Survival crafting games have been a dominant force in PC gaming for some 13 odd years. Ever since Minecraft exploded in popularity, we've been inundated with games following its early access open world procedurally generated survival crafting sandbox recipe. It's still one of my favorite genres and I can be counted on to drag my group of friends into every new tree-punching playground. Much as I love them though, the "crafting" is actually the worst part of the survival crafting genre.
When first launched, Minecraft was a novelty. Instead of just stuffing a stack of materials in my pocket and interacting with a shop or merchant to turn them into something new, its visual crafting system was a little puzzle unto itself.
