As a game? Astrobot is a VERY solid and polished platformer.
But mostly it is the nostalgia and target demographic. If you ever had a PS1 or PS2 growing up then you will have insane amounts of nostalgia for all the costumes and easter eggs while not realizing most are from the late PS3/early PS4 anyway.
So… it is basically a modern Nintendo game. Others do platforming and level design better. But only this has the excessive amount of references to nu-God of War and rare reference to Jumping Flash that makes your heart remember the happy times.
And… even though I see it for what it is, I am not gonna pretend I am above it.
For what it is worth? I think it IS the better game than Balatro (one would hope so since it had a full major studio and platform holder behind it…). But I still think Balatro was THE game of 2024 just for how much it pervaded everything and everyone.
These days you can’t really go wrong with any bedslinger for a “first printer” since they are all Ender 3s anyway. That said, I think Teaching Tech just did a video where he talks about his suggested “first printer”. Get a bedslinger, use it for a few years, and then learn what you actually want out of a printer and go from there.
In terms of proprietary software: Many printers use some form of Klipper or Marlin (or can be reflashed to them) as firmware. In terms of a Slicer (what you use to go from model to instructions for your printer), Orcaslicer. Decide if those are FOSS enough for you.
The real issue is creating those models themselves. People will suggest FreeCAD. FreeCAD is great as a second or third modeling tool once you know the basics. But it is HORRIBLE for learning because so many terms and defaults are “different” than every other CAD program out there and the online resources are much more limited and are often referring to five or six major releases ago. The best of the best for a hobbyist is Fusion 360 but that explicitly does not work in Linux. I use OnShape which is web browser based (and all the pitfalls of that) and apparently has a legacy UX-wise going back to a tool I learned in high school.