If you're a nerd of a certain age, I apologise - that headline has probably caused you to rupture something in the wizened meat of your lower back, or the swampy catacombs of your cerebellum. If you aren't, let me explain: Zachtronics are or were a US-based video game developer founded in 2000 by Zach Barth, who put the studio on ice in 2022 and now works at Coincidence Games, a "flexible business framework" involving many former Zachtronics devs. Zachtronics have thrown together all kinds of things - Infiniminer, a block-builder from 2009, is probably the single greatest individual influence on Minecraft, while Eliza is a tremendous visual novel about AI chatbots and labour politics. But if there's a type of game they're known for, it's engineering puzzles and factory games.
]]>There it is, the trans-planetary pipeline. One long tube of metal scarring a rural alien planet. It brings coal and water to my power stations, and electricity to my factories. It has taken a day of planning, construction and pumping. Now, the pipeline stands before me, a snaking behemoth of energy consumption. Suddenly, a thought comes. Why didn't I just build coal stations next to the vein? I could have stretched a cheap wire across the planet, instead of a kilometre-long death pipe.
This is Satisfactory, a cracking first-person factory-builder that's been in early access on Epic for a while. It's coming to Steam today, so RPS management dispatched me to inspect the game's machinery and ruin the extraterrestrial idyll with smog and incompetence. They sent the right person.
]]>It is so likeZach to release a Zachlike (just a Zach to his friends) about creating drugs in a small Romanian apartment. Molek-Syntez is now squatting on early access, trying to hook you in with the good stuff as you program your molecular synthesiser. Your goal is to turn chemicals into medicines and other substances with "various pharmacological effects".
]]>Zach-like, the book about Zachlikes by Zach Barth, creator of the genre, is now free albeit notably less papery now. Zachtronics's previously Kickstarter-exclusive book was a collection of design documents from the creator of Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Infinifactory and many more, showing just how he engineers his puzzles. Now anyone can read a digital version for free, and it comes bundled with a pile of his early browser games, unreleased prototypes, and even a card game if you've got printer ink to burn. Grab it free on Steam. I feel smarter just having it on my PC.
]]>I reckon most of the RPS Treehouse gang love us some Zachlikes, since well before Alice Prime coined the term in 2016 in reference to Shenzhen I/O. Puzzlemeister Zach Barth likes the term too, as he's borrowed it for the title of his book. Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter (500% funded in one day), Zach-Like shows the workings and the processes behind his practical puzzlers. There's design docs for his major games, sketches and documents for some that never got made and some early design exercises. There's even some pen-and-paper brainteasers in there, because we're gluttons for punishment.
]]>It’s pretty obvious that the excellent Exapunks is a game about hacking. Specifically, it’s a game about programming viruses and sending them into networked systems to monkey around with data, set in a great alternative 90s Wired cyberworld of PC cases flashed with black and red decals and zines set in Apple Garamond.
For its makers, though, Exapunks is a game about limitations. Its format is the result of hard decisions about how much space you get to write your code in, how much freedom you get to solve its puzzles, and how it’s presented on your screen. And even now, creative director Zach Barth isn’t totally sure he and his team got it right.
]]>A proposal: puzzles games focused on assembling or programming - or both - should be called Zachlikes. Following the atom-assembling SpaceChem, production line 'em up Infinifactory, and the computer-programming TIS-100, Zach Barth and his Zachtronics have announced a new Zachlike. SHENZHEN I/O [official site] will combine assembling and programming to build circuits from components and then write code for them. It's due to hit Steam Early Access in October and, for now, you can check it out in this wee announcement trailer:
]]>SpaceChem and Infinifactory creator Zach Barth has released his latest thing-making puzzle game, which sits somewhere between fiddling with chemistry and building automated factories. TIS-100 [official site] is an assembly programming puzzler, having you literally learn and write code to fix up corrupted code in the mysterious eponymous '80s computer. Yes, you do need to learn and write the TIS-100's assembly code. Computers are puzzles!
After a seven-week stretch in Steam Early Access, TIS-100 properly launched yesterday.
]]>After having folks design molecules in SpaceChem and automated plants in Infinifactory, Zachtronics are back with another puzzle game of complex systems. What comes after atoms and factories, the whole dang universe? The multiverse? Nah, you write assembly code.
Today Zachtronics both announced and (sort of) released TIS-100 [official site], a game about rewriting corrupted code to fix a fictional '80s computer. It's on on Steam Early Access now for £4.49. My prediction: their next game after this will be to literally program SpaceChem.
]]>Zachtronics has linked the SpaceChem molecule to the Infiniminer molecule to create and announce their new game: Infinifactory. It's "Like SpaceChem... In 3D!" says the site, which sounds like a very good thing when you consider that SpaceChem broke the brains and captured the hearts of just about everyone at RPS who played it.
There's only a little information about this new game, but it's about designing and running factories and optimising them via histograms just as before, but now you'll be doing it in "exotic alien locales" with a "next-generation block engine". Alright. It's due in Early Access later this year.
]]>Now, let's be clear. When I say "Hey, Sokobond has been out since September but now it's on Steam," I don't mean to imply that you should refuse to buy games not on Steam, and I don't want to encourage people who do. But a game being on Steam always draws more attention, and launching on Steam can reintroduce it to a larger audience. A Sokoban-y puzzler shifting and bonding atoms to form chemical compounds is a quiet and unassuming sort of game, after all. But a good one.
Hey, Sokobond has been out since September but now it's on Steam.
]]>We have, in the past, said some very nice things about brainosaurusly brilliant puzzler SpaceChem. For instance, things like "straight up genius." Also, "brainosaurusly brilliant." That's technically the past now. But Zachtronic Industries - booming center of commerce that it/he is - refuses to stick to the straight-and-narrow. Which brings us to Ironclad Tactics, a "real-time, card-based tactics game set in an alternate history Civil War - with steam-powered military robots." To which I reply by gathering a studio audience, teaching them to cry on command, and then having them give a standing ovation for 45 minutes.
]]>After a brief foray into the world of music, the Humble folks are back with their third Android bundle. Which is also a PC, Linux and Mac bundle too. Buy them, and you'll get versions for each. In there this time are BIT.TRIP.BEAT, Fieldrunners, SpaceChem, Uplink and for those who pay above the average, début release Spirits. So that's quite an... wait, what, Uplink's out on Android!
]]>Onlive and the IGF are spooning for a fortnight. The sensual lovers are celebrating the Indie Gaming New Year by giving you access to 30 minute demos of 16 IGF finalists. The alphabetically sexy list of games is: Atom Zombie Smasher, Be Good, Botanicula, Dear Esther, Dustforce, English Country Tune, Frozen Synapse, FTL, Lume, Nitronic Rush, Once Upon a Spacetime, POP, SpaceChem, To the Moon, Toren, and WAY.
]]>As the Advent door creaks open, a pungent smell pours out, causing eyes to water for miles around and entire species of flower to wither into extinction. Sorry about that. Something has clearly gone horribly wrong but we'll just have to try and put it all back together again, step by step, and hope the reaction isn't one of total disappointment.
]]>A new update to SpaceChem has arrived, adding a sandbox mode to the brain-challenging indie wonderpuzzler. I haven't tried it yet because I can feel a vein beginning to throb in my temple as soon as I think about the possibilities. There is a competition to find the best creation and this quote to introduce it doesn't help matters:
I suspect that some people will be building molecular computers, but that certainly doesn’t mean that’s the only thing we’re looking for.
So, they'll be building molecular computers, will they? If I load this up there's a very real chance that it's the last anyone will hear from me until I'm found with my entire face clenched into four square inches of pure concentration as new elements spew catastrophically from my motherboard.
]]>Hopefully this is happier indie price-experimentation news than the below... What began as really little more than pay what you want for one game - that being Frozen Synapse - has been slowly expanding to be some games, as appears to be Humble Bundle trends. You'll be very glad to hear that the very, very good Space Chem is the latest addition, joining Trauma which was bundled in earlier this week. And yes, this works retroactively for people who already bought the FZ bundle. So, whatever you have given or are prepared to give, you'll end up with FZ, SpaceChem and Trauma - and if you beat the average price you also get a package of Frozenbyte games to boot.
]]>For my money, überpuzzler SpaceChem is still the best indie game we've seen in 2011. You can read Wot I Think here, but don't just take my word for it- even renowned X-Men author Kieron Gillen said that it'd been a long time since he'd played something "so obviously genius".
As of this weekend, developer Zachtronics has just upended another frothing beaker of content into the deadly vat of entertainment that is SpaceChem. By which I mean they've updated it. I'm talking Team Fortress 2 tie-in items, I'm talking 12 new levels, I'm even talking about a new level editor and inbuilt sharing options to make sure there'll always be some hateful new puzzle that will paralyse your mind like a King Cobra. Details after the jump.
]]>As long as we're talking superfine indie games, SpaceChem, the finest puzzle game 2011's seen to date (and arguably the finest indie game, too) has arrived on Steam. Anyone who hasn't yet tried the demo (available in Windows, Mac and Linux flavours) should physically drop what they're doing to do so immediately. Yes, even if it's tea. I don't care if it's tea and you're drinking it directly above your child. What's your child doing there! Download this demo!
]]>SpaceChem isn't simply the best indie game 2011's seen so far, it's one of the best puzzle games ever made. If you haven't yet partaken of the demo or my review then you certainly should. The game is predominantly the work of one Zack Barth of Zachtronics Industries, who describes the outfit as such: "In the pursuit of clandestine R&D objectives, Zachtronics Industries accidentally releases games from time to time." I infiltrated his hermetically sealed underground laboratory for a chat.
]]>When I posted about indie puzzler SpaceChem last week, I wondered if we already had one of the year’s best indie games on out hands. Since then I’ve lost many hours to its incredible chemical conundrums, and I’m very excited to tell you Wot I Think.
]]>Indie puzzler SpaceChem saw a quiet release on the 1st of this month, and in the two hours this morning that I spent playing it I'm not sure I stopped smiling. I'll be getting Wot I Think up asap, so for now I'll be brief: this game is incredible. I think we might have just received one of the year's best indie games in the first week of 2011.
]]>Putting the puzzling into puzzle games is SpaceChem. I've just watched the indie game's trailer, and I've absolutely no idea what on Earth it's all about. However, KB who kindly emailed me about it says it does make sense to him. So much so he's able to conclude: "It looks like you actually design circuits or something to accomplish a task, such as combining molecules, I think." Crystal clarity! You can watch the trailer below, for what looks like a genuinely intriguing game, by a developer with the best name I've seen in ages: Zachtronics Industries.
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