Coming to Steam Early Access on October 6th, 2016!
Build circuits using a variety of components from different manufacturers, like microcontrollers, memory, logic gates, and LCD screens.
Write code in a compact and powerful assembly language where every instruction can be conditionally executed.
Read the manual, which includes over 30 pages of original datasheets, reference guides, and technical diagrams (included as a PDF, with a physical version available for purchase separately).
Get to know the colorful cast of characters at your new employer, 深圳龙腾科技有限公司 (Shenzhen Longteng Electronics Co., Ltd.), located in the electronics capital of the world.
Get creative! Design and test your own games and devices in the sandbox.
Engineering is hard! Take a break and play a brand-new twist on solitaire.
Awesome, now that's a limited edition I can get behind. I'm wondering if Zach Barth is still the one behind Zachtronics, seeing as how he's been at Valve for a while now?
Awesome, now that's a limited edition I can get behind. I'm wondering if Zach Barth is still the one behind Zachtronics, seeing as how he's been at Valve for a while now?
This looks super awesome and will very likely be a great game and I will not buy it because I am too dumb to ever come close to finishing any of his games.
I would certainly hope so, but I dunno if there's any weird non-compete thing from Valve, or if he's actually still even there, or y'know whatever else! ¯\_(ツ_/¯
I have absolutely loved every Zachtronics game I've played so this is a no-brainer instabuy for me. Going by what the trailer shows, it kinda looks like it could be to TIS-100 what Infinifactory was to SpaceChem, if that makes any sense.
Oh and that Limited Edition looks pretty sweet. I'd definitely go for it if I wasn't so broke right now.
Really really want the limited edition but £42 is a pretty big ask. I assume that mystery envelope has a patch in it so I'm not sure how much value there is. I'll still probably get it.
None of the Zachtronics games have captured me quite as much as SpaceChem, but I fucking love that there's a developer out there making stuff like this that no one else in the world is making.
You joke but one of his earlier freeware games is basically hand designing a grid of NP gates to design logic chips like quad inverters, multiplexors etc:
You joke but one of his earlier freeware games is basically hand designing a grid of NP gates to design logic chips like quad inverters, multiplexors etc:
Oh wow, this is just LogicWorks: The Game: Soviet Edition, but building your own gates. Awesome! Guess I should check out the other freeware stuff as well.
You joke but one of his earlier freeware games is basically hand designing a grid of NP gates to design logic chips like quad inverters, multiplexors etc:
I'm an idiot, that looks way too intense and the UI doesn't look inviting. I only just got through Quadrilateral Cowboy. If I got good at this, I'd just become a programmer lol. Then again, I've never played a Zachtronics game.
I'd really recommend checking out Infinifactory, if you haven't already. The limiting factor in most Zachtronics games tends to be working space, and most of the levels in Infinifactory tend to be really, really big, so you've got lots of room to be as sloppy as you like. It wasn't until near the end of the game that I started to feel like I had to really focus on being more efficient with my solutions.
I'm an idiot, that looks way too intense and the UI doesn't look inviting. I only just got through Quadrilateral Cowboy. If I got good at this, I'd just become a programmer lol. Then again, I've never played a Zachtronics game.
Seriously, try Infinifactory. It's by far the gentlest of his three retail "sandbox puzzlers". Between the large levels, the lack of any real failure states beyond just not making the thing right (as opposed to SpaceChem's limits on atom collision and stuff leaving the level), and the much gentler progression of level difficulty (I was concerned that the game was going to be way too easy until what turned out to be about halfway in), it's the best place to start.
I'm an idiot, that looks way too intense and the UI doesn't look inviting. I only just got through Quadrilateral Cowboy. If I got good at this, I'd just become a programmer lol. Then again, I've never played a Zachtronics game.
Seriously, try Infinifactory. It's by far the gentlest of his three retail "sandbox puzzlers". Between the large levels, the lack of any real failure states beyond just not making the thing right (as opposed to SpaceChem's limits on atom collision and stuff leaving the level), and the much gentler progression of level difficulty (I was concerned that the game was going to be way too easy until what turned out to be about halfway in), it's the best place to start.
Infinifactory is probably my least favourite of their "major" puzzle games. Mostly because I got it on PS4 and it's a pain in the arse to play, I think. Don't really recommend a controller on this one.
I just love the purity of SpaceChem. Every level being essentially the same but a slight change in objective making everything so different.
Infinifactory is probably my least favourite of their "major" puzzle games. Mostly because I got it on PS4 and it's a pain in the arse to play, I think. Don't really recommend a controller on this one.
I just love the purity of SpaceChem. Every level being essentially the same but a slight change in objective making everything so different.
What about it's difficult on the PS4? I only played it on the PC, and it seems like fairly standard FPS controls, but with flying. The only thing I could imagine being tricky is the block selection. On the PC, I had all the number keys set up, and with those plus the modifier for selecting their "opposite" (conveyor/upside down conveyor, clockwise/counterclockwise rotator, etc), I never had to go to the block selection screen.
Of course, that bit me in the ass when the game introduced a new block in the last set of levels and doesn't tell you, so I spent hours banging my head against a puzzle that's almost certainly impossible without the use of the new block.
And yeah, I don't know if I'd say that Infinifactory is a better game, it's just that it's a lot more accessible. SpaceChem starts out simple but gets hard FAST.
I'd say while Infinifactory doesn't have that same level of purity, it does a neat job at throwing you some really interesting curveballs in the second half of the game, stuff like
having to feed an already assembled object into a teleporter and reassemble it on the receiving end, or assembling large objects not from individual blocks, but a continuous extruded block of raw material
.
I'm an idiot, that looks way too intense and the UI doesn't look inviting. I only just got through Quadrilateral Cowboy. If I got good at this, I'd just become a programmer lol. Then again, I've never played a Zachtronics game.
I like that these exist, but I haven't even tried TIS-100 yet. The latest Zachtronics games feel so close to my real life work that I almost hesitate to play them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just funny.
What about it's difficult on the PS4? I only played it on the PC, and it seems like fairly standard FPS controls, but with flying. The only thing I could imagine being tricky is the block selection. On the PC, I had all the number keys set up, and with those plus the modifier for selecting their "opposite" (conveyor/upside down conveyor, clockwise/counterclockwise rotator, etc), I never had to go to the block selection screen.
Block selection was my issue, mainly. It was awkward.
But yeah, I could just never get my head around the controls for some reason. Constantly deleting blocks by mistake instead of placing them was another thing I was good at. And when you delete the wrong block, it can be very awkward to go back to the menu and re-select it and spin it the right way and then go back to the block you were using to begin with.
It was probably me more than the game at fault, but I definitely enjoyed SpaceChem because it was basically impossible to go wrong with the controls there.
I liked the more visual nature of Infinifactory, it was much easier to keep the system state in mind and remember which step the various components will be on at that tick than in something like SpaceChem. After all you can't do properly structured programming anyway and everything becomes a big mess so you need to be at least capable of running the logic in your head.
Given how each Zachtronics game comes closer and closer to actual programming, I think he should just make an ARM compiler next.
Just add some optimization problems, few achievements and presto.
Given how each Zachtronics game comes closer and closer to actual programming, I think he should just make an ARM compiler next.
Just add some optimization problems, few achievements and presto.
_/¯
