ComPressure
One of the best zach-like games to exist thus far; A perfect rendition of simple rules leading to complex interactions. The retro pixel art and story featuring historically accurate rock star scientists lends itself well to a fun and engaging game about building the worlds first analog computer. The developer is active and responsive, adding more content fairly frequently, and the community is already both friendly and competitive.
10/10, would request lewd etchings again
– Real player with 395.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming Automation Games.
First and foremost: This is a positive review.
I’m unable to beat this game however (PEBKAC) though, so I’m going to caution prospective players:
This game is HARD, and the tests in each level are NOT comprehensive, nor will they give the same results when run individually versus the ‘run all tests’ results. It’s VERY possible to make solutions which pass in test-all but fail on every single test when run individually. Chasing the test scores can easily box you into a dead-end solution path.
The test score results are NOT an actual metric for how usable parts you design are, and almost every part is meant to be used later after it’s made, without any clear description of errors compounding or what to watch out for.
– Real player with 16.5 hrs in game
Contraption Maker
I used to like this game. A lot. I won firts place in one of their contests, and second place in another. For which I received reward in the form of steam games. Contraption maker is a great example of a game that never stops growing. Even now, they keep adding new content to it.
But… things havetemporarily changed.
Top Meadow and Game Dev Castle took over the development and publishing of the game, and I get the feeling that they don’t really care about the game itself anymore. They look at things from a rather business perspective which is bad for this type of game’s health. I am talking about DLC packs, and the fact that they ruin this game’s fun of uploading and sharing contraptions, puzzles and mods.
– Real player with 205.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming Automation Games.
If I think about my earliest days of video gaming, back before I got into my classic platformers like Sonic the Hedgehog, the title that stands out to me the most (amidst many education-focused games) was The Incredible Machine. A game that tests your ingenuity to solve puzzles, and your imagination to create them. Many of my fondest gaming memories from those days came from T.I.M. I got this game when it was in alpha, and the fact that I got to play any part in this game’s development, even just by messing around with the parts and reporting bugs, is something truly special to me.
– Real player with 37.8 hrs in game
Dreamjob: Programmer
Dreamjob: Programmer is a super easy and fun way to get you started with programming. With hundreds of missions, each one carefully adjusted to your level of expertise with coding, you will get into the shoes of a real programmer! Soon you will know how to create and monetize enough assets to buy a home, an exclusive yacht, or even a private island! Each place can be decorated by items you buy in a sim-shop and many of them may be enchanted by your code, making them uniquely interactive. As your programming skills keep getting better, you can change your life - earn more money, perform more difficult tasks, and become a real IT guy!
Making a long story short - if you are looking for a good coding learning game, Dreamjob: Programmer is the perfect match!
Learn programming from zero!
Start your adventure with the simplest approach to programming ever created: Visual Scripting Editor. Place and connect the proper blocks to create programs. The concepts you learn here will help you learn real programming in languages like Python, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript, and more! Smooth and fun gameplay in our coding game will make you have a great time while learning.
Gain XP and learn new skills!
Starting with the legendary “Hello world” program, you will solve more and more complex tasks and acquire new skills that will let you understand real programming concepts like:
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Math and logical operations
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Conditional statements
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Loops
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Arrays and dictionaries
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…and many, many more!
Upgrade your hardware
Earn lots of cash by solving more and more prestigious jobs. Upgrade your computer, monitor, mouse, seat, desk, and the whole place you live in! All this to play and learn even more efficiently.
Program anything!
Have a hot coffee every day at 8 AM, program a toaster to give you fresh toasts at 10 AM, and make lights turn red when someone is approaching your home! In Dreamjob: Programmer game you can change the world around you.
Get some actual Python source code working!
Besides solving tasks with the visual editor, you will have the opportunity to try yourself with the actual Python source code. And, by doing so, to launch a rocket to outer space. How cool is that? Our coding learning game has two endpoints - teach you to program and keep you entertained!
Why should you give Dreamjob: Programmer a shot?
In today’s world, the work of a programmer is associated with prestige, performing interesting tasks, and good money. No wonder so many people want to learn to code. After deciding to give it a shot, they often ask themselves - how to start? Buy an expensive course? Enroll in college? Well, there is a much cheaper and easier way. Dreamjob: Programmer will let you understand the world of programming. Thanks to our coding learning game you will understand how it works - starting from simple, basic issues, ending at complex, rewarding tasks.
Dreamjob: Programmer is a programmer’s career sim / code learning game. Inspired by The Sims, Monument Valley, and Minecraft.
Read More: Best Programming Automation Games.
Cadence
Cadence is something different: a hybrid of game and music sandbox. Understanding how to bring these two worlds together has been a quest 8 years in the making. It’s now finally here for you to enjoy.
How you spend your time with Cadence is up to you. Some people will enjoy relaxing with the game and solving levels. Tinkerers will enjoy fiddling with music in the sandbox. The crazy ones will program things we didn’t even know were possible.
Game play
You don’t need a sense of rhythm or a good ear to play Cadence - just your thinking cap and a bit of patience will reward you with gentle zen melodies. Puzzles start simple and build up to complex head-scratchers.
Make some noise
If you’ve tried music production you’ll know it’s intimidating. Cadence’s sandbox mode has been meticulously designed so that “time to first sound” is mere seconds. It doesn’t matter if you’re a composer looking for inspiration or you’ve never made a note of music in your life - Cadence is an entirely new and playful way of interacting with music.
Many are better than one
Cadence goes deep: underneath the game there’s a Turing complete logic system and a host of music production tools for you to explore. What’s possible with Cadence is an open question.
That’s why Steam Workshop is deeply integrated with effortless one-click import:
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play the best community generated levels
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collectively learn new techniques
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show off your proudest creations
CHR$(143)
I started writing this review but got distracted and kept playing it.
Its pretty challenging but learning and overcoming a level gives a good level of satisfaction, but do be prepared to end up sitting on a level for an hour or so trying to learn whats going on slowly revealing all the intricate parts especially on the fog of war levels.
If you enjoy logic puzzles and perhaps a lil logic coding CHR143 is more than worth the asking price.
– Real player with 101.4 hrs in game
CHR$(143) is an absolutely mystifying game. Behind its retro drapery in the style of the Amstrad CPC (a computer both slightly before my time and popular on the wrong continent altogether) is a construct that tears apart the modern rubric for successful games.
The result is something that is equally wondrous and maddening. The sense of discovery experienced here is something unlike anything I have experienced since the original Portal. New gameplay elements will be introduced that will come totally out of left field - once you’re out of those tutorial levels, how will they work, how will they behave, especially in a strange and quirky physics implementation? It will be on you to find out - this game demands you to experiment!
– Real player with 50.4 hrs in game
Infinifactory
Infinifactory is the best puzzle game I’ve ever played. It takes something truly compelling for me to spend hours, sometimes days at the end, perfecting a single puzzle, and yet I have never felt frustrated. This is a game that truly earns the description ‘engaging.’
Everything that happens in this game is because you made it, and you need to have your brain firing on all cylinders to make it through. But fear not, any new players considering this game: the mechanics are easy to approach and you’ll be hooked in no time. Players who have enjoyed any other game by Zachtronics (like Spacechem or TIS-100) or who like similar games with similar mechanics (Factorio, Big Pharma, even the city-builder games by Impressions) will absolutely love Infinifactory, but I think anyone willing to giving Infinifactory a chance will love it too.
– Real player with 574.9 hrs in game
This game puts you in the position of an alien abtuctee that is tasked with manufacturing various constructions from supplied materials for your new masters. Your role is to design and construct the “factory” to make each construction. In order to prove that your process works, you must deliver 10 perfect copies of the requested item to a “scanner” that validates that each copy delivered is correct. As you progress, you are given additional tools, more challenging conditions/restrictions and more complicated items to assemble.
– Real player with 181.1 hrs in game
Mechanica
Still an amazing game!
I am editing this review to reflect how i feel after adding another 120 hours of play time in game and i can tell you that my feelings toward this game have only been reinforced. This game is awesome! The developer has been very vocal with the community and continuously given us updates (both content and where they are at with future updates). Still a very intuitive but complex programming system that is only limited by the player. Since my first review there have been massive updates! I.e Base building, new defenses, enemy types, and so much more! Absolutely worth the 20$
– Real player with 223.4 hrs in game
This game brings THE single feature that would take every game that inspires it to the next level. I love it, I love what it could be if it were developed seriously with a full team. All these “learn to code” “psuedo-games (such as hour-of-code) are failing at the “GAME” part of this. Mechanica has NAILED this. I want this to be fully developed so badly because learning to code is so much easier when driven by necessity, by a problem the coder themselves understand. This game presents situations for the player to have a reason to want to code/program, and then provides a great framework for learning to implement their ideas. This game also brings that magic element that no other game like Satisfactory or Factorio has, the ability to determine how you want a group of machines to work together, and then to implement that idea, the player’s idea, not just putting together blocks of machines in some manner the dev wants you to.
– Real player with 43.0 hrs in game
DevLife
Game is still very raw and incomplete.. After 2hrs, there is not much new to do. It becomes mundane and just clicks before time expires kind of a game.. very little strategy to play. Once you hire all 6 employees most of the commissions are very easy to complete. And once a few own projects are successful, you have enough money to just sit and enjoy..
In the present stage I wouldn’t recommend the game but there is potential.
– Real player with 24.7 hrs in game
I really wanted to love this game, everything about it could’ve been done or handled way better than what it is now, and I wanted to give it a positive review, given that it’s in an early access, and made by a single developer, though I couldn’t.
The Game
DevLife is a game where you somehow end up in a locked time loop, you’ll be pausing the game a lot just so you don’t accidentally miss the “unfair” deadline.
You’re given commissions to complete based on your level, and unlocked components, eventually you’ll be able to do your own commercial projects that will profit you if you’re lucky with the RNG.
– Real player with 6.7 hrs in game
while True: learn()
After finishing the whole game, despite of my strong objections that I’ve written about in my original review (below), I’ve decided to change my review into thumbs up.
It took me some time to analyze my thoughts, and while I still have strong objections about inconsistency of various gameplay mechanics, the game truly has a charm, is well done and doesn’t deserve negative review, even if as a programmer purely analyzing the consistency of the gameplay I’d rate it negatively without a second thought.
– Real player with 30.3 hrs in game
Let me start off by saying that I actually really enjoyed playing the game. The challenges are fun to solve and while they generally were not very difficult, I often found myself going back to old exercises and solving them in different ways.
Nevertheless, with the current state of the game, I cannot recommend it since there are just too many flaws that I cannot overlook even for an early access title.
Many of these are easily fixable,which is why I will go over the major problems one by one so that the developer(s) can consider my feedback.
– Real player with 25.1 hrs in game
Block Machine
Block Machine is a difficult yet poorly explained programming puzzle that combines the joy of doing homework for computer science class with the eerie satisfaction of toying around with Redstone in Minecraft.
In Block Machine, you build machines from blocks (who would have guessed!) to solve a variety of programming tasks. Block Machine’s programming model is unique: Blocks are both code and data, and all computation happens in parallel. Von Neumann would have loved this.
15+ Different Block Types to Explore
How many different ways can you find to use the basic arrow blocks? Or maybe you fancy the charged battery blocks? Wrap your head around the different capabilities and use them to build the smallest and fastest Block Machine.
25+ Challenging levels, ranging from HARD to REALLY HARD
Solve difficult programming puzzles in this Turing tarpit. Can you beat the global highscore in any of the three categories?
A Sandbox mode to mess around to your heart’s content
Build that 1000 block machine your dreamt about last night. Or don’t. It’s a sandbox!