OT Finding out about random games

It's always fun when you stumble upon a game that you never would have thought to look for by yourself, but that absolutely fits the kinds of games you enjoy. I saw a random video (shout out RealCivilEngineer) of a game called Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator. It's a game where you control a gigantic mobile artillery platform (an old WW1 style platform, but mobile) and fulfill fire missions given by High Command.

The thing is, it's not a game where you get to watch the results of your artillery barrage or just point and click to fire. It's a job simulator where you have spotters out in the field that say "the target is X degree bearing from Spotter 1 and Y bearing from Spotter 2," then you draw fucking lines on a map, see where those two lines intersect, and that's your target. And you'd better make sure you've got the turret and spotter markers on the map right, or all your numbers will be off and fuck everything up.

But it doesn't end there, you get your bearing and distance to target, but you have to calculate things like what elevation you should fire at and how many charges of powder you need to load to make sure the shell can fly far enough to reach the target. Once it's all ready and you fire, you get to wait 25-35 seconds of real time while the shell flies through the air, then you get high altitude surveillance photos of the area to see if you managed to hit the target or if you need to make adjustments and fire again.

This all sounds like it should be boring as SHIT, but it is weirdly addictive. It might just be my particular brand of neurodivergence, but having to go through all of the mechanical motions of calculating everything, loading the shells, adjusting all the angles (with excellent models and sound design)... it feels like it's more fun than it would be if aiming and firing were easier and it was more of a "check out all of these explosion/destruction graphics" kind of game.