One thing that has always amazed me about management sims is that I’m essentially using my precious video game time to, like, do work. I’ve given many hours to “SimCity,” even though it’s essentially like having the world’s crappiest job and not getting paid for it—though it is kind of fun to level a city that refuses to cooperate with my schemes. Anyway, I haven’t paid much attention to the evolution of this gaming genre because “Destiny,” but serendipity saw fit to grace my Steam account with two recently released management sims: “The Sentient” from Uncaged Studios and “Punch Club” from Lazy Bear and tinyBuild. Here’s what happened when I played them!

“The Sentient”

Uncaged Studios

Available on PC

If you’re reading this, you’re likely a big enough video game nerd to have delved into the wonderment that is “FTL.” “The Sentient” strikes a similar chord, but there is waaaaay much more to keep track of. The player takes the role of a spaceship’s AI, which is in charge of every aspect of said spaceship. Before even taking off into the churning void of space, it’s possible to spend a good hour or so building rooms, furnishing them and then recruiting a crew. The attention to detail here is impressive, and there is a solid risk/reward dynamic at play. Loading up the engineering room with weapons generators will make your flak cannons do more damage, but you might suffer when it comes to shields. The ship customization is all good and well, but the most interesting aspect of “The Sentient” is the crew themselves. Each crew member has specific strengths and weaknesses, and also has the ability to level up after working hard enough. It’s a cool concept, but I didn’t notice a clear advantage or disadvantage between one crew member and the next—all of them just worked too damn slowly.

Once everything is up and running, it feels very “SimCity”—except you can’t build anything new once you’ve left Earth. This essentially means that gameplay consists of plotting out courses and watching your crew eat, bathe and sleep. Combat scenarios happen fairly regularly, your success rate depends largely on how much research you dump into weapons and shields before the journey. There is a lot of downtime in the game, but there’s something strangely meditative to watching the day to day lives of a spacefaring crew through the unfeeling eyes of an AI. It’s immensely irritating to be ninety percent of the way to a destination only to have the pilot bail because he/she has to eat or take a dump, and that’s totally how an AI on an interstellar cruiser would view its human resources.

“The Sentient” isn’t the most engaging rogue-like management sim on the market (“FTL” is tough to compete with), but the retro graphics, ambient soundtrack and thoughtful management mechanics make it worth checking out—especially if you’ve ever wanted to be EDI from “Mass Effect 2.”

“Punch Club”

Lazy Bear Games/tinyBuild

Available on PC and Mac

On what must be damn near the opposite end of the management sim spectrum, “Punch Club” brings the player out of the stars and into the dingy life of a never-was boxer. Weirdly enough, playing through “Punch Club” is a lot like taking control of Randy “The Ram” Robinson in Darren Aronofksy’s film “The Wrestler.” The unnamed avatar of “Punch Club” starts with nothing but a few bucks, some frozen pizza and an impotent desire for revenge towards the mystery man who killed his father. With a little bit of training, a shot at joining the city’s most fierce group of fighters in Punch Club starts to become more of a reality.

The thing about “Punch Club” is that you get invested in this character. In between juggling training time, earning money, eating and sleeping, I felt the pain of every loss and the thrill of every victory. Even though fighting consists of strategically selecting the right boxing moves for your character and letting the game do its thing, fights are extremely engaging. I nearly took down a fighter who was overall tougher than I was by focusing my training on stamina, and I felt pretty good about myself even though I lost.

On top of the surprisingly addictive gameplay (seriously—when I earned enough money to install a treadmill in my garage I about wet my pants. I understand that this is not normal), the game is also chock full of easter eggs paying homage to 90’s pop culture. Oh, and there are occasional bouts with mutant alligators to boot. The game’s on sale right now—just buy it already.

It’s nice to live in a world where a game about a sentient AI and a washed-up boxer share many of the same characteristics, and it also speaks to the aesthetic flexibility that the management sim genre has come to enjoy. I just wish that working out in real life was as fun as working out in a video game.