7 Billion Humans
This game starts off with a nifty little premise, not terribly unlike that of a genie that has granted all your wishes.
Food for all, energy for all, and a robot workforce to do everyone’s work for them.
And like any story involving a genie granting world changing wishes, there was a catch.
…
Unemployment hit the unprecedented level of 100%.
What did you expect with a robot workforce doing everyone’s work for them?
If this involved a real genie, someone would be wishing for an undo wish. If this were an election year there’d probably be riots. Genies and elections don’t appear to be the solution here, we’re stuck with this problem and need to find a different answer.
– Real player with 365.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming Touch-Friendly Games.
I have not finished, but this game is great.
I played through all of human resource machine, and optimized a lot of the solutions for size and time.
I have written software for over 30 years, mostly paid to do it. And I still found this fun. My software doesn’t result in people walking into shredders when it fails to work, which is a pretty good feature…in a game ;)
I love the added challenge of having to move my workers around the “map” and having to have one set of instructions for all workers. The multiprocessing aspect is great. I have written quite a few deadlocks so far, not on purpose, but it’s a really nice way to visually see deadlocks when multiple people are keeping each other from moving ( yes I know that two people trying to move towards each other will swap.)
– Real player with 52.3 hrs in game
Opus Magnum
Opus Magnum requires you to build different alchemical machines (it got my nomination for the “Most fun with a machine” Steam Award in 2018). Solving a puzzle isn’t difficult (except maybe in some of Fontenelle’s Alchemical Observations), but if you’re like me, you’ll see that your first machine falls short in one or more of the three criteria (cost, speed, compactness) and you won’t proceed until you’ve built a better machine.
So if what you seek is a puzzle game that won’t give you a headache or take too much of your time, Opus Magnum can be that. And if what you seek is a puzzle game that’ll torture your neurons for hours as you strive to optimize your solution—or to find another solution—Opus Magnum can be that, too.
– Real player with 144.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Programming Automation Games.
Clever programming puzzler, with a wonderful visual presentation!
An Opus for your brain
In Opus Magnum you must create a product from ingredients and machinery. You’re an alchemist, and the products resemble molecules. You have to make sure that the atoms are in the correct spot, with the correct bindings between them. To do that, you have infinite space, money (for machines) and time. When you finish the product, these values are recorded, and compared to the other players in a graph, and if any of your Steam friends have played the game, their scores are presented as well. If you want a bigger challenge, you can try to perfect one, or all the scores. I myself mostly went for the cheapest solution, however the fastest provides the biggest challenge. When you can see scores after the puzzle is complete, and you see best score, it stimulates to all least equal that score!
– Real player with 76.0 hrs in game
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 Adventure 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
EXAPUNKS
The best “Zach-like” game yet. Even if it is by Zach.
Another excellent puzzle game from Zachtronics. If you’ve never played a game like this before, this is an open-ended puzzle game. By “open-ended” I mean there is a problem you are trying to solve, and you are given tools (in this case a programming language for what appears to be tiny robots) to solve it as you choose. You build a solution to the presented problem. You win if the solution works but how you get to a working solution is up to you. There are limits to your freedom both by the language and what the “little robots” can accomplish at one time. The puzzle here revolves around writing little program fragments that unfold through parallelization into pretty impressive results. It is a complete programming language (although a very simple one) and even has a little test-bed where you can make your own creation without a specific goal.
– Real player with 107.5 hrs in game
The first Zachtronic game I found myself being able to complete and with extremely minimal help, more so due to that some puzzles are difficult to understand rather than writing the code itself. Even though the game does get hard, it does an excellent job of preparing you for the difficulty ahead. Even without any programming knowledge, you’ll be able to overcome the challenges this game poses. You can always see the exact end state the game wants you to leave the board in at any time, which serves as an excellent guide in what you’re meant to do.
– Real player with 87.6 hrs in game
CyberRebeat -The Fifth Domain of Warfare-
I’m a huge enthusiast for the cyperpunk genre, and a premise this unique at $5 was hard to pass up. I definitely enjoyed my time with CyberRebeat and would recommend it to anyone who find its premise or subject matter interesting, especially if you find it on sale like I did. However, it’s also important to note that, as a VN itself, its production quality is considerably underwhelming (though it thankfully did not deter my enjoyment as much as it may others).
Let’s start with the good though: The story is lengthy and very engaging. I found myself hooked from beginning to end and wanting more after the credits rolled. The characters and their designs are also a plus: I felt the characters were very well-rounded, not pulling too much (or too little) from their personality traits or backstories to leave a lasting impression on the reader. Background art doesn’t wow much but gets the job done and, similarly, the BGM is also enjoyable despite a relatively short track list (an OST release would be a nice bonus).
– Real player with 24.3 hrs in game
Video review (including score):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezTIrfJlKSQ
The rundown:
Pros:
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Good character designs
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Language-switching feature
Cons:
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Barebones settings menu
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Lack of keyboard controls
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Text issues
This visual novel is a rather odd release. On one hand, it is a VN about hackers and the world they live in, a concept rarely touched on in VNs. On the other, it is a freeware title that is still available to download on the developer’s website, although without the English translation. The game may have some good art, but it definitely shows signs of being a freeware title, and not in a good way.
– Real player with 17.1 hrs in game
Prime Mover
Prime Mover is a deceptive game. Despite the charming and simple graphics style, or even the initially simple mechanics, this is a devilishly hard game. This is part of the ‘Zachlike’ genre of puzzle games: freeform puzzles based on constructing machines to turn inputs into outputs. Your tools here are simpler than any other in this genre, yet from this you construct elaborate and complicated machines whose functions may at first seem impossible to reproduce.
This outward simplicity is its initial appeal, but also its greatest weakness. Something that may have taken a few lines of code in a Zachtronics game is now much more laborious to construct, but that brings with it its own rewards. After completing a long, arduous puzzle brick by brick, you can look back and watch as your machine comes to life, remembering all the toil that went into its design.
– Real player with 351.0 hrs in game
This is one of my favorite games of all time. To say that I was addicted for a period of time would be an understatement.
This game is often compared to Zachtronics games such as Shenzhen IO or Opus Magnum, but what this game has that those games lack is seriously grand scale.
The incredible complexity of the kinds of things you will end up building in this game (with impressively simple components) is on another level.
The game starts with several very simple tutorial levels to introduce you to each component.
– Real player with 153.7 hrs in game
SpaceChem
What is SpaceChem?
SpaceChem is a chemistry-themed programming puzzle game (no actual chemistry or programming knowledge required).
Spacechem is moving stuff from one side of the screen to the other while rearranging it a bit.
Spacechem isn’t finding the unique solution, it’s creating your unique solution.
Spacechem is the elegance of a brilliantly simple solution.
Spacechem is the elegance of a solution you know is a terrible wall of spaghetti, but it’s your wall of spaghetti, dammit!
– Real player with 2677.8 hrs in game
When I first read about the puzzle games by Zachtronics, the promises were to good for mathematics and IT affectionate people like I consider myself so that I soon had to buy one, I didn’t wait for a sale and took SpaceChem for the simple reason of being one of the older and therefore cheaper games, Never would I have expected to play it THAT much.
After 90 hours of gameplay, which I had in less than 3 weeks, I did all the challenges, optimized some solutions in a battle with a friend and also did some of the community levels from “ResearchNet”, but I was stuck at the level “Omega-Pseudoethyne” on the next to last planet. There was just so much logic to cram into two reactors, that I tried and tried but couldn’t come up with the right approach. I watched some solutions on Youtube, but was fortunately to proud to just copy one. After putting the game aside for a few months, I tried it again and did it. The feeling of success was immense, even though the statistics that can be seen in a histogram after each level were bad.
– Real player with 137.2 hrs in game
SHENZHEN I/O
10/10
I had a lot of spare time over a 4 day period and 40+ hours of that time went into this game alone, nothing can describe enough how amazing this game is. The core of this game can be summed up with the phrase ‘fun embedded electronics programming’, it’s not overly complicated but will also pose a challenge to those out there who love solving puzzles or optimising code.
The game is simple to start playing, you are placed onto a dashboard with 2 main buttons ‘conceptMAIL’ and ‘Datasheets’. Your first email will ask you to read through the ‘Datasheets’ which is a printable PDF ( you don’t have to print it, but it does make referencing easier ), it’s a fairly short read and is something you can come back to if you’ve any queries or is required for your project. Once you’re finished, you can start your first lot of puzzles, which eases you into the UI and teaches you the basic principles of I/O control.
– Real player with 80.3 hrs in game
You may be wondering why I’m thumbing down a game I’ve spent over 70 hours playing. I did enjoy the game, but I simply cannot recommend it to anyone except the most hardcore fans of Zachtronics' other games. And Shenzhen I/O is the only Zachtronics game which I’ve had no desire to replay.
My biggest complaint is the size of the boards. They are unfairly small.
In Zach’s other games, constantly adding and testing parts is how I would work my way through the logic of the puzzle, step by step. You could make a big messy solution at first, and then worry about optimizing it later. But Shenzhen I/O actively discourages you from playing this way, especially after the first campaign is over. There is simply not enough room on the later boards to reasonably work with.
– Real player with 77.9 hrs in game
Human Resource Machine
That was a blast! It was quite refreshing to play a less-than-hardcore programming puzzler for once.
You new job is at an old-timey skyscraper. Since computers haven’t been invented yet, the engineers solve problems by running letters and numbers around on tiled floors. Given an inbox full of stuff, your task is to write a small set of instructions that give the bosses exactly what they want, in the precise order they want it.
What the game doesn’t explicitly tell you is that you’re writing some of the simplest useful algorithms in assembly code, such as multiplication, sorting, and alphabetizing, using logic that’s very similar to what you’d use if you were doing it for real. And it’s all presented in a clean, responsive interface and Tomorrow Corporation’s signature creepy cartoon artstyle. It does a wonderful job of presenting the art of writing algorithms as a series of simple, elegant puzzles.
– Real player with 37.1 hrs in game
A small puzzle game based on the basic math understanding and the very basic programming commands which you’ll be using to solve the riddles. Plays quite nice, but gets a bit over-the-head tedious in the long run, thanks to the late game process, where you need to put in motion 50-100 strokes of code (and maybe several hundreds of iterations) to get the work done, thanks to the lack of program commands. But that is only true about the latest stages. At the start, the game is really nice, and it is still quite nice till the end despite the amount of the codework you have to do with so little tools as you get there.
– Real player with 28.0 hrs in game
Rogue Bit
Very awesome unique game! Had a greate pleasure solving those assembler puzzles. I wish it lasted a lot longer: completed it on Switch pretty quickly, just decided to buy in Steam to express my delight to the author and also to play in the level editor, which is missing on Switch. I have lots of ideas of my own puzzles to implement on this mechanic :)
As for the final recommendation, I think not everybody will like such game. If you are a programmer of some kind, I think you will certainly like it, but if you are completely unfamiliar with coding and related stuff, such as computer architecture and binary logic, you’ll probably not highly appreciate it. But it definitely deserves a like from me ;)
– Real player with 10.7 hrs in game
Amazingly well done! The cuteness of the single bit, all alone inside the
giant machine, trying desperately to escape using only its power to XOR
with other memory (without accidentally wiping itself out), as you valliantly
try to help it escape by making sense of the many arcane and curious
algorithms running a single step each time the little bit tries to move.
I love how screens show the single bit moving into the register and
reappearing elsewhere in the vast memory after the instruction.
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game