A strange little side quest
Even a quick game like My Shopping Mall sits on top of decades — and sometimes centuries — of ideas. Voyager 1 entered interstellar space in 2012, and Voyager 2 followed in 2018. The surprising part is how quickly the next milestone followed. The Oregon Trail mixed travel, supplies, risk and survival decisions decades before resource-management systems became common in mainstream games. That history is one reason familiar mechanics can still feel new when they are recombined well.
