Genres tend to get standardized after a while. A soulslike will have a strong focus on parrying in a dark and desolate world, character action games focus on the cinematics, farming games have life-sim socialization, etc. Even a genre like automation, which is just a decade old in its current incarnation (Factorio in 2016, although 2011's SpaceChem is the spark that started things off) has expectations that almost every game adheres to. There will be conveyor belts, assemblers in all shapes and sizes, refiners, and a few systems unique to each game to give them their own identity. Whether it's Foundry, Shapez 2, Satisfactory, Little Rocket Lab, and many more, you'll have a rough idea going in of how things work once you've played a couple. But "automation" doesn't technically mean "factory".
There's Gold In Them Thar... Sand?
Sandustry released into Early Access today and takes a pass on most of the automation genre tropes, instead wandering off in its own unique direction. Fusing automation with the falling sand/Powder Toy genre, it's less about building than it is refining one substance into another using heat, cold, water, or just shaking it to get the byproduct you're after. This...
