When I was around 12-14 I read this biography of Markus person (notch) and it mentioned a game he made with a friend in which the goal was to be able to build stuff and reshape the world. When I looked it up it looked awesome, it was basically, at the time, “Minecraft in real life” for me. Like Minecraft but with realistic building, mining and stuff. It also helped that I was into haven and hearth at the time and this game looked similar in its MMO and crafting aspects.
And as it turns out, as a kid I actually did enjoy this game. I thought the graphics were so awesome back then, and I enjoyed the sense of progress that the game had. The only thing that dismayed me was that every plot of land in the world had pretty much been claimed and starting out solo was impossible. When I saw they were releasing a new version with private servers, I actually did end up buying it, and subsequently never playing it because i couldn’t get it to run on machine.
I definitely would not play this now, and the graphics are a bit less charming than I thought they were, but I still think this game has some interesting aspects, namely the permanent MMO nature of constructions leading to a player-made history of the world, certain game systems like weight and crafting, and honestly, the UI. It’s really refreshing to see such a unique UI in a game and it makes it feel so different, while still being usable, click dragging to pan the camera feels so satisfying to do. I wish modern games could go back to this level of UI experimentation, although I may be the only person in the world who thinks that