Robo Instructus
I’m a noob/amateur at programming. I have had quite an experience with Python programming especially after following guides/tutorials and reading some books. The programming language syntax in this game is easy to pick up, and it reminds me a lot about Python because Python is also a language with easy to pick up/remember syntax.
This is a pretty fun programming based puzzle game so far, with some unique mechanics about the game such as whenever the robot is instructed to go forward, it will move towards the tile but veering towards its right side. Which makes sense because TRIANGLES.
– Real player with 90.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best Singleplayer Robots Games.
This is a hard game, on par with TIS-100, Human Resources Machine 2, and Shenzhen I/O. However, it is hard in a different way from those other games: it poses difficult problems that demand clever algorithms rather than limiting the number of instructions that you can use (TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O) or having to deal with parallel processing (all three). So you may like this game even if you found the other three frustrating. On the other hand, if you found those games to be at the right level of difficulty, you may find this game too easy. As always, your mileage may vary.
– Real player with 54.4 hrs in game
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 Singleplayer Indie 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
Algo Bot
Learn to write efficient code!…if by “efficient” you mean “small,” with no regard for performance. Let me start over:
Learn to write super-inefficient code in the smallest amount of space possible! Enter your commands by easy-to-forget keyboard shortcuts without basic editing functionality, or simply drag and drop them over a weirdly large area with the mouse! Experience the rush of accidentally overwriting a command and trying to remember what it was supposed to do! Revisit completed levels to try to optimize (for size) your old code without the aid of line comments and human-readable function names! Thrill to the story of a helpless yet verbally abusive robot with a heart of gold, and cry at his climactic death scene where his head just kinda falls off!
– Real player with 23.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Singleplayer Indie Games.
I was looking forward to an HD robozzle.
Pros
-
A scenario to keep us motivated
-
Funny jokes
-
Great graphics
Things I notice you may want to be aware
-
only one condition
-
recursion is only used as a way to loop, no level requires an understanding of the stack (in robozzle it is an important trick to be able to count the number of time a condition failed)
The consequence is that levels feel like hardcoding patterns more than writing logic.
This choice is neither good nor bad, maybe they want to keep it simple and achievable for non-coders.
– Real player with 19.4 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
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
Command Line Pilot
| Follow our GROUP and CURATOR for more interesting games and quality reviews!
|
A fusion of card-based programming, 2D puzzle and roguelikes. Turn-Based Combat
The game is not as simple as it looks at first glance. To win the last levels, you will have to keep in mind many combinations of moves and think over your strategy many steps forward. This is a kind of chess, only with robots on planets in space.
– Real player with 124.1 hrs in game
Here’s my video review - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeFMJ7L_EKA - but quite a bit more content has been added since then.
It’s a great little puzzle programming card game! You control your mech by drawing and playing cards such as “Move”, “Rotate”, and “Attack”, each upgraded if you play the same colour. Every mission has it’s own unique goal, not always a combat, but sometimes destroying a certain amount of crystals, defending an area, etc. for a certain amount of turns, and you’re rewarded cogs based on how well you do.
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game
Discord Rich Me! (Custom Rich Presence)
Works great! Easy to use and so far it has basically no bugs. The only thing that needs to be done is add the all the templates.
EDIT:
Now that i have over 1000 hours in Discord Rich Me, I can confidently recommend this program to any user who wants just an extra little touch to there Discord profile. One of the great things about Discord Rich Me is that you just start it, minimise it to your tray, and forget about it. I have Discord Rich Me running 24/7 on a spare Windows 7 Laptop i have thats over 16 years old and there is 0 performance change. The community in the Discord server is friendly and can provide help if you need it. 10/10 program, 100% worth the money.
– Real player with 1948.7 hrs in game
Please understand that Discord Rich Me! is currently in BETA. It’s still missing a ton of features, but they have a lot of things planned according to their discord.
Review
As a very prominent and long time Discord user, Discord Rich Me! provides, as of April 19 2021 (19/04/21) a very straightforward interface, with some helpful (though subtle) guides on what every single textbox function does.
At the very least it provides very basic rich presence functionality, but very much so simplifies all of the painful steps it takes to make a rich presence. I do understand that this is still in beta though, and I will re-review once more features have been added over time.
– Real player with 502.7 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
Learn Programming: Python
Exercises can not be skipped. Answers are also not provided to someone at the end of their rope. To someone new to Python they will go through the exercises and eventually reach one they can not answer. Not answering the question will not allow them to move on.
A solution should be something like question is asked and if the student gets it wrong 5 times in a row. The answer should be provided.
Why? Because if you are a total noob which I assume this game was made for “This game assumes absolutely zero prerequisite background.,” you will eventually get stuck no matter how much you paid attention to the lessons.
– Real player with 68.5 hrs in game
I am not necessarily a beginner to programming but this is a decent educational “game”. Its more of a interactive textbook but I found it useful. I am trying to get a job as a programmer so I am exploring many different resources. This one definitely makes you think and that is a good thing. I feel there is room for improvement and I would love to see more of these types of “games”. I see a lot of potential in this and I feel it could be expanded much further. One thing people need to understand is that is only a resource for learning Python. When you finish it you will most likely still not really know what you are doing but it will edge you in the right direction and allow you to piece things together easier. Once finished you will most likely be able to design a very simple program but to get to a actual payable level you are going to need more then just this and a ton of practice. I do recommend this for beginner programmers and or anyone who has not tried Python before. I have taken classes in other languages and worked with them for a few years but had never worked with Python so I found it interesting. Overall I think its worth the money. Investing in yourself is never a bad idea especially for this price.
– Real player with 29.9 hrs in game
MOLEK-SYNTEZ
To those unfamiliar with Zachtronics' games, MOLEK-SYNTEZ is an open-ended puzzle game.
The goal in each puzzle is to transform or rearrange precursors (inputs) to make another molecule (output).
As usual with these games, there isn’t just one solution. It’s up to you to make one with the tools you’re given.
You can just enjoy making each molecule and be done. It’ll most likely take you a few pleasant hours.
Or, you could go down the rabbit hole…
Because there are many solutions, some will inevitably be better than others. Each solution is rated on 3 categories (metrics), which you can try to optimize. And this is where these games shine, in my opinion. You’re making Aspirin in 360 cycles? Pretty good, but what about that person on your friend list who makes it in 240? How does that work?
– Real player with 168.2 hrs in game
This game is really good if you like complex puzzles that make you use every inch of your brain. One of its faults (or perhaps benefits, depending on who you are) is that it doesn’t really explain anything. You have very little instruction and have to figure it out by yourself. This can be really obnoxious.
This game is a pain in the ass for completionism, but the right kind of pain in the ass. The last ten of the bonus puzzles made me want to scream, but it was so so satisfying to get the final achievement.
– Real player with 38.6 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