Else Heart.Break()
So many bugs, so little help. You have to coax the game into continuing the storyline. God forbid you didn’t spend five to ten minutes walking back to the hotel to sleep at night, otherwise you might fall asleep before you finish a key plot point action that has roughly a minute-long window to do. The premise seemed fun, but I am having the hardest time even getting the first few things done.
The backpack system is a mess, especially given the fact that you’re going to want to collect every floppy disk you find. There are tons, so you’ll be constantly flipping through them, dropping them places you’ll hopefully remember you dropped them, and potentially rediscovering them later.
– Real player with 56.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming RPG Games.
This game drove me crazy. I finally finished it, but I wouldn’t have been able to without consulting the online forum repeatedly. There is a lot of great potential here, but most of it is wasted. The first thing to realize is that this is not a “programming game”, in the sense that none of the difficult aspects of the game have anything to do with tricky programming puzzles (unlike, say, Zachtronics games). This game is a role-playing point-and-click adventure that happens to feature programming (hacking) as a key component. The game features an in-game programming language called Sprak, which is a pretty simple imperative language that nobody with any programming experience will have any trouble with. However, very little real programming is necessary to progress in the game; usually you just modify tiny snippets of code and then you’re done. (Basically, the game makes you into a script kiddie.) The one difficult aspect of programming in the game is figuring out just which built-in commands are available. The game helps you a bit with this, but every programmable device has a different set of built-in commands, and some critical ones are only found in a few places. But the biggest problem with this game is the plot. The plot progression is wildly uneven, with long stretches where nothing is happening punctuated by short bursts where critical stuff is happening all at once. Plot triggers are very easy to miss, and if you do, you will wander around forever trying to figure out what you should be doing, while none of the in-game characters will talk to you. Worse, many triggers require you to behave in exactly the opposite way that the game suggests you ought to behave, or thwart your expectations in other ways. Contrarily, many things the game suggests you should be doing turn out to be completely unnecessary and a waste of time. The worst part of it, for me, was that the programming part of the game can’t start until you get a hold of something called a “modifier”, and it is by no means easy to do so. I probably played for 20 hours or so before giving up and consulting the forums to find out how to get this absolutely critical piece of equipment, without which the game cannot progress. The best (non-spoiler) advice I can give you is to talk to every person you meet, and keep talking until all possible conversation paths are exhausted. Also, the game world is large enough that it’s very easy to get lost, and although you have a map, it’s pathetically bad, with many important landmarks left off. And when you finally get a modifier, you still aren’t out of the woods. You have to figure out how to join a kind of “resistance” against an evil system, and again, it’s very easy to completely miss the trigger that will get you into this group. Once you do, the game (finally!) starts to take off. This is fun for a while, but nothing you do matters much until the final confrontation happens, which will be glaringly obvious. However (once again!) what you need to do to fix things will not be obvious, so you are left wandering around again while nobody will talk to you, wondering what you should be doing (this seems like a theme here). When you finally realize what you need to do, doing it is quite easy as long as you can get into a particular room. There are floppy disks scattered all around the world that contain hints and clues, as well as code examples that you can learn from. You will need to spend a lot of time looking at these unless you (like me) run out of patience and just consult the online forum, and then you can literally finish the game in five minutes. There are multiple endings: several “you lose” kind of endings and one “you win” ending which is so unsatisfying it feels like you just lost a bit less. To sum up, I think this game had huge potential, but it was ruined by poor execution. I almost can’t fault the developers for this; to do a game like this right requires more resources than a small team can provide. I think in the hands of someone like Valve, with expert writers and large numbers of playtesters, this game could have been something amazing. As it is, it’s more of a proof of concept. (OK, great, concept proved! Now go make a real game!) If you’re going to play this game, save yourself endless frustration and consult the online forums when you get stuck.
– Real player with 51.0 hrs in game
vCoder Labs
In vCoder Hero the virtual world has been infected by a rogue AI — it’s up to you to locate the bugs, hack the system, and rewrite the code to save it! An epic adventure awaits in this educational puzzle-action game.
Build real-world programming mastery while unlocking the secrets of lost dimensions and discovering the depths of your own super-coding-power! Are you ready to become the ultimate vCoder Hero?!
Read More: Best Programming VR Games.
Zero Page
Zero Page is a single-player survival horror puzzle game that dares you to survive the horror of solving puzzles by yourself in space. If that wasn’t horrifying enough, you’re also going to have to solve them on a deserted spaceship using the only piece of equipment that still works: a personal computer from 1981. But with a little bit of BASIC and a lot of high-stakes debugging, you might just live long enough to find out why you’re alone, why you’re in space, why you’re on a dying ship circling an unknown planet, and why that ship wants to kill you.
Back to BASIC
Find out if you’re smart enough to not die in space, armed only with a machine that struggles to count higher than 256 — a highly accurate recreation of a classic 1980s personal computer, complete with floppy discs and a joystick.
A Game About Thinking (The Thinking Man’s Shooting)
Put that laser gun back in your space pants. You’re going to have to program your way out of this problem, by writing code that actually physically changes your environment.
Also a Game About Action (The Action Man’s Thinking)
You won’t just be sitting at an old computer — well, you will, but not fictionally. In addition to programming, you’ll also get your hands dirty resurrecting an ancient spacecraft — patching critical holes, pressing important buttons, and bringing systems back online so they can start keeping you alive again.
Read More: Best Programming Hacking Games.
Algotica Iterations
2.5D logic puzzler with a bit of adventure thrown in. Vivid, colourful graphics and engaging gameplay but spoiled by sloppy execution.
You play as a little robot (I think there are 3 of them but if so they all look the same). You have to plan a route for him along catwalks to hit nodes and reach the exits. You do this by setting a series of actions (forward, backward, turn-left/right, activate, jump, attack…) and then running the program to set him in motion. You keep modifying the program until you get it right, so more often than not you’re running the program over and over, adding new steps to get further each time. You have a limited number of ‘memory cells’ (steps) to reach the exit and I vagely remember something about the less steps the better.
– Real player with 9.9 hrs in game
Despite nice looks, I won’t recommend this game… At least for now. It certainly has a potential, but the execution is quite poor and raw. There are quite a few bugs in the game, which sometimes are irritating and make you restart the level, but nevertheless they aren’t crucial (as in you can still progress through game, because those bugs occur only occasionally). Besides all the bugs, my laptop cooler starts spinning like crazy whenever I run the game. Putting that aside, I wouldn’t say that the UI is that well-thought-out either. By that I mean, for example, that to exit the game, you need to first exit the level, then exit “the room”, and only after that, after you OPEN SETTINGS, you can quit the game. Not the most rational way to do it in my opinion. Another issue is, if for some reason I am to write all the robot’s actions one by one, they all don’t fit in the zone where you have all your commands pinned down! And there is no option in this scenario to scroll down to see what you have in the end of your program! And there’s many, many more of such mistakes.
– Real player with 7.7 hrs in game
Glitchspace
‘Takes out number 50. Multiplies it to 2500. Places Y Vector. Applies force. Jumps on jump pad. Meets God.’
The story is simply your ability to move forward in a giant abstract arena where you’re required to constantly programme red cuboids to do your bidding. This testing zone is made challenging through both the introduction of various programming commands as well as the taking away of them. While the first quarter of the 3 hr game will be just you simply moving, stretching and rotating the direction of various red platforms, the latter two thirds will require you to learn some more slightly complicated commands like trying to find the specific identification number of a cube etc.
– Real player with 16.5 hrs in game
I first played Glitchspace several years ago, when it was in a rather early stage of development. I quite liked it, especially the ways in which I could break the game to do as I wanted. It had a short set of levels, and a nice enough sandbox. At the time, I would have recommended the game.
However, playing it now it has been fully released, I found myself more infuriated than anything else. The biggest frustration for me was the way in which it handled the puzzles. At set points, the game just takes away certain abilities to try and force you to solve a puzzle in a certain way. Not a bad idea in principle, but because of the bizarre difficulty curve it made some of the later puzzles really confusing. I ultimately resorted to a walkthrough, which was disappointing because it turned out it was the final puzzle in the game that I got finally stuck on.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
Jump, Step, Step
A nice educational game.
You control a robot. You don’t have a manual control of it, but you can set a program (a several commands) and it can execute it. So, basically how the computer works.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1518662059
The game is great for children to help them understand how the computer works.
The game is short, it is a plus.
There are a few flaws. You cannot restart the level , it is bad because you can get in endless cycle. Also, there is no way to leave from this cycle.
– Real player with 10.8 hrs in game
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this review, I haven’t completly finished the game.
Jump, Step, Step is an entertaining game with cute graphics. But don’t let the first impression fool you, this game gets really challenging after the first few stages.
The concept is similar to games such as Lightbot. You control a little robot (called Bob) stranded in a world full of dangerous cliffs, spikes and breaking stones. You’ll have to program Bob by clicking together a chain of commands. Bob will faithfully execute your defined commands. If he doesn’t reach the goal, you’ll lose a life (in form of a battery). If you have no lives left, you’ll have to start over at a checkpoint.
– Real player with 6.0 hrs in game
Quadrilateral Cowboy
Quadrilateral Cowboy is a story about having those youthful, exciting, and often dangerous experiences with a really tight-knit group of friends as you journey through life together, and then growing old to reflect fondly on those memories.
It is all very beautiful to experience.
Half the game is a story that unfolds, and the other half is puzzle solving. The tale is quite moving, and the puzzles are very reasonably difficult, and quite rewarding. If you know Chung’s work, you know what to expect as far as the ‘experience’ or flavor. Otherwise, here is a test to gauge if you will like this game. If two of the three apply to you, then I highly recommend you buy it:
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
The game has some great ideas and nice attention to detail, but I felt like it never came together.
A lot of mechanics get introduced and then forgotten. New mechanics replace the old ones instead of building on them. There’s hardly any increase in complexity as you go along.
All the levels are simple and focused on 1 to 2 of the avialable mechanics. The rest is either not used at all or simply taken away from the player, sometimes for 1 mission and other times forever.
Because of all this, the game became way too easy later on. Instead of having puzzles to solve, you just go through the motions. Click this, click that, go here, go there. Some timer here and there. No challenge whatsoever. Not to mention you can ‘cheat’ your way though a lot of the levels.
– Real player with 6.8 hrs in game
OS:Path
Was having fun and it shows great promise, but it is painfully short. - was very frustrated when it ended. Most of my shown playime is waiting for text to appear and afk making my lunch. I would have spent around 15 minutes actually doing something.
– Real player with 2.7 hrs in game
The game is quite short. It’s a really cool idea. The game engine seems solid. I only wish there was more content. The developer has suggested more content, if the game does well enough.
I had issues with the game on my Debian machine. See forum for solutions. The developer has been very responsive.
Ultimately, it’s worth the price, if nothing else to support an good developer.
– Real player with 2.4 hrs in game
Codemancer
Solid puzzle-based programming game.
– Real player with 1.2 hrs in game
This game is VERY COOL.
If you have kids who are interested in coding, this game definitely scratches that itch.
Program your character properly to rescue your dad.
Cute, voice acted, and fun, this is definitely worth a look for the educationally minded.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixwHP724So0
– Real player with 0.7 hrs in game
CodeSpells
I have been in the game since a relatively early alpha and honestly there is no other game quite like it. If you like the ability to truly build things, from the ground up, there is no more impressive game out there.
Now I have to warn you, this is early access:
1. Not all of the abilities that will be in the game are there yet.
2. Multiplayer is not yet there, but is on the way, and oh man am I excited.
3. The developers are working really hard on this and are some of the most communicative developers I have encountered. Just check out the forums. A_lomo is the guy coding all of it and has a significant chunk of the posts there.
– Real player with 175.0 hrs in game
CodeSpells is an interesting and unique game. The power to devise your own magic, limited only by the physical rules of the universe and your own imagination, is a truly unique experience. The art style and music are very charming and draw you into the world from the start.
The first time you wander around and use a simple push spell to launch a little red dinosaur into the sky, you will feel a sense of awe of the possibilities. Then you get a spark of an idea and bring up the spell menu. At first, you may be a little daunted by the Block-based language used to construct the spells. But after some guess and test and a little bit of practice, you will soon be creating all kinds of magic! From jumping on a rock and causing it to float and lift you off the ground, to building structures and terraforming the world around you, to changing the ebb and flow of water around you, to manipulating the elements around to ignite massive fires.
– Real player with 84.7 hrs in game