On of the cooler features of life is its need to build bigger than itself.  Bees and wasps make hives, ants construct huge underground networks, a single fungus can have a root network extending for miles, beavers like dams, and humans...  That's where it gets properly insane.  Animals are limited to the labor they can perform, and there's no question it gets impressive results, but humans specialize in tool usage to the point we can automate systems to be far more productive than even a population of billions could create by hand.  Even so, everything we've done has been on a planetary scale, and that's not going to come close to being enough to engineer the unthinkably massive structure of the Dyson sphere.

A Dyson sphere is a construct that completely encases a star, with its internal surface meant to be fully terraformed and liveable.  The advantage is that it uses 100% of a star's energy, but its sheer volume makes building one a project requiring work on a galactic scale.  This makes it the perfect construction goal for a factory game, as seen in the Kickstarter for Dyson Sphere Program.  Humanity's endless hunger for energy has gotten to the point that only an entire star's-worth will do, and in a fit of disturbing isolationism we've decided to roll up the galaxy and close off the rest of the universe to live inside a sphere with a 93,000,000 mile radius.  While socially it's a bit worrying, from an engineering perspective it's the single greatest feat a civilization can attain.  But it won't be easy.

Gathering up the resources will require harvesting a galaxy, which Dyson Sphere Program randomly generates at the start of each game.  You set out into the void traveling from one star system to another, making planetfall and setting up production lines to harvest and refine every resource available.  One planet is nowhere near enough, of course, so different planets will need to specialize in different equipment, and part of succeeding is creating interplanetary and interstellar production lines.  The heart of a good factory game is getting the right resource to the right place, and Dyson Sphere Program scales up from the standard conveyor belt to space ships.  As for the player, you get to scoot around the galaxy in a mech, harvesting resources on new planets until the infrastructure is big enough to run itself and then moving on to the next one to do it again but bigger and faster.

Dyson Sphere Program is running on Kickstarter and has great plans for is galactic factory including space elevators, alien enemies, mecha editing, and much more.  With one week left on the clock it's hit the $10,000 goal, which on the one hand seems more than a little small for this type of game but on the other the new video is looking incredibly sharp.  Its little planets bustle with activity, and space is looking lovely as well with planets that orbit around their stars as the mech travels from one to the next.  It's a hugely ambitious factory game, which is more than a little necessary for its in-game goal, so give the new video a watch to see what it takes to start building the greatest architectural wonder a civilization can aspire to.