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!
Read More: Best Sandbox Minimalist Games.
Marble World
Are you reading this to see if you should get this game?
Then congratulations! You probably should.
This game isn’t for everybody, because not everyone would care about a Marble physics simulator, but if you’re reading this - You probably enjoy marble runs enough to consider this a fun toy, in which case - this game definitely is! At least… If you’re willing to learn the controls for it, which are REALLY not intuitive at first but you get used to them once you learn them (also, the game’s still in early access and improving the controls is on the dev’s to do list)
– Real player with 155.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best Sandbox Physics Games.
Love the game! I’d give 4.5/5. The reason I don’t give a full 5 stars, is because its only for windows. I understand that things are weird, but maybe making it available to mac would really be cool and add more of the community to the game.
EDIT: I don’t update my rating, still 4.5/5. I know this is still early access, but it would be pretty nice if something like “Gates” were added, letting you stop all your marbles at specific areas. Another thing that would be cool would be a sort of “trash block”, where once a marble touches it, its automatically deleted. Again, this game is still early access, so it doesn’t matter for how long it takes, as long as it can be done.
– Real player with 28.2 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
Read More: Best Sandbox Automation Games.
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
Logic World
Looks like a good start.
The first thing I would mention, is that this game is about building logic circuits, using logic gates. If you don’t know what an AND gate is, you probably need to do a bit of reading /videos before playing.
My “hello world” (first project) suggestion for new players, is to build a half adder circuit. A half adder is one of the first multi-gate circuits you learn when learning digital electronics. If you understand how computers add, you understand quite a lot more than many people about how computers work.
– Real player with 276.9 hrs in game
LogicWorld is a boolean logic simulator in 3D with “game” marketing/usage controls.
So pack your backpack with some knowledge or a lot of curiosity.
And in time, we will also get built-in tutorials about boolean logic - looking forward to them.
It is also early access!
Means yes, there are a hell lot of bugs! But that is normal for most indie games.
And you can rely on the developers to fix the bugs within reasonable time.
The game has an awesome community (mostly on Discord). If you ignore some slang, it is very wholesome and helpful.
– Real player with 241.8 hrs in game
Marble Run
With over three years on Steam, 1,250+ games, and well over 100 reviews, there is no doubt in my mind that I have NEVER worked so hard to like a Steam game as I have with Marble Run. Additionally, I have over 75 hours (some offline) in a desperate effort to find that there may be a future for this game, based on a concept that I cherish. Currently, there simply is not.
Had Marble Run been released as Early Access, this review would not be written (now, at least.) Had it been released in a complete state, or had the DEV shown more interest in improvement, I would have waited, then almost certainly praised Marble Run. (And I did buy it for two interested friends.) But nothing that has “burst full grown from the head of Zeus” (so to speak) should ever be so flawed, so incomplete, and so (seemingly) resistant to suggestion. All indications (beyond one change) are that this game may as well be chiseled in granite, as is.
– Real player with 80.6 hrs in game
Thanks for the cool game!
There are some flaws, but overall the game is very interesting. At first I could not guess as to raise the gun up. But by changing the angle of tilt I was able to send the ball across the face of the cube. It’s good exercise for the brain.
Please turn buttons items.
Good luck in the game’s development!
– Real player with 17.0 hrs in game
RISING BONEvR
The game focuses on physical interaction with the world, and how dynamic everything in it. Most of the tasks can be solved in different ways. E.g: to pass the closed door, you can find a key, or destroy the padlock, or break the window nearby, or find the underpass
Each circle of hell is a level where you need to climb as high as possible at any cost. Haron will take you to next level. If desired, you can find funny or creepy secrets, part of story, or collectible items
–——————-
See
See is a logic puzzle game based on the C programming language.
A basic knowledge of programming and the C language is highly recommended!
Start with an empty program and then add lines of C source code. No typing! Just select a line of source code from those provided. As a sandbox game, different programs can be experimented with and run multiple times to test results. Supports writing and calling functions.
A few functions have been included for displaying results and earning points in the game.
Infinite Progression
I have no issues running the game. Don’t listen to those low TPS homers giving negative reviews. This game is oddly satisfying. Cheap, fun, simple, idler.
– Real player with 52.6 hrs in game
Crashes on loading a game, even if you create a new game, play for 2 minutes and try and load.
Gameplay seems completely uninteresting as well from the hour I’ve actually played.
– Real player with 4.0 hrs in game
Block Motion
if you like infinifactory, then just buy this beautiful game.
– Real player with 63.1 hrs in game
Good for scratching that Infinifactory itch. Not quite as polished, but brings some new ideas to the table.
– Real player with 47.9 hrs in game
Screeps: World
I have played lots games over the years. have forgotten 95% of them, 4.9% of them i remember due to them being an excellent game and myself enjoying, Paradox games I love but don’t rate as in the top .1%. Only a very rare game has me remembering epic or defining moments that really set that game apart for me. EvE online is one, for creating a sandbox of such freedom, politics, warfare, resource gathering, trade, which all helps to create proper player driven stories.
The other is Screeps….which has given me my most proud moments in any game i have played. The games are of course markedly different but also surprisingly similar. Screeps like EvE has trade, crafting, factories, land ownership, politics/alliances, resource gathering, warfare, but ants instead of ships and where in EvE when u get killed you take a big loss, in Screeps it can mean game over, time to respawn from scratch……again.
– Real player with 3117.3 hrs in game
Note: I am not associated with the developers in any way, I’ve just been playing a lot recently.
Screeps is a game for programmers.
But it is possible for someone without any previous programming experience to learn it with enough dedication, though I recommend at least learning some basics of programming/JavaScript from somewhere like codecademy first. And try the free tutorial before you buy the game (I am still running code that started out based on the tutorial code, 2 months later).
The game has deceptively simple visuals, but a lot of increasingly complex systems that you gain access to as you progress within the game, providing interesting challenges for your programming ability. How complex it ends up getting depends in part on how much of it you end up wanting to automate. Pretty much anything you can do, you can get your code to do for you.
– Real player with 2606.2 hrs in game