If not Minecraft, there's other games that scratch the "manipulate your environment and build something" itch. Space Engineers, Satisfactory, Populous from back

If not Minecraft, there's other games that scratch the "manipulate your environment and build something" itch. Space Engineers, Satisfactory, Populous from back in the day, uuh. There's a long list. Actually, before Minecraft, Notch worked on a game called Wurm Online, which was a tedious and buggy MMO but which allowed you and your friends to manipulate the sandbox world, dig holes, flatten the environment, build roads, etc. With teamwork, they could do some really interesting things. But like I said, it was pretty tedious and slow.