Picked up Shenzhen I/O during the Automation Fest and I'm having an absolute blast with it. I'm getting into PLC's and microcontrollers IRL at the moment, so this game is scratching a fantastic itch by not having to actually build prototypes physically.

I've looked at TIS-100 and EXAPUNKS, do those games hold up as well?

Also, general Zachtronic games and the likes thread.

>>716139435 (OP)
not a real Zach-like

>>716139576
Literally made by Zach.

>>716139435 (OP)
Shenzhen i/o, exapunks, and opus magnum are my favorites in that order.
I like how shenzhen i/o combines together the programming puzzle and space management aspects of zachlikes
Exapunks has really good presentation and style, a fun difficulty curve, and the puzzles feel very fun to go back and optimize. If you have friends on steam who play you can try to beat their solutions on some of the hacker battle puzzles.

>>716139435 (OP)
Signal state is nice, if the they stop yapping and let you play

A Solitaire Mystery by the Baba is You dev recently came out on Steam.

>>716141068
>pixel cardslop

>>716139435 (OP)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2275490/Kaizen_A_Factory_Story/

>>716139576
it's a programming game with histograms, how the fuck is it not a zachlike

>>716142770
too easy and too short
still happy to see them make games again though

bump

>>716139435 (OP)
i haven't played them much yet but a=b and quantum odyssey strike me as zachlikes. i also like turing complete

>>716143278
I beat Shenzhen I/O and TIS-100 but Kaizen is honestly kinda filtering me. I'm spending half an hour on each puzzle trying to find an elegant optimisation and end up with mediocre histogram results.

best non-zach zach-like I've played is Infinite Turtles

I wish they would buils some kind of meta game layer, for example in a hypothetical sequel to opus magnum you run an alchemy store and have to choose what reactans you supply in response to demand for certain end-products.

>the local hobos want more alchohol, gotta buy more fire element

>>716147224
The main thing that keeps me from playing Zachtronics games is that I don't feel like I can move on from a level until I have an optimized solution.
Solutions aren't difficult but when I'm on the farther back end of the histogram I just feel like a brainlet

>>716148319
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1210320/Potion_Craft_Alchemist_Simulator/
Not a Zachlike at all but potion crafting in this can be accomplished by different means depending on what ingredients you have available so I feel like it kind of meets what you're talking about

>>716147224
i usually just focus on space
time based solutions always hurt my brain and cost optimizing is just cancer

I'm usually a Zachtronics evangelist but I've been weirdly uninterested in Kaizen. I bought it the day it came out but I haven't even booted it up once yet. idk what's wrong with me

>>716147224
Could you do Opus at all? Optimizing here is about physically lining things up like there, even if the rules are different.

>>716150553
It IS a little short and simple. It feels like it's still waiting for a bonus campaign with some kind of new twist (or just difficulty on the level of the last puzzle). Maybe that's just me though.

>>716141068
what the fuck. baba is you is one of the most popular puzzle games in recent memory, and the guy who made it puts out a new game and it has 150 reviews. videogames are so finished.

>>716152031
i think it's just because BiY is better, but maybe people disagree with me on this.

>>716148319
Roody:2d is kind of like that
You use little pushers and conveyor belts and welders to make a zachtronic factory that makes... little pushers and conveyor belts and welders
Starts off slow since you have to manually put everything together, but eventually you build tunnel diggers and stuff

Just stop jerking around and start doing the real thing. The few hundred Euro/Dollars you'll spend on equipment and supplies, you'll save by not buying shitty videogames.

>>716139435 (OP)
>TIS-100
this one is fun, but its mostly a puzzle game and doesn't really teach you about programming past the usual assembly syntax

>>716154138
they're not supposed to teach you how to program, they're supposed to give you fun challenges to solve.
I've 100%'d all of Zach's games and I have zero interest in actual programming

>>716139435 (OP)
haven't seen anyone mention infinifactory yet, that one is great

>>716156165
That's probably my favorite one.
Are there any other good 3D programming games besides Infinifactory? I've yet to see any myself, almost all of the ones I've seen are 2D

>>716149587

>Autism thread
Cool, i been trying to focus on time, cost/area is way too autistic for me.

>>716139435 (OP)
EXAPUNKS is great and has a banger OST.
TIS-100 is also good, but has very minimal presentation compared to other Zach games.

>Autism thread
I was waiting for this!
Finally got around to play Infinifactory this week and made this solution that gave me an achievement on the first go. Felt nice

>>716160923
Did you use screen record like OCR for this?

>>716160923
there's some parts you don't get access to until later in the game, that you can stupidly use on earlier puzzles where you initially didn't have access to them. which is why I didn't even bother optimizing or going for achievements until after I had already beated the game

>>716160923
So complicated

I wish I had more gifs from my infinifactory playthrough years ago
I should replay it one of these days

>>716139435 (OP)
Ever tried leetcode?

>>716161005
No i just used the in built recorder on my OS
>It looks like shit
I know it was late and i wanted to go to sleep

>>716161572
last time someone mentioned leetcode in a zach thread I asked what it was because I couldn't find it on steam or itch, and they gave me a flippant non-answer, so I'm just gonna assume you're the same guy and tell you to go fuck yourself

>>716161281
This is the puzzle that filtered me, it was more work than play

>>716161883
that maybe true but I am a dull boy at heart

>>716161795
NTA but can't you google? Genuinely can't tell if this is a joke, because if it is, you really need to work on them.

>>716149587
I personally try to figure out the most retarded solution to every puzzle.

>>716162006
when I googled it all that came up was some fucking job training bullshit that seems to have fuck-all to do with puzzle games so I assumed it had to be incorrect

>>716162413
based

>>716162443
Pay attention to who that anon is replying, the message he's replying to and how the "fucking job training bullshit that seems to have fuck-all to do with puzzle games" thing correlates to it. You play puzzle games so you have the brain power to understand, i believe in you.

>>716162864
don't care he was rude to me the other day he can go suck his own dick

>>716163017

>>716143278
>too easy and too short
>he doesn't know
>Today's update adds our first weekly bonus puzzle, SUPER DEFENDER BOT!
kek

>>716139435 (OP)
i enjoyed the first half of the first campaign of shenzhen but at some point i just get hard stuck. i've gone back to it a few times over the years and just get stuck at the same place. didn't have that problem with EXAPUNKS or TIS-100, those felt like they had a much more even difficulty curve and did a better job of guiding you into learning mechanics you needed

i've got molex and opus magnum but i could never really get into them. not that they were too hard (opus is piss easy) but just kind of lost interest

>>716161795
NTA but it's a website that has a bunch of coding challenge stuff, mostly used to prep for interviews. The original anon was likely thinking that since you've played/beaten a lot of zachtronics games, you might enjoy solving programming challenges, and from the experience with the games you will likely have an easy time picking up on data structures and algorithms and programming concepts.

Kaizen threads made me reinstall opus magnum
I'm on chapter 5/6 and getting real tired of it after a mere extra 3-4 hours of play
It feels tedious, finding the order of operations rather than the breakthrough eureka of actual puzzle games. and solving is bottlenecked by having to use 24 atoms but only having 2 dispensers.
arranging monstrosities to assemble complex molecules simply isn't as fun as optimizing small puzzles.

>>716163368
What, they didn't make you install Kaizen?
I guess that's the problem with making the same game over and over, eventually people will see your new one and realize they pretty much already own it

>>716163368
Opus doesn't feel like a puzzle game outside of optimization. When you see a new puzzle you don't think "can i beat it?", it's obvious you can, you just wonder if you have the energy to place things on the board. Really is a shame that my favourite visually is the one i least enjoy actually playing, but i don't optimize much anyways.

>>716163470
It looks too easy, I have low interest.

>>716163368
You just fucking suck and you suck so much that you can't even comprehend how much you suck.

>>716163932
Damn, you are mad.

>>716163295
For Opus/Molek/Kaizen you really need enough autism to get into optimization. Solving the problem once is easy enough, but trying to shave off cycles or get a compact enough solution is where the challenge usually lies.

>>716139435 (OP)
Is this game just assembly? I always liked doing stuff in assembly

>>716165063
assembly + rearranging chip pieces for hours trying to make your solutions fit on the tiny ass board

>>716165063
Not quite assembly, but close enough. Also check out TIS-100

>>716165473
if you liked tis-100 you should check out quantumpulse-2a when it comes out next month. I got to play it early and I really liked it, although some of the puzzles got a bit samey towards the end (there's like 4 different variations on the "find the biggest number" puzzle for example).
chips can broadcast a number to any other chip no matter if they're touching or not. but also you have to worry about synchronization a lot more than you did in tis. so it's easier in some ways and harder in others

Schenzhen I/O is my fav, probably followed by TIS-100 and Infinifactory.

>>716166037
neat

>>716152031
Solitaire is not exactly the most riveting of draws is it

>>716166529
Mine too, I also really enjoyed Exapunks

>>716166037
ur game looks pretty neat, anon

>>716139576
Nigger what?

>>716166682
not my game, the dev is a guy from the unofficial zachtronics discord though and he gave out a bunch of free keys last month for playtesters. I've mentioned it in a few threads already though, sorry for shilling (I'm also the same guy that shills Infinite Turtles in every zachtronics thread I see)

>>716142770
something about the lazy PNG rotations and flips in that game just reminds me of a flash game from newgrounds, it just doesn't have the same polish as other Zack games and its a hard sell for $17

>>716166037
that looks amazing, wishlisted

I dont mean to be that guy but whats the best of these type of games where I actually learn something? It boggles my mind that there isnt just a leetcode game thats actually a fully fledge real game.

>>716167865
I think the only one i could say is educational is "turing complete" but even then at that point you might as well look into courses. Zach actually made a few educational games iirc.

>>716167865
the Signal State is a pretty good intro to modular synthesis
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1577620/The_Signal_State/

>>716166631
The story in exapunks was cringe

>>716167865
Zach kinda said his games are like all the fun parts of coding without all the lame parts that actually make up the majority of these "jobs" in real life.

I wouldn't call these games "learning". They're games for people who can already wrap their brains around programming concepts. They're fun puzzle games that use programming. It doesn't necessarily translate into real life skills. It helps, but Zachtronics are not edutrainment, they're puzzle games.

>>716168750
Opus and Spacechem are the only good Zachtronics stories.

>>716169007
I liked the concept of Shenzhen I/O. Westerner trying to deal with Chinese documentation and work culture.

>>716167865
Turing Complete is legitimately an entire Computer Engineering course for like 1/1000th the price of going to university for a semester

>>716167865
You can try Bit Burner which is an incremental game but you have to write your own code
https://bitburner-official.github.io/

>>716140681
Excellent taste for the right reasons. I find the different metrics to shoot for in Shenzhen to be a bit more different than the other games where the best solution can and will often cover multiple metrics at a time.

>>716166593
Hah!

What is the next LOGICAL move?

>>716173235
What am I looking at exactly...?

>>716174478
Logic Bombs https://store.steampowered.com/app/3816700/Logic_Bombs/
Inspired by Last Call BBS' Dungeons & Diagrams

>>716173235
(1, 5) is an X

Zachtroons be like
>YO THIS GAMEPLAY FIRE

>>716176227
I solved it by assuming the spots that were 5/6 on the row/column were filled in.

>>716176227
I understand your line of thinking though, since to stop the middle bomb from hitting cats the walls must be in between them, hence the rows/columns with a 2 must be Xs on the outside.