Awesome Engineering Games

Awesome Engineering Games github.com/arcataroger/aw...

I've spent way too much time both playing and finding engineering-focused games, and haven't been able to find very detailed or comprehensive lists online. So I made one :)

These games are both fun and often quite educational, presenting gamified versions of real-world challenges and professions.

There's a lot of different sub-genres of "engineering game", such as:

* Factory automation (Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program)

* City builders (Cities: Skylines, Anno series)

* Route-builders (Mini Motorways, Railway Empire)

* Comp sci (TIS-100, Bitburner)

All games on the list are very highly reviewed. I've played most (but not all) of them, and provided personal recommendations alongside the reviews. Many of them are also playable on GeForce Now (if you don't have a gaming PC).

Please contribute if you know of more, or have any comments/suggestions!

I'm not sure where Human Resource Machine would belong,

https://store.steampowered.com/app/375820/Human_Resource_Mac...

might be worth adding this and 7 Billion Humans

https://store.steampowered.com/app/792100/7_Billion_Humans/

m463 · 2 years ago

You can get them on gog too:

https://www.gog.com/en/game/human_resource_machine

https://www.gog.com/en/game/7_billion_humans

also gog has WHILE TRUE: LEARN()

https://www.gog.com/en/game/while_true_learn

because how many games expose you to machine learning?

yedpodtrzitko · 2 years ago

I disagree that While True: Learn() is a game about ML. It's _themed_ as a ML game, but it's mere a share-sorting puzzle game where you are routinely load-balancing things until it works precisely as the task expect. Driving minigame was bugged at that time I was playing the game, but from what I seen on YT videos, the whole thing is about clicking "Evolve" button.

lifthrasiir · 2 years ago

HRM was personally disappointing because of both the lack of depth (no appeal to programmers) and the sudden difficulty hike (no appeal to non-programmers). Also it had (or still has?) some game-breaking interpreter bug that made me lost my code and ultimately give up.

solardev · 2 years ago

Both have been added, thanks!

Galxeagle · 2 years ago

Kerbal Space Program gets high marks for giving me a great intuitive sense of orbital mechanics, aeronautical design, and space mission architectures (‘to get to space you need to go sideways, not up’), even if the actual rocket building is simplified to Lego-like to keep it fun

My light bulb moment was when I looked at the Apollo 13 orbital paths and mentally considered a few alternatives they could have done too.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/220200/Kerbal_Space_Progr...

rkagerer · 2 years ago

Agreed, here's a sentiment that basically sums it up for me: https://xkcd.com/1356/

And for anyone frustrated with the premature release of KSP 2, I recently discovered Juno New Origins which scratches a similar itch. It works on both Android and PC, and SyncThing or the like can transfer saves/crafts between.

piersj225 · 2 years ago

delanom · 2 years ago

Surprised not to see “Baba is You” on the list! Great puzzle built around programming logic. https://store.steampowered.com/app/736260/Baba_Is_You/

bbstilson · 2 years ago

"Baba is You" destroyed my ego. 10/10 Great game

Or Recursed [1] if you have Scheme-stained glasses.

[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/497780/Recursed/

What category do you think this would best belong in? I watched the trailer but it wasn't super clear to me how the gameplay worked. Looks like you can move chests and keys around, but not the room itself? What's the logic/programming angle?

Added!

Scoundreller · 2 years ago

Under the category of "Rube Goldberg Machines", I'd add this classic retro game for the kids:

The Even More Incredible Machine: https://playclassic.games/games/puzzle-solving-dos-games-onl...

DizzyDoo · 2 years ago

I enjoyed The Incredible Machine as a kid, the modern equivalent (though still 10 years old) is 'Contraption Maker' - https://store.steampowered.com/app/241240/Contraption_Maker/ - which was designed by the same person. Glad to see he's still going all these years later!

This is not 'Incredible Machine' related, but while I'm here, I'm working on an engineering-adjacent game where you build and automate a zoo full of spooky monsters. Might be of interest to some! https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke...

Currently, the list only has Steam games (not for platform favoritism, but for "Very Positive" reviews as a minimum threshold).

However, I'm not sure if it should stay that way. Maybe it'd be good to have some older games, etc.? Discussion here: https://github.com/arcataroger/awesome-engineering-games/dis...

gene-h · 2 years ago

RoboCo is a nice vehicle building game. https://roboco.co/https://store.steampowered.com/app/1067220/RoboCo/

It has one of the best mechanism simulators I've seen in a game with all sorts of gears, differentials, slider joints, springs etc. I've found it handy for virtually prototyping, you can mock up and test machine concepts much faster than CAD software.

Oh and it has a python API: https://docs.roboco.co/latest/

Awesome, thanks! I'll add it.

May I please cite your comment as a recommendation and link to this?

Sure.

tgsovlerkhgsel · 2 years ago

Sim Tower would deserve a spot on the list if it was more modern. It was originally built as an elevator simulation and then turned into a game, and it shows. Unfortunately, it's a 16 bit application and thus not well suited for modern systems. It was unstable even back then, time was tied to CPU speed, and playing with DosBox and corresponding bad mouse behavior (no acceleration) isn't fun.

Project Highrise seems to mostly omit the fine-grained elevator control that was at the core of Sim Tower, so the most recent successor that I'm aware of is Yoot Tower, which I didn't get around to trying yet. Unfortunately neither SimTower nor Yoot Tower seem to be available legally.

Aeolun · 2 years ago

If you want pure elevators you can play https://play.elevatorsaga.com/

There's a current discussion about whether we should also make room for non-Steam games, especially older but great titles: https://github.com/arcataroger/awesome-engineering-games/dis...

If that doesn't happen, there could very well be an sibling list of "Oldies but goodies DOS-era engineering games"?

Narishma · 2 years ago

SimTower works fine in PCem with a period-accurate config.

edg-l · 2 years ago

This list lacks most of Zachtronics games, which are all related to engineering, and my favorite game dev.

I really think Exapunks, Shenzhen I/O, SpaceChem and TIS-100 should be there, in fact, Zachtronics created his own puzzle genre, "zachs-like"

https://www.zachtronics.com/

They're definitely there, just near the bottom: Under https://github.com/arcataroger/awesome-engineering-games#hac...

I think they were the first games I added while building the list, and a heavy inspiration for it to begin with :) I added a thank-you for them just now.

LugosFergus · 2 years ago

They are there.

disintegore · 2 years ago

I have two suggestions :

TerraTech (https://store.steampowered.com/app/285920/TerraTech/) for the vehicle building category. Very streamlined and surprisingly deep, although the campaign gameplay can be frustrating.

Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic (https://store.steampowered.com/app/784150/Workers__Resources...). A planned economy city builder. It's apparently an extremely deep game with a steep learning curve. Seems to have developed a cult following.

Added, thanks!

I didn't expect my descriptions to be included verbatim hahaha