Kerbal Space Program

I've heard people rave that this game is fantastic.

You manage a space program, and with the little that I played - you incrementally gain science in order to construct better ships to go further and do better science-y things.  The first few of which are just being able to launch a ship into orbit.

To me it felt heavily like I was about to be managing a spreadsheet of slowly incrementing variables.  Unlocking boosters that are level 2 ... in order to unlock a space module level 3 and stay an extra 3 revolutions for 100 more science points and my first space walk.

There was probably a time for this game to shine, and I'm just playing it at a different point in time.