Other than the sleep part, an awful lot of "survival" genre games work that way. Like ARK Survival Evolved, for instance.
Honestly they do become a chore, because your character is constantly weakening and you die a lot. As you advance in the clothes and tech you can build, you stay alive longer.
But it absolutely is work. You need to harvest X to build Y, so you can unlock the ability to build Z, and then you need to find half a dozen As, Bs and Cs before you can do D, and D takes your character some time in game ...
They become very absorbing and huge time-sinks. What's notable for me is that when you turn the difficulty down, either by reducing the resources needed to build, or reducing time constraints on activities, there's just not much game left there.
Honestly they do become a chore, because your character is constantly weakening and you die a lot. As you advance in the clothes and tech you can build, you stay alive longer.
But it absolutely is work. You need to harvest X to build Y, so you can unlock the ability to build Z, and then you need to find half a dozen As, Bs and Cs before you can do D, and D takes your character some time in game ...
They become very absorbing and huge time-sinks. What's notable for me is that when you turn the difficulty down, either by reducing the resources needed to build, or reducing time constraints on activities, there's just not much game left there.