Former indie puzzle specialists Zachtronics are releasing another game despite having closed their doors earlier this year. It’s a collection of their many minigame interpretations of the classic single-player card game, solitaire. The Zachtronics Solitaire Collection releases on Steam on September 6th, and adds a new version themed around tarot decks. Each version of the card game has been updated with 4K graphics. Have a sneaky peek at the trailer below.
]]>Two more games hit Game Pass today, one oldie-but-goodie and one newie. The oldie is Shenzhen I/O, an excellent Zachtronics puzzle game from 2016 where you design circuits and program hardware. The newie is Turbo Golf Racing, which looks like Rocket League for minigolf and is hitting Game Pass on the very day it launches. Shenzhen is absolutely worth a go if you enjoy Zachlike puzzlers, and Turbo Golf looks like one of those "could be fun, sure I'll give it a try" Game Pass games.
]]>After over a decade of game development, Last Call BBS is the curtain call for prolific indie studio Zachtronics. Released only a month after the studio casually announced it would be disbanding, Last Call BBS will be the last game the studio releases. It's a bittersweet feeling for fans, but this final game is not just a goodbye, it's a retrospective dive into the studio’s ten-year-plus run making games. It also acts as a reminder of how flipping good Zachtronics is at making puzzle games, even if they do melt my brain into a puddle.
]]>The most prolific indie studio of the last decade are preparing to bow out, with today bringing the early access launch of "the last game from Zachtronics", Last Call BBS. It's a puzzle-o-rama firing up a mysterious old computer to download pirated software from a BBS, letting us play everything from logic puzzles of circuits and flesh to a model kit-building simulation. I've played a wee bit and am keen to explore more, even as someone who is the absolute worst at Zachlikes.
]]>Infinifactory developers Zachtronics have revealed what they say is their last game, Last Call BBS. It’s a compilation of eight smaller games, some new and some reworked elements of previous games. These range from assembling Gundam-esque models to the tile-matching from Exapunks, now with an added single–player campaign. Of course, there’s two solitaire games thrown in for good measure too. Check out Zachtronics’ last hurrah in the trailer below.
]]>Möbius Front '83 is a wargame set in the mid-eighties in a world where the USA must defend itself from an America from an alternate timeline - which weirdly sounds a bit like the plot to 2021 so far. But, if you're tired of fighting America as America, you're in luck. Today, Zachtronics added multiplayer so you can battle your pals as the Soviet Army now.
]]>The fiends behind puzzle games including Opus Magnum and Shenzhen I/O have released a free competitive multiplayer solitaire game, named Nerts! Online. They'd played this version of the card game in their office, then after the pandemic hit they made a digital version, which they're now sharing with everyone for free on Steam.
]]>It's the mid-80s, and the United States Of America is about to face its most dangerous enemy yet - itself. Out today, Möbius Front '83 is a new tactical wargame from Opus Magnum and Infinifactory developers Zachtronics, a dimension-hopping military strategy romp that sees the puzzle boffins take their shot at a more violent form of problem solving with troops, tanks and attack helicopters.
]]>The minds behind Opus Magnum and Infinifactory are dropping another clever game for ya. Möbius Front '83 is a new strategy game by Zachtronics set in a past where the United States is being invaded by its dark realm self. Möbius Front '83 will launch its turn-based tactical battles in November.
]]>Opus Magnum is the most tactile game I've ever played. Playing it makes me remember last Christmas, when I was given one of those wooden assembly kits where you have to snap together the various wood pieces like a jigsaw to create a three-dimensional sculpture. In my case, it was a little steampunk clock, all interconnected gears and ornate swirls. Turning a gear at the bottom would turn other gears, and the minute and hour hands on the clock face would turn in tandem with the gears.
It was very fulfilling to piece together something so beautiful and functional. But what I remember most about it wasn't the end result. It was the feeling of those wooden pieces snapping perfectly together. Like most people, I'm drawn to tactile things, and the right combination of texture, sound, and resistance can invoke a surprising emotional reaction in me.
]]>It's been a weird, weird year for games. My perspective has been particularly odd and hard to square, as I've now been full time staff here at RPS for nearly six months. Six months! That's ... oh my god, I still haven't extended my rent.
It's quite strange suddenly being able to talk about games in real life without having to apologise, but other than that it's nice. In that time I've played somewhere around 1,200 to 1,300 games (an exact count is impossible for boring reasons), almost all of them little known.
There have been many, many excellent games. There's a refrain you see around the internet sometimes that "this was a bad year for games", and I've honestly never understood it. I lived through the 2000s, people, I remember that wasteland. But this year, even after a solid 2018, has been so replete with interesting things to play that I cannot fathom how to be disappointed with the games. Sure, the industry, the culture, these are often garbage things for garbage people. But the games, man. The gaaames. Don't hold it against them.
So here it is then. It's time for the very best of Unknown Pleasures 2019. The finest of all that we've got through since last year, in a mostly random order.
]]>A chemistry teacher once tried to teach me what a molecule is, but it didn’t stick, thanks to my chronically slippery brain which refuses to retain useful information. Please correct me in the comments below, but as far as I understand the situation, molecules are like atoms but larger and with some fun accessories. If atoms are footballs, let’s say, then molecules are those big nets filled with footballs you see hanging outside shops in seaside towns. Some molecules are good and clump together to form chemicals we like, such as water and sunshine. Other molecules are horrible and conspire to form the things we hate, like bad dreams and dangerous knock-out gases.
]]>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".
]]>Have you played the visual novel Eliza yet? If not, stop what you’re doing and play it pronto. This almost sci-fi visual novel was recently awarded an RPS Bestest Best by Sin, who said, in her review, "if I start talking about how much this game has spoken to me, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop." It's a fascinating, thought provoking game where you play as Evenlyn, a "proxy" for the titular counselling service software. It measures heart rate and key words and things like that, and then generates a counselling script for Evelyn to read. You can get it from Steam(and it just came out on Switch, but that's of no concern to us here).
Matthew Seiji Burns was the writer and director on Eliza. Burns is a Seattle-based writer and musician, and in addition to creating Eliza, he also contributes narrative and music to developer Zachtronics' other games. He's worked in game development for many years in different roles. You may have played, for example, The Writer Will Do Something. But I had the pleasure of asking him about Eliza.
]]>Eliza is a visual novel about Evelyn, a woman starting work as a 'proxy' for the eponymous service. The service is counselling by algorithm. The proxies sit and listen, while clients say whatever they have to say, and the system takes measurements of things like heart rate, vocal stress and such, before analysing keywords used and delivering a reply. You read the script it generates, and nothing more. That's the job.
The game itself is about everything to do with that. Counselling. Crunch in the tech industry. Ethics and isolation and empathy, and Men In Tech. And it's about recovery. You get dialogue options here and there, but until the final act there's not a lot in the way of big decisions. I mulled over those closing decisions for longer than I've thought about many I've made in real life. Indeed, if it seems I'm sticking to the slightly dry facts in this intro, it's because if I start talking about how much this game has spoken to me, I don't know if I'll be able to stop. It is doing so much. I have lost sleep thinking about it. And I am glad.
]]>Here are two things that are currently a bit rubbish: the standard and availability of mental health care, and the quality of AI doing the job of a human. Would applying an AI bandaid do anything to touch the former problem, or make it worse? And is it a problem bad enough to give up a bunch of personal information to tech valley datacentres? These are some of the questions you’ll be able to ponder while playing Eliza, a visual novel set in a world where an algorithm provides counselling to those in need via a human proxy who reads the script they’re provided. It’s about as creepy as it sounds, as you can see from the trailer below.
]]>A friend from the midlands once lamented that she'd always lived there. How absurd it was to live on an island, but directly in the middle of it. I can now say, having lived in two coastal cities, that living on the edge of it is very much the same, except that there are much better chip shops and the rain is more ... oceany.
It is currently hacking it down out there and I don't want to go home in it. Join me once more then, readers, for our regular round up of the best new games on Steam that you'll never see on a billboard. It's Unknown Pleasures.
Gazing wistfully into the deep this week: algorithmic therapy, Scandinavian body horror, and the ol' rotate and thrust.
]]>Zachtronics are so known for puzzle games about building or programming machines, games like Opus Magnum and Shenzhen I/O, that they lend their name to the whole genre: Zachlikes. (And when I say lend I mean I yoinked their name to coin a genre and they kinda rolled with it.) Their next game isn't a Zachlike at all, though it perhaps does dovetail nicely to illustrate consequences of all those gizmos they've had us build and program. Today they announced Eliza, a visual novel about an AI counsellor app and its impact upon people, for good and bad. Huh! Watch the first trailer below.
]]>Cor, kids have it easy nowadays. Sure, they're inheriting a polluted hellhole teetering on the brink of ecological and economic ruin, but look at all the neat games they get to grow up with. Thanks to Zachtronics announcing they're giving away (nearly) all their games to schools, some of them even get to muck about with fabulously inventive puzzle boxes during their pretend workday. Imagine that! Privileged tykes.
]]>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.
]]>If there's three things Zachlikes have become known for, it's programming-inspired puzzling, histograms and animated victory recordings to gloat over on Twitter - now Exapunks has all three. After a brief tour of early access, grungy retro-cyberpunk hacking sim Exapunks is free to rampage across the internet. While no patch notes have rolled out for the official version 1.0 release, a patch a few days ago introduced the animated victory GIFs we all know and love, displaying scores and EXA movements, although not the code within.
]]>Look at you, hacker. No, really look at you, look at that gorgeous scarf. And those sunglasses are simply sublime. I hope your code tampering is as good as your fashion sense, because spidery hacking sim Exapunks is coming out later in October. It’s been in early access, yup, but now it’s jacking out completely. Free from the system, man.
]]>Not everyone can hang with the console cowboys in cyberspace; some of us can merely gaze in wonder and astonishment at what keyboard wizards accomplish in Zachtronics games. But if you're not a kewl enough d00d to hack and program in Exapunks, the latest Zachlike, you can now at least play people's created in-game games for free. Zachtronics last night released the TEC Redshift Player, a free standalone simulation of Exapunk's fictional in-game handheld console. And the way to play Redshift games is cute: you download pictures of cartridges (which magically contain the data) then drag 'em in into the deck.
]]>Matthew Broderick simulator Exapunks got a sizeable update yesterday, adding nine more puzzles to the code scribbling hack ‘em up. Developers Zachtronics are calling this a bonus campaign, since it focuses not on the AI pal who features in the main story, but on the hacker pals who appear in a chatroom between levels. In short, you’ll be helping your hackmates do dodgy stuff. “Like NthDimension getting his driver’s license,” says Zach Barth of Zachtronics, “and hydroponix looking for the truth about the Roswell UFO crash.” That one involves hacking the Department of Defense, naturally.
]]>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.
]]>Johnny Lee Miller simulator sim Exapunks is the newest puzzle game from the makers of Opus Magnum. I’ve already told you how cool and hard it is. But I thought I’d pop by to show you the neat things players are making within this code-drenched alternative 1990s. Y’see, there’s an in-game handheld console called the Red Shift, and since Zachtronics are known for their frighteningly-detailed hacking games, you can program your own games for this Game Boyish device (not to mention other nonsense). Then, if you like, you can send the cartridge to other players.
]]>To borrow a wise Klaxian proverb: It is the nineties and there is time for hacks. Exapunks is the latest hack ‘em up from Zachtronics. It’s set in the year 1997, which is a very pleasing year to say out loud. The same studio gave us the alchemical gadgeteering of Opus Magnum only ten months ago, but they’ve already returned with a programming puzzler that’s got more in common with previous Zachlikes. I’ve been hacking into chocolate factories and university servers for the past week, and I’ve found it as difficult and rewarding as anything that came before. Although, if this is your first glimpse into the Zachtroniverse, it might be overwhelming.
]]>It's time to learn a whole new programming language, and then use it to commit (virtual) crimes. Exapunks, latest from puzzle-creating megabrain Zach Barth (Spacechem, Infinifactory, Opus Magnum, etc), is out today, albeit in early access. In Exapunks, players get to write virtual viruses and set them loose across a strange, alternative (and far more cybepunk) 1990s world to do our sinister bidding. Oh, and hack a bizarre hybrid of Game Boy and Virtual Boy, if you want to really show off.
]]>Exapunks is the next game from prolific puzzle-meister Zach Barth and his little studio Zachtronics, creators of the likes of Opus Magnum, Infinifactory and Spacechem. Set in an alternate 1997, Exapunks is about cyberpunk hacking, programming viruses called EXAs (EXecution Agents) to carry out your will, whether that's tweaking a game on an alt-history Game Boy or robbing a bank. It's hitting early access on August 21st.
]]>What Works And Why is a new monthly column where Gunpoint and Heat Signature designer Tom Francis digs into the design of a game and analyses what makes it good.
Opus Magnum is a puzzle game about designing machines that arrange and combine shiny little atoms to turn lead to gold, and other fanciful alchemy. It's by Zachtronics, whose games follow such a recognised pattern that they've become a genre: the Zachlike. SpaceChem, Infinifactory, Shenzhen IO, and now Opus Magnum all involve designing an automated system to process some given input, and produce some desired output. But it's a particular quirk of this format I want to dive into, and it's one Opus Magnum does especially well: optimisation.
]]>The DRM-free digital game store GOG have reversed a baffling curation decision and started selling Opus Magnum, the wonderful machine-building puzzler from the studio behind Spacechem and Shenzhen I/O. GOG had initially declined to stock the game and gave developers Zachtronics a mysterious explanation that it "did not pass our internal curation system". Given that Opus Magnum is one of the best PC games of 2017 and that GOG already stocked several similar Zachtronics games, y'know, it was weird. With digital stores drawing different lines in the virtuasand over which games they will and won't stock, this stuck out as an unexpected casualty of curation.
]]>The age of machines has begun. I'm not talking about world conquering, human enslaving robots from the Matrix or what have you, nor the warped logic of paperclip-producing AIs. I'm talking about clunky factory lines producing wizard-viagra ('stamina' potions), and cobbled together contraptions that eventually churn out stain-removers. Now that I think about it, those were two unfortunate examples to use next to each other.
What I'm trying to say is that ace puzzler Opus Magnum left early access on Thursday, so you've got no excuse not to jump in and start building machines of your own.
]]>The alchemical puzzler Opus Magnum has a few of us at House RPS scratching our heads and shouting "a-ha!" before giddily sharing our twisted contraptions in GIF form. It's real good, friends. The studio behind it, Zachtronics, is headed by Zach Barth. I spoke to him about the game's machines, his short stint at Valve, and the reasons he sold his own company.
]]>Cowardice is a virtue. So says the team on this week's RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. That's because our theme is "running away" - games that encourage you to flee from danger, or that give you a choice between fight and flight. Adam will run from the soldiers of Arma or the post-apocalyptic antagonists of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Brendan will scarper from poor odds in For Honor or Overwatch, while Alice only pretends to run away in Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, tricking her foes into giving chase before ambushing them like some kind of velociraptor.
]]>We've already seen some amazing contraptions come out of Opus Magnum - someone's even made a computer - but the Opus-est of Magnums might be yet to come. Zachtronics have stuck an additional chapter on to the end of the alchemy-based puzzler's campaign, and it looks hard as hell.
]]>By the laws of the game-o-sphere, a computer made from the marbles and metal of alchemy-based puzzler Opus Magnum almost seems like an inevitability. Alchemy and code fan Peer Backhaus has built a - ahem - "Brainfuck interpreter", which is a real computing term and not something I expected to see in my emails when I came into work this morning.
]]>Opus Magnum is Zachtronics’ best game and you’ll have to extricate me from an impossible web of metal talons if you want to argue otherwise. It's both understandable and open-ended. I spent almost ten hours on a single puzzle last week, not because I couldn’t decipher a solution but because I wanted a better solution. In the end, the stain remover I invented was a terrible, hacky mess. But I was proud of it. Like all of nature’s most wondrous creations, it had 17 arms.
]]>The fever of alchemical engineering has descended on the RPS team like a dank fog. Opus Magnum is the new Zachtronics puzzler that asks you to make some hair gel out of salt and a hangover cure out of marbles. It's really good. We’ve already shown you some mechanical marvels and talked about it on the podcast but since the game includes a “record GIF” button, we wanted to show off three of our own proudest creations. Come see the clockwork beauty of our well-oiled machines.
]]>It's a simple theme this week with the Electronic Wireless Show. We're talking about guilty pleasures - the games that make us feel a wee bit embarrassed but not so much that we won't squirrel away at them while grinning like idiots. Alec feels a bit sheepish bringing his toy steering wheel to work when planning to play American Truck Simulator. Meanwhile, Matt remembers how he enjoyed the passage of time while picking flax in a Runescape field, and Brendan attempts to explain the relaxing sea-based boredom of Sailaway.
We've also been tinkering with alchemical puzzler Opus Magnum from Zachtronics, fiddling with small machines to produce precious metals, hangover cures and the kinds of "stamina potions" you might find spamming up your junk folder. Come listen, guilt-free.
]]>I am raising my head from the alchemy desk to tell you: Opus Magnum is out now and it is good. It's the new puzzle game from Zachtronics which crept up on us this week. This studio’s puzzlers have a definite flavour to them. They’re about fiddling with machines, hacking together a solution out of strange gadgets and mental duct tape before revealing a loudly-ticking device and feeling impossibly proud of yourself. This is no different, except that your end results are flipping gorgeous.
]]>Is there any joy like the humble Zachlike? Don’t answer that. Zach Barth, creator of head-scratchers like Spacechem and SHENZHEN I/O, continues his slow march towards filling the planet earth with intricately complex puzzle games. His development studio has just announced Opus Magnum [official site] a game of dark machinery and darker alchemy in which you must use a “transmutation engine” to create “vital remedies, precious gemstones, deadly weapons, and more”. You will be pleased to learn that it too has a built-in solitaire game.
]]>When I saw that Shenzhen Solitaire - the solitaire minigame spun off from Shenzhen I/O - was out for MS-DOS on floppy disks I'll admit I nearly consigned it to the novelty promo pile along with emails about cassette mix tapes or my friend whose response to new music is always "Yes, but can I listen to it on my Discman?". HOWEVER! It gets more interesting because developers Zachtronics have written up the project as a blog post. I didn't follow all the technicalities, but it was super interesting to know more about the choices the pair made, and the quirks of the systems involved under the hood. I find optimisation techniques fascinating so dirty rectangles discussion was a lovely accompaniment to my cup of tea!
]]>If you've heard folks talk about Shenzhen I/O, you've likely heard them celebrate the fiendish and delightful puzzles of building and programming hardware. You were likely a bit blindsided when they went on to praise its in-universe solitaire game. Well! If Zachlikes are a bit much for you but you do enjoy a nice bit of solitaire, good news: Zachtronics have now released Shenzhen I/O's solitaire separately as a cheap standalone game.
]]>SHENZHEN I/O [official site], the latest Zachlike from the creator of TIS-100 and SpaceChem, today properly launched after six weeks in early access. It's a puzzle game about assembling circuits from components then writing code to drive them, while poring over a manual for help and getting to know your new co-workers a little. SHENZHEN I/O was already a cracking game when Brendan prematurely evaluated it in October but Zachtronics have given it a nice bit of polish since. Along with the usual bug fixes and balance tweaks you'd expect, they've also added new components, including a synthesiser, and oh, a bonus campaign of extra puzzles.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
No, neither have I. Infiniminer was a team-based game in which players competed to collect more minerals than their opponents in a blocky, randomly-generated cavern. But during development in 2009 the source code was leaked by hackers. In the wake of new modified versions, the small community of players that had formed around the game dissolved. The developer made the game open source and shelved the project. Not long afterwards, a man called Notch started work on a little somethin’ somethin’. And it looked a wee bit like Infiniminer…
]]>Every Monday we send Brendan to the special economic zone of early access and task him with increasing the productivity of the people’s republic of videogames. This week, the brain-breaking electronics of SHENZHEN I/O [official site]. Some spoilers included.
Zach Barth of Zachtronics, who is previously responsible for games like SpaceChem and Infinifactory and who is also definitely a robot, unfurled his new electronics-em-ep this month. In SHENZHEN I/O you play an expert who emigrates to China to work for Longteng Electronics Co. Ltd. That means you’ll be building circuits, wiring microprocessors and writing bits of code for a range of increasingly unusual and complicated devices. But you’ll also be learning about your co-workers and delving into an unnerving industrial future that probably already exists.
]]>The creator of SpaceChem, TIS-100, and Infinifactory is back with another making-things-work puzzle game. Zachtronics last night launched SHENZHEN I/O [official site] onto Steam Early Access, letting people have a crack at building circuits from electronic components then program them by writing in an assembly language. Easy peasy! Zachtronics say Shenzhen I/O is already "highly polished and would be perfectly acceptable to release in a traditional fashion" but they're again turning to early access for feedback to make it even better - maybe from you?
]]>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.
]]>Infinifactory [official site] is another thing-making puzzler from SpaceChem chap Zachary Barth, this time going into 3D to set up production lines manufacturing goods for cruel alien overlords. It initially launched incomplete on Steam Early Access in January, though even at the time John was really into it.
Maybe you'd rather wait until it was fully finished before playing yourself. In which case, good news: after five months of updates adding so, so much more, Infinifactory has launched out of Early Access to become a proper released game.
]]>Infinifactory [official site] isn't quite the game it is meant to be just yet, still on Steam Early Access, but that hasn’t stopped our John Walker from really enjoying its brain-twisting twists and turns. To summarize from the alpha preview, this new puzzle title from Zachtronics is very obtuse, very good, and very much something that would benefit from updates - like this one!
]]>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.
]]>Oh my goodness, Infinifactory is difficult.
]]>A new game from Zach Barth is probably something to coo and poke and beam and gawp at, even as an Early Access release. His past games including the Minecraft-inspiring Infiniminer and RPS-pleasing SpaceChem, and his latest looks to combine elements of the two. Infinifactory is a sandbox puzzler about building and optimising production lines to create products to please your alien overlords. They always take a hard line on slacking and slop, alien overlords do.
]]>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.
]]>The American Civil War was a pretty big deal over there, I hear, and Ironclad Tactics poses a profound question about it. What if, instead of all that boring nonsense about bondage and confederacies, it was really all about robots? And what if, for example, the Native Americans had robots too with tomahawks and ting? Wouldn't that be pretty awesome?
The answer is that yes, yes it would.
]]>Handsome alternate history steampunk Civil War card game from the makers of SpaceChem, Ironclad Tactics, is set to appear on Steam on September 18th. But that far off date hasn't stopped them from taking pre-orders that give you rather more than you'd get purchasing on release day. What's this pre-order business all about? Developers Zachtronics explain that the bundle: "contains Ironclad Tactics, the first two add-on campaigns for Ironclad Tactics when they're released, a copy of SpaceChem with the 63 Corvi DLC, and a bunch of other fantastic extras." They do look okay, too.
Oh, and there's a video for you watch in the Confederate South of this post. Take a look.
]]>I won't pretend to understand the complexities of SpaceChem, Zachtronics' chemical puzzler. Not in the guided single-player mode, nor the sandbox that was added to allow a player to complete the computer he was building within the game. With that sandbox came a challenge for players to build “the most awesome sandbox pipeline imaginable”. The winners are almost mocking in their complexity, given that my chemical romance never got beyond first base. Come revel in their ingenuity and marvel at my utter ignorance. I have marked where I lose the ability to comprehend each.
]]>
![קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/honkai-star-rail-bronya-fu-xuan.jpg?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "קודי רכבת סטאר של Honkai [דצמבר 2024]")
