Dyson Sphere Program is a Factorio-like that's off to a strong start on Steam

After a successful crowdfunding campaign last year, Dyson Sphere Program is now out in Early Access on Steam, and the ambitious building game has made quite a splash. In its first week on sale on Steam and China's WeGame platform, Dyson Sphere Program has sold more than 200,000 copies.

If you've played Factorio, you'll have the basic idea for what's going on in Dyson Sphere Program - it's a game about harvesting, building, and then automating those processes. This time, however, the goal isn't to simply leave the planet you've been stranded on. As the name suggests, Dyson Sphere Program is about building a megastructure that surrounds your solar system's central star, harvesting its energy to help power humanity's central industrial brain.

While the concept of a Dyson sphere was formalised by the prolific British-American theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson in a 1960 paper, the concept itself was first described by Olaf Stapledon in his 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker. Dyson spheres and Dyson rings have been popular in sci-fi ever since, and similar megastructures form the basis (and title) of the Halo franchise. Stellaris players will also be familiar with Dyson spheres.

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