Sandustry review

I started Sandustry on a whim at 8:15pm on a Friday evening. I was still playing at 2am. I went to bed, woke up at 9am, and immediately started playing again. It's rare that a game gets its claws into me like this. It's even rarer that I feel good about it.

Sandustry, now in Early Access, is a factory builder with a great hook: every pixel is physically simulated. Think Noita, but instead of a deadly roguelike, you're laying down conveyor belts and sorters to gradually process all the natural resources of an alien world. Factorio but with gravity. Satisfactory but I'm satisfied.

I used to think I had a complicated relationship with 'busywork games', the kind that give you a todo list of simple (and sometimes prima facie tedious) tasks, and invite you to decide whether the experience is a flow or fugue state. I love some of those games (Pokémon Pokopia, Turnip Boy) and flee almost instantly from the seeming pointlessness of others. I now think my relationship is very simple: some todo lists feel worthwhile and others do not, and it's a matter of design as to which is which. In other words, it is the games that are good or bad, not me.

Too often factory builders feel like they're putting artificial obstacles in my path and daring me to work hard enough to render the inconveniences moot. That power curve can feel good, but more often than not it feels too much like the bad kind of wasting time. I don't want to cup water for ten hours to earn a bucket.