Build your first PC in PC Building Simulator's demo
Demystification
"If you haven't ever built your own gaming PC, you're selling yourself short," our Alec has said. Though I've been on a gaming laptop for a few years I do agree; the computers I built myself are the ones I cherished most. Picking components and clacking it all together is interesting and exciting, and also a bit terrifying - especially the first time. So hey, whether you've built a PC before or not, you might be interested in trying PC Building Simulator [official site]. It is exactly what it sounds like. PC Building Simulator is still in pre-alpha and quite scrappy but you can now try it.
The pre-alpha build is up on Itch for Windows and Linux as pay-what-you-want with no minimum. I do mean it when I say this build is scrappy but hey, it's a pre-alpha demo of a solo project. It's the work of a Romanian developer known simply and mysteriously as Claudiu.
That demo offers the tutorial, running through how to put a PC together from the case up. It's fairly simple and friendly when compared to component 'em ups like Car Mechanic Simulator, My Summer Car, and World of Guns, and doesn't have any dangers of e.g. bending CPU pins or frying components with static. All the same, it is still quite satisfying to put a PC together. I've missed the process.
"The purpose of this game is to try to teach people about building PCs while still having fun," Claudiu says.
If you've never built a PC but have wondered about the magical parts you can see through the perspex window your PC mystifyingly came with, this'll help explain. Maybe it'll give you confidence to build a real PC. Please don't blame me if anything goes wrong. It is, of course, equally fine if you never build a PC.
A career mode is planned for the future. Personally I'd also hope one day for a simulation that gets into functional electronics, deep enough for diagnosis puzzles and repairs like Car Mechanic Sim.
For illustrative purposes, here's a peek at the cabling system from February:
