Starfield players are finding a use for all their junk and plundered sandwiches: Rube Goldberg machines

An ominous row of sandwiches perched upon a set of stairs in Starfield.

(Image credit: Bethesda / Muaxh03 on YouTube.)

Starfield can be an inventory management nightmare sometimes. Whenever you make a modification to your ship, the game sends all your loose miscellany to your cargo hold, filling it with junk.

Not to mention it's an open-world RPG—while a lot of the loot really isn't worth snagging, it's hard to swat away that reflex to hoover up every loose book, sandwich and pencil holder. Fortunately, it seems like players are finding a use for all this tat—elaborate Rube Goldberg machines.

The first of these comes from sandwich pirate Muaxh03 on YouTube, who combo'd a pile of books into a football, leading to a row of tasty dominoes. Not sure about the food wastage, though—considering the sheer amount of man-hours and quicksaving that must've gone into arranging all of these, I think we're way past the five-second rule. Maybe the floors are just cleaner in space.

Then there's this monstrosity by Holy Moe which makes use of a whole library of books and several lunch trays to achieve their physics dreams of punting a football at a wall.

While I'm a big fan of the excessive physics experiments, like dropping thousands of potatoes into a cargo hold or this horrifying milk carton avalanche, I can't help but admire the craft here.

It's one thing to spawn a bunch of objects and knock them—it's a whole other ballgame to painstakingly arrange a hundred sandwiches into a perfect line. It's also a Bethesda game tradition—don't believe me? Here's a 17-year-old Oblivion video from the bygone days of 240p. Ahh, simpler times.

Granted, this was all done in the Oblivion construction set—and we won't be getting official mod tools like that for Starfield until 2024. Until then I expect these engines, humbly built of paper and bread, will stay simple. Then again, maybe I shouldn't be underestimating gamers—they can do some truly absurd things with enough time on their hands and determination in their hearts.

Harvey's history with games started when he first begged his parents for a World of Warcraft subscription aged 12, though he's since been cursed with Final Fantasy 14-brain and a huge crush on G'raha Tia. He made his start as a freelancer, writing for websites like Techradar, The Escapist, Dicebreaker, The Gamer, Into the Spine—and of course, PC Gamer. He'll sink his teeth into anything that looks interesting, though he has a soft spot for RPGs, soulslikes, roguelikes, deckbuilders, MMOs, and weird indie titles. He also plays a shelf load of TTRPGs in his offline time. Don't ask him what his favourite system is, he has too many.