All of human history is just moving stuff from one place to another. We scoop stuff up out of the ground and stack it into great big pyramids to dispose of unwanted mummies and ankhs. We blast stuff out of rocks and turn it into gardening shears and fidget spinners and lamp shades and clothes hangers, before dumping it all back into the sea nature s bin where we can only assume it safely disintegrates back into benign molecules that fish love.

So this latest spate of factory games should come as no surprise to anyone, scratching, as they do, our very human urge to convert raw wood into planks and then into wagons. First came the more puzzle-focused Infinifactory, and the addictive, top-down, conveyor belt sandbox game Factorio. More lately there is the three-dee Satisfactory, whose developers were so pleased with their own bad pun that they wilfully called their game something that literally means good enough I guess .

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Oh hello! John is away in San Francisco gobbling up gum left on the underside of chairs at the Game Developers Conference, so I’m filling in for our regular rundown of last week’s top-selling games on Steam. As is customary for weeks where I need to take over, the charts are full of the surprises he grumbles they never have. What can I say, John – video games must make more of an effort for me. And for goodness’ sake, leave that gum. I don’t care if Sid Meier himself stuck it there.

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“The twenty-tensies truly were a golden age for games about optimising production lines,” future generations will say under their infrared-heated geodesic domes.

“The way was paved by games like Infinifactory and Factorio, smoothing the way for a flood of followers,” one elder recalls. “Why, one month saw the launch of not only Satisfactory and Production Line but Factory Town too.”

“What’s Factory Town?” asks one of the huddled younglings, their eyes quivering with reverence.

“Ah, yes, I’m afraid the tomes about that one were amongst those devoured for sustenance during The Hard Times,” sighs the elder. They look upwards in reminiscence then quickly back down, trying to unsee the cracks in the dome growing as waves pound overhead.

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