![the Sequence [2]](https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1560450/header.jpg)
the Sequence [2]
While I’m just starting this game, I can with 100% confidence say that it’s worth its price.
The puzzle design is brilliant! All tools are very simple, All puzzles fit in a couple of hex cells AND YET they all have very interesting and unique solutions.
And the game is CHALLENGING! It looks like a simple mobile game, but don’t let it decieve you. The solution to a puzzle is almost always not obvious and often requires you to do things differently then you did before.
This game gives me brain juice :з
– Real player with 14.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Puzzle Programming Games.
Good game
I spent a lot of time to play this.
– Real player with 14.0 hrs in game
Charge!
There is a lot of game here for a very low price. 5 hours in and I have barely managed half the levels. The mechanics are good. Charges move consistently, so often a solution is to create a lucky path rather than using control elements. The challenges are quite varied tasking you in different ways. At times it is frustrating and at times rewarding. The graphics are rather crude and simple, music is meh and the interface is acceptable. No bugs or crashes. Runs fine on Linux. My main problem with these types of games, is I find them too short, but this isn’t an issue here. The developers put in a lot of content. The sub-circuits are well made and fit naturally in the game. Overall, it’s a challenging game that should keep you entertained for quite some time for a pittance.
– Real player with 50.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Puzzle Programming Games.
Warp Factory
Really good Zachlike - it’s basically 2D infinifactory with portals.
It’s less optimisation focused than most of Zach’s games, and doesn’t have leaderboards/histograms to compare yourself to other players. Instead, there’s challenge variants on some maps, such as complete in under 250 cycles, or complete without using sensors and conveyors. To me, these are better than just having histograms because they’re chosen to match the level, and optimising every single level for size/time does tend to get a bit samey. (it also means I’m not constantly reminded how inferior my solutions are!)
– Real player with 91.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Puzzle Simulation Games.
Fantastic little automation game. Plenty of puzzles and infinite ways to solve them. Most tasks can be completed with no (or minimal) portal usage, but once you get more comfortable with them you can make some very elegant contraptions. If you’re like me and your brain gets tickled by building and optimizing machines, then this will scratch the itch perfectly. The only thing it’s missing is the ability to record your best scores for parts/size/speed. In Zachtronics games, these scores let you compete against yourself and other people online to make better machines, which makes the game even more fun. If you’re more competitive, the absence of this may be a turn off, but if you have the drive to optimize things yourself or if the act of solving a puzzle is enough to satiate you then it’s fine. Some puzzles also have specific optional limitations that make things more interesting, like asking you to beat a level in a small area or without using sensors. All in all, a great game that stands alongside others like Infinifactory and is absolutely worth your time. I hope it finds the success it deserves.
– Real player with 82.3 hrs in game
Blub Emporium
This game is truly unique, colourful, and bubbly (or I guess you could say blubbly ;))
While playing through this game, the first thing I noticed was the vibe it gave when I was watching the emporium sell, the blubs buying items or sitting down, maybe even playing on an arcade; It is really something else, especially with the soundtrack adding to it; It sounds relaxing and ambient, yet it sounds like there’s a powerful meaning behind every song.
I also find that the factory is super fun! It’s puzzles are very challenging, but very possible; Meaning it has a very nice balance! The Farm has a lot more depth than most would initially expect with how you can harvest items and whatnot, you can even automate some parts of it! :O
– Real player with 186.5 hrs in game
I’ve played a few hours and it’s very fun :)
Really cute aesthetic which is a blast to decorate, a relaxing farm which is super therapeutic, and (my favourite) a really interesting factory which plays just like a puzzle game! (with a ton of potential to improve at, optimise, and experiment with).
This game is a perfect example of being worth more than the sum of it’s parts, and there’s something in it for everyone - it’s not the sort of game I would normally play, but so far I’ve had a blast, and look forward to playing more (THERE IS SO MUCH CONTENT O.O)
– Real player with 157.3 hrs in game
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
The Signal State
Great little Zach-like. If you like this genre of fiddly little programming games, you’ll like this. If you’re not interested in the genre, you won’t.
Pros of this particular game:
+Charming analog aesthetics. The game’s UI feels very “physical” and low-tech in a neat way.
+Minimalist but reasonably interesting story. I’m all about workers seizing the means of production.
+Good soundtrack. Really helps you get into that zen programming mode.
+More accessible than most games in this genre, as difficulty curve is lower. This might be a con for you, if you’re super good at this genre and really want a challenge, but I think difficulty curve is in that sweet spot challenging without feeling like you now have a second job learning an imaginary programming language.
– Real player with 36.4 hrs in game
This game falls short on so many aspects and makes so many dubious design decisions that makes me wonder whether the devs actually know what they’re doing:
- UI/UX:
The main UI, a physical rack representing modules, is just bad, period. Now before you yell blindly, “but node-based programming is the future!”, please note that the game does not feature node-based programming: actual node-based programming would be like Scratch, LabVIEW or Blender nodes. This game’s UI represents specifically DAW skeuomorphism, notably Propellerhead’s Reason. It is also a design decision from the last century, done by nobody else, and being commonly criticized around all the time. Also, DAWs don’t have a million tiny modules like this game.
– Real player with 20.7 hrs in game