Finding the game in the simulation

Hey everyone,

I’ve hit a massive design crossroads on my current project and I’m curious if anyone else has gone through a similar pivot (and how you handled it).

I set out to make a building game with a core philosophy: I wanted players to build with "full control, using real materials."

Somehow, during development, "real materials" morphed into "fully simulated physics." Right now, the game lets you build brick by brick. Every single brick is a rigid body. If you build a wall and don't interlock the bricks correctly, or you forget a lintel over a window, the physics solver kicks in and the wall collapses.

Technically? It's cool. But as a game? It’s exhausting. Building a simple house brick-by-brick takes forever, and the physics engine actively punishes players who just want to make something beautiful.

I was brainstorming ways to fix the tedium, like adding a drag-and-build wall tool that automatically calculates correct brick bonds (Stretcher, English, etc.) based on the thickness you drag out. But while designing that, I had a realization:

I don't think I actually want to make a physics engineering sandbox.

What I really had in mind originally was a game where you build by suggestion. Think Tiny Glade, but from a first-person/third-person perspective where you can actually walk into the buildings, live in them, and furnish them.

To achieve that cozy, atmospheric "architect/interior design" vibe, I’m pretty sure I need to completely kill the rigid-body physics. The bricks would still look granular and real, and the drag-and-build tools would generate real brick patterns, but they would be static meshes. No collapsing walls, no physics bottlenecks on performance, just pure aesthetic building.

I'm currently staring down two very different paths: Game A: The Physics Sandbox (Engineering puzzles, structural integrity, destruction). Game B: The Cozy Architect (Tiny Glade + The Sims, focus on vibes, furnishing, and relaxing building).

Has anyone else accidentally built a hardcore simulation and then had to strip out complex systems to find the actual "fun" game underneath? How did you make the call to kill your technical darlings?

Also, purely as players/devs, which of those two directions sounds more appealing to you?