-class FAANG, but it's not the "real" work that "burns you out", per se.
Games are more fun than hobby programming because (usually) the feedback loop is very quick, they're designed to guarantee that success is possible, and you can tell why you failed at something.
For hobby programming I think you need to want something more than just the process once you get past a certain level of ability. You have to want the thing you're creating.
(But I have a terrible track record on hobby projects and could be totally wrong!)
> Why would pseudo-programming with no actual payoff or learning along the way be desirable over...just doing what you want, programming?
Because Factorio is all the fun problem solving with none of the baggage of dealing with programming - no git repo to manage, no linter to satisfy, no language quirks to re-learn, no messy APIs to use (and in my experience, almost anything useful and non-trivial will need to use ugly APIs).
I have been wondering about it as well. I could be a lot more “productive” writing my own games and potentially make $ (I have in the past) instead of playing Factorio. However Factorio gives me a deep joy that programming no longer does. The reward cycle is much faster.
