I'm sick of the survival crafting 'Cube' and calling the gamer HOA on all of you

I've played an excessive amount of survival crafting games this year, and while I knew I could be a bit of a pain in the ass to play these things with, it was never more clear than when I was juggling Dune: Awakening, Abiotic Factor, and Valheim, and tutting at my friends' creations in constant disappointment. In my defense, some of you are killing my vibe, and it's about time we tackle your biggest survival crafting sin—building the Cube.

Is there an established name for this phenomenon? Whether you're guilty of building these or also wildly offended, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about already. The Cube is male living spaces come to haunt me in videogames. It is the ugliest reminders of modernity. It is four equally sized walls, a flat roof, and a door. Sometimes there's a floor. Often it's just dirt.

The Cube is what happens when my friends want to jump straight into exploring and focus on mass production. It turns me into the fantasy equivalent of your retired neighbor who can't mind their own business. I am walking up and down the neighborhood, asking if that paint color is HOA-approved. Sometimes I bring my tools over and start building crap on your lawn. I have no concerns about property lines or the law.

I'll admit I should be a little more chill, but the Cube is an aesthetic nightmare that turns fantasy landscapes into boring government office parks. I hate a real homeowners association, but if I could establish a freakish gamer HOA and bulldoze your Valheim box, I would. If you still don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry. I've documented recent cube crimes in my neighborhood and I will be distributing the appropriate fines.

Which Dune: Awakening house is in charge of zoning laws?

First of all, I'm sorry if this is your house. Second of all, you probably wouldn't realize it's your house anyway since it looks like every other PS4-shaped building in the vicinity. This is Arrakis, not the Sony State of Play. I know it's in the starting zone, but I was losing my mind over buildings like this from the very beginning, and it's not like there's a rock shortage. You're surrounded by free resources.

The building in Dune: Awakening didn't feel great, I get it, but even early tools give you access to more than one shape. Add a room to the side or a smaller second floor. You could even just delete a corner of the building to give it a shape that's not just…Cube.

We have the science to do better in Abiotic Factor

Despite being called cubicles, I'm not happy with my friends' buildings in Abiotic Factor, either. I get these are a bit different and don't really count as a building—you set up in pre-built rooms around a research facility, instead—but I'm still ill over the extreme symmetry. Turn the grid snap off. Get bold. Make one, maybe even two of those corners into 45-degree angles.

And on that note if we're playing scientists together then I expect you to do some cable management, too.

I know messy wires are not Cube related, but could you imagine the horror of both offenses at once? My colleague who reviewed Abiotic Factor, Morgan Park, showed me his fire hazard of a setup when he first started playing, and I about lost it. He fixed it later (and begrudgingly I admit it now looks better than mine), but the first draft made me holler.

Your Valheim cubes are an affront to Odin

Valheim Cubes are easily my biggest peeve. Pick even the most barren and hostile of biomes for your viking village and it's still one of the prettiest survival game backdrops to get creative in. At my absolute laziest I build regular ol' rectangles and give them some dimension with a carefully placed barrel, bench, maybe a tree. Still not a Cube. My roofs are too cute for that.

Plus, I mod every server I host with Valheim Plus, so my crew always has a little more freedom around building restrictions and environmental hazards. I'm trying to make it easier on us all, and yet they still insist on giant square boxes with flat ceilings. No decorations. Not even signs to label their chests!!

Sometimes, when we get raided, I pray the trolls will go for my function-over-form friends first. A little mean, yes, but their box is distracting from my whimsical villa.

I swear I'm not this much of a pain as a real neighbor. I mind my own business, don't care if your grass is 10 feet tall, and encourage you to ignore the guy next door whining about his property value. But if we're sharing a space in a survival crafting game, then I'm demolishing your Cubes… or at the very least, I'm getting online in the middle of the night to remodel them while you're asleep. A nice Dutch gable just brings the whole house together, you know?