Those games are interesting studies because of the user interface. It's a 3D creation system where the interface is incredibly helpful and creation is fluid. You don't have to line up vertices or objects. It mostly does the right thing for you.
Archimatrix was perhaps the ancestor of those games.
Tiny Brutalism - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49928192 - Oct 2026 (35 comments)
Edit: Bought it and happy with it. Don't know if Geisel is actually possible because it's more guided than that, but I really like how fluid it feels.
I've been building a game for the past 3 months, and I'd really appreciate just a chat with someone who managed to pull it off.