i can finally enslave these filthy clankers

I downloaded this thinking it would be a peaceful farming sim to relax between more intense games. I now have a tiny robot empire running at the bottom of my screen 24/7 while I pretend to work, and I'm pretty sure my productivity has either increased 400% or decreased into negative numbers. My boss thinks I'm extremely focused on spreadsheets. Little does he know I'm optimizing carrot production ratios.
This game runs in a tiny window at the bottom of your screen, which sounds innocent until you realize it's basically digital crack that you can consume while doing literally anything else. I've been 'working from home' for 6 months, but really I've been managing a robot farm while occasionally typing important-sounding emails between harvest cycles.
Rusty is the most wholesome robot protagonist in gaming history. He went from industrial automation to farming because he wanted a peaceful retirement, and honestly, that's the energy I need in my life. Meanwhile, I've turned his peaceful retirement into a hyperoptimized agricultural-industrial complex that would make Amazon's fulfillment centers weep with envy.
The automation possibilities are endless, which is dangerous for someone with my particular brand of obsessive-compulsive optimization disorder. I started with a simple potato farm. I now have multi-tiered crop rotation systems, automated processing plants, and a distribution network that NASA would be proud of. Rusty just wanted to grow vegetables, but I've created SkyNet for turnips.
I've developed an emotional attachment to my tiny robot workers. When Bob-7 gets stuck behind a tree, I don't just fix the pathfinding issue - I restructure the entire farm layout to ensure Bob-7's optimal happiness. They don't have feelings, but I've assigned personalities to each one. Gary specializes in beets and has trust issues.
The game is supposed to be 'idle,' but I've spent more active hours optimizing layouts than I have playing most AAA games. There's something deeply satisfying about watching little numbers go up while robots scurry around like the world's most efficient ant farm. My dopamine receptors have been permanently rewired to respond to carrot harvest notifications.
I've played this game during Zoom meetings, family dinners, first dates, and my own wedding (hypothetically). The beauty is that it looks like you're doing something productive while you're actually managing a robot agricultural empire. I've given presentations while secretly expanding my potato production facilities.
The progression system is perfectly balanced between 'satisfying growth' and 'absolute addiction.' Each upgrade feels meaningful, each new crop variety opens new possibilities, and each efficiency improvement makes me feel like a genius. I've calculated optimal plant-to-robot ratios with the precision of a NASA engineer planning a Mars mission.
My friends think I'm incredibly busy and productive because I'm always 'working' when they text me. In reality, I'm usually staring intensely at tiny robots while mentally calculating whether I need more water pumps or if I should expand into corn production. This is what peak multitasking looks like.
I've run this game for so long that I'm pretty sure Rusty's farm has achieved sentience and is now planning to take over my computer. The robots have become more organized than my actual life. My virtual vegetables are thriving while my real plants are dying of neglect, but priorities, you know?

10/10 would accidentally create an agricultural dystopia while pretending to be productive again. This game has taught me that retirement is just another word for 'industrial optimization with vegetables.' Now excuse me, I need to restructure my entire irrigation system because I just unlocked sprinklers and everything must be perfect.

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Play it while you eat and watch something on youtube, then go back to a "real" game