👷‍♂️ I Found Steam's WEIRDEST Game?!

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Hello Fellow Engineers!

Welcome to Real Civil Newsletter - the only newsletter where flood control looks like a sci-fi cathedral, bridges are judged emotionally, and architects are reminded who actually keeps cities standing.

This week we’re heading underground to Tokyo to admire a concrete megastructure that quietly stops 38 million people from floating away, checking out some genuinely cool engineering links, descending into full indie-game madness with an 18-metre goose, and reviewing a bridge that refuses to open like a normal bridge out of pure spite.

Scroll on for completely unbiased bridge scores.

Let’s dive in 👇

This week we’re giving away TWO copies of Monster Care Simulator, the only game where you run a professional care centre for adorable monsters while being wildly underqualified for the responsibility.

You’ll be treating mysterious creatures, hatching questionable eggs, raising your own monster companions, and desperately trying to keep everyone alive, happy, and not unionised.

And now… drumroll… 🥁

🏆 WINNERS:
erclevel0
jemgrundy

Congrats! Check your inbox, you’re about to become the head of a monster care facility that definitely didn’t pass its last safety inspection.

Didn’t win? Don’t worry, more giveaways are coming, and as always, bribing me with pictures of good bridges remains strongly encouraged.

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

🌊 Tokyo’s G-Cans Project: The Underground Cathedral That Stops a City From Drowning

Architects design buildings that look like they float.

Engineers design systems that stop 38 million people from being washed into the Pacific.

Welcome to Tokyo’s Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, better known as G-Cans, a flood control system so overbuilt it makes regular drainage feel embarrassed.

This isn’t a tunnel.
This isn’t a pipe.
This is an underground cathedral looking flood drain, buried beneath a suburb north of Tokyo.

🧠 The Engineering

• 5 massive vertical shafts, each about 65 metres deep and wide enough to casually drop a small building into

• 6.3 km of tunnels connecting overflowing rivers like some kind of hydrological group chat

• A 177-metre-long pressure control tank supported by 59 concrete columns, each weighing ~500 tonnes

• Pumps capable of moving 200 tons of water per second into a nearby river before Tokyo turns into Atlantis

When heavy rain hits, excess river water is calmly redirected underground, stored, and expelled elsewhere, all while the city above continues pretending nothing is happening.

No glass.
No curves.
No “inspired by nature.”

Just concrete, gravity, and engineers refusing to lose.

⚡ Cool Links

⚙️ Engineering & Infrastructure

🤯 The world’s smallest autonomous robot - smaller than a grain of salt, can sense, think, and wiggle around on its own. Your next bridge inspection buddy? Probably not yet, but close..
 

🌉 India is building its tallest cable-stayed bridge high in the Sahyadri mountains as part of the Mumbai–Pune Missing Link - engineering triumph over fog, wind, and gravity.

🎮 Gaming & Indie Update

📣 Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 devs tweet 'Blame the French!' after losing every Game Awards category to Clair Obscur, but it was in good fun: They partied together after

🤖 As triple-A studios embrace gen-AI, one indie dev is reportedly making candidates do live drawing tests to prove their art is real

🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

It's wet, he's a wet dog...

No safety briefing.

No umbrella.

Just Paddy the Apprentice carrying out a rainy site inspection, personally verifying that the ground is wet, the conditions are unacceptable, and the walk must continue anyway.

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

This week’s video is Tingus Goose, a game I am convinced was developed during a medically significant fever.
You grow an 18-metre goose, water people until they sprout necks, click on “tingies” for money, and somehow end up running a goose dating / biology / plumbing simulator.

I spent the entire video asking “What am I playing?” while absolutely refusing to stop playing it.
If you understand what’s happening, I’m worried about you.

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

This week we’re reviewing the Slauerhoffbrug in the Netherlands, a bridge that looked at traditional drawbridges and said, “No.”

Instead of swinging or folding like an architect’s sketchbook, the entire road deck lifts straight up out of the way. No curves, no cables, no artistic suffering, just pure vertical motion and mechanical confidence.

DEngineering Highlights:

• Roadway lifts vertically using hydraulics and counterweights

• Clears tall ships quickly without massive rotating spans

• Compact footprint, perfect for a tight urban canal

• Fewer moving parts than your average “iconic” bridge, which engineers love and architects fear

Architects call it “a bit harsh.”
Engineers call it efficient.

Final Score: 8.6 / 10