Shapez 2 (and I guess Shapez 1) both feel cartoony and abstract enough that it doesn't make you feel like you're polluting a whole planet and killing the wildlife.
But that very same cartooniness also made it less interesting to me; the things you're producing are just too arbitrary.
It seems very sysphean to me, a slightly different boulder everytime.
This time, in games, we assign it to ourselves. It isn't even a a burden layed upon us by the gods. Did we shape ourselves such that this is now what we entertain? Or did sysphius already like pushing that Boulder?
What about all the time in between. Im not for going back to hunter gathering, but what about all the things we do all this society for, all the things inbetween. Wouldn't you want to be spending time doing that.
> Are there any games that teach automation like Factorio but that don't have that depressive dystopian magnasanti feel?
And as the opposite question: are there games that give more of that feeling?
I want to feel like I'm playing the human faction in Starship Troopers or on Pandora in Avatar, but in the more factory building sense, where you supply a war machine or the industrial capacity that will inevitably make the local ecosystems and planet perish.
On the more bright and cheerful side, though, Satisfactory is great, Captain of Industry might be worthy of a look (you're literally helping a settlement of humans survive), maybe Mindustry for something a bit simpler or Factory Town. I'd also mention Urbek City Builder and Timberborn as loosely related, albeit they can feel just more like puzzle games.
