[agersant]

I've played a couple of these games (Opus Magnum, EXAPUNKS). What I liked about them is that they distill the experience of software engineering to "just the fun problem solving" part.

In these games, you don't write RFC, set up CI for your project, do code reviews or battle old dependencies. It's just you, a clear goal and all the right tools to reach it - somewhat similar to assembling Lego (or Ikea furniture) but with the fun of problem solving added.

Making something real would definitely net you a more satisfying end result, but maybe wouldn't be as entertaining. Obviously this depends a lot on what you find fun in programming and how smooth your real projects go!