A strange little side quest
Even a quick game like Mars Colony sits on top of decades — and sometimes centuries — of ideas. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 followed in 2018. The broader history adds one more wrinkle. SimCity grew out of Will Wright's enjoyment of the map editor he had built for an earlier game; the act of shaping a city became the game itself. That history is one reason familiar mechanics can still feel new when they are recombined well.