[HN Gopher] Goodbye Zachtronics
___________________________________________________________________
Goodbye Zachtronics
Author : danso
Score : 497 points
Date : 2022-06-24 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kotaku.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kotaku.com)
| iterati wrote:
| I still have TIS-100 under the Languages skill section of my
| resume as an Easter Egg. I haven't played many of Zach's recent
| games, but SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, and TIS-100 were some of the
| best puzzle games ever made to me.
| lufte wrote:
| Oh I'm definitely copying this idea!
| anta40 wrote:
| As as assembly language enthusiast, TIS-100 is easily my #1
| Zachtronics game. The closet contender would be... CoreWar.
| Seems like their implementations are rarely updated these days.
|
| Robocode is also cool, but you code in Java instead of
| assembly, anyway.
| krallja wrote:
| Oh that's a hilarious great idea.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| TIS-100 and Shenzen had that fun little bit of hacking using
| the docs. Or just fiddling with it and finding that one
| instruction that had enough of a side effect where it could let
| you shave off two other instructions. Where you could get that
| really fun rush of removing 1 cycle from something. It is a
| skill I do not get to use much anymore as most things are
| fairly cookie cutter.
| Bjorkbat wrote:
| Incidentally my first "true indie" game was SpaceChem. I'm
| tempted to play it again, maybe try and beat it this time. It's a
| very fun game, and cheap too, if you want to play along.
|
| Glad they got to go out on their own terms. They're such a niche
| game studio that I was really worried that they closing their
| doors because of market apathy or dissatisfaction with the status
| quo. This is a good ending.
| bspammer wrote:
| Zachtronics' games have given me so much joy over the years, very
| sad to hear this. My favourite of the bunch is probably EXAPUNKS,
| but Shenzhen I/O is also wonderful. I was also surprisingly taken
| by Eliza, given how different it is from the rest. Thank you
| Zach!
| schnevets wrote:
| Before anyone writes a eulogy based on the headline, note the
| following:
|
| _So it's sad, but also awesome in its own way, that 2022 will
| see the end of Zachtronics. Not because their publisher shuttered
| them, or because their venture capital funding ran out, or
| because Activision made them work on Call of Duty, or any other
| number of reasons (bankruptcy! scandal!) game developers usually
| close their doors._
|
| _No, Zachtronics is closing because...they want to._
|
| _"We're wrapping things up!" Barth tells me, way more
| enthusiastically than you would normally expect under these
| circumstances. "Zachtronics will release Last Call BBS next
| month. We're also working on a long-awaited solitaire collection
| that we're hoping to have out by the end of the year. After that,
| the team will disband. We all have different ideas, interests,
| tolerances for risk, and so on, so we're still figuring out what
| we want to do next."_
|
| I play games too infrequently to invest the necessary bandwidth
| into a Zachtronic game, but I read some of ZACH-LIKE and always
| respected the philosophy. As long as no one is getting the rug
| pulled, this sounds like an awesome way to go and an awesome
| thing for the gaming industry. Hopefully this means more smart
| indie gems in the future.
| mysterydip wrote:
| Assuming the games are still for sale after they disband, who
| gets the money? Just the publisher?
| thombat wrote:
| Unless they signed bizarrely horrible contracts at least some
| of the staff will be getting residuals. By way of imperfect
| comparison, Ringo Starr's annual income of $20m doesn't come
| from doing the Xmas Special of "Thomas the Tank Engine"
| leoc wrote:
| Apple Records is still legally a going concern, though.
| (Though again there's the complicated situation with his
| songwriting royalties etc.)
| isk517 wrote:
| Yeah, reads more like a band splitting up than a company
| closing.
| schnevets wrote:
| Honestly, indie gaming would benefit from a better
| distinction between the company and the contributor (similar
| to bands and musicians or films and the
| director/producer/cinematographer). I know not everyone wants
| to self-promote, but I would love to see what games certain
| designers. contributed to before they had an opportunity to
| lead.
|
| I hope every Zachtronics contributor can get the resources to
| make their next dream project, and the entire industry
| becomes a pinch more Zach-like.
| egypturnash wrote:
| So basically you want IMDB but for video games?
|
| This exists to some degree but most of the examples I can
| think of are specifically about retro games, rather than
| any and all video games. Lemon64 and LemonAmiga
| exhaustively document who worked on what in the c64 and
| Amiga games scenes, for instance. MobyGames does cover
| modern games but a few checks of modern games sure don't
| have any credits beyond company. IMDB does cover games but
| also doesn't delve into any more detail than company.
| VectorLock wrote:
| Most games have some kind of Credits sequence, I'm
| surprised someone isn't feverishly documenting them in a
| wiki somewhere.
| ehsankia wrote:
| It definitely seemed like they had done most variations of the
| idea, and they wanted to try something new. It is interesting
| that they don't want to try the new things under the
| Zachtronics names, but it also kinda makes sense, since their
| fan maybe has certain expectations from that brand? I
| definitely can relate to how making the same kind of game for
| 10 year can become tiring. The article also hints that some of
| them maybe want to try opportunities that has more room for
| growth than a small indie studio.
|
| Definitely interested to see what they do in the future, the
| fact that it'll be under a different name doesn't really matter
| to me.
| ivanbakel wrote:
| >It is interesting that they don't want to try the new things
| under the Zachtronics names, but it also kinda makes sense,
| since their fan maybe has certain expectations from that
| brand?
|
| Given that the studio is disbanding, I don't think it would
| make any sense for any of the former members to continue a
| new project under the Zachtronics name. They're not just
| continuing to work together on something else. To quote:
|
| >"We all have different ideas, interests, tolerances for
| risk, and so on, so we're still figuring out what we want to
| do next."
| [deleted]
| madrox wrote:
| I think my favorite line of the article was _knowing when to
| quit is its own kind of skill_.
|
| Shuttering my startup last year, I felt this one. I think I
| quit six months later than I should have. Knowing when to quit
| is difficult...especially when you think others are depending
| on you. I applaud this team for leaning into that instinct.
| schnevets wrote:
| Without knowing what your startup did, non-"As a Service"
| game studios are an interesting animal in the world of
| software development because their products have a clear
| Release Date. To me, this sounds like the developers didn't
| want to do more cerebral, optimization puzzle boxes, so they
| decided to close up.
|
| Like someone else mentioned, it's more like a band breaking
| up because artists no longer want to follow the framework and
| expectations that they have progressed into.
| madrox wrote:
| I absolutely agree, and I think even bands can feel the
| pressure to keep going if they think people count on it as
| a livelihood. Making a collective decision to move on is
| brave no matter the context.
| helloplanets wrote:
| _"We felt it was time for a change. This might sound weird, but
| while we got very good at making 'Zachtronics games' over the
| last twelve years, it was hard for us to make anything else. We
| were fortunate enough to carve out a special niche, and I'm
| thankful that we've been able to occupy it and survive in it, but
| it also kept us locked into doing something we didn't feel like
| doing forever."_
|
| So they basically got tired of making more Zachlikes, which is
| more than understandable at this point. Amazing games, but I
| think they can safely say their job is done after they've
| basically kickstarted a genre. Rather than being sad seeing
| Zachtronics go, I'm sort of anticipating to hear more about some
| of those smaller "weird" projects Zach alludes to in the article.
| Would be much more tragic to see a designer of that caliber left
| feeling stuck making games in a similar vein for longer than they
| feel is necessary.
| noduerme wrote:
| For anyone who hasn't read Matthew Burns's short fiction, it's as
| much of a treat as his writing for Eliza. I think he used to have
| more work online, but he's still got some short stories and
| interactive stuff here... https://matthewseiji.com
|
| Full disclosure, I'm an old friend and glad to see him mentioned.
| I'm lucky enough to be reading an early draft of a novel he's
| been working on as we speak.
| eswat wrote:
| Although it was never promised, I enjoyed Eliza and was hopeful
| of another visual novel through Zachtronics + Burns. Hopefully
| something in a similar spirit comes out in the future.
| frob wrote:
| Spacechem singlehandedly got me back into gaming 10 years ago. It
| was such a wonderful example of how a simple concept worked to
| its extreme could be more delightful and entertaining than shiny
| AAA games.
|
| RIP. I'm glad you went out on your own terms.
| toma_caliente wrote:
| Zachtronics leaving game development is such a blow to the
| industry. Zach is directly and indirectly responsible for a lot
| of games we see today. His game Infiniminer was a major
| inspiration for Minecraft, he published a game that was also a
| book explaining his philosophy on puzzle design, and his games
| were genuinely fun with no BS.
| 202206241203 wrote:
| I dislike the games, since they are too close to
| work/programming to be fun for me (just like Factorio).
| However, the success of Zachtronics - both business and
| creative, is undeniable. I wish they were the ones to gain
| success with the original 3D cube digging gameplay and not the
| massively popular Minecraft clone.
| bstar77 wrote:
| I hear this a lot, but I personally don't get it. These games
| are the best part of my job (the problem solving) without any
| of the nonsense. Most games today are a grindfest that we
| convince ourselves is fun because it's happening in a
| beautiful virtual world.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| I view these games similarly. I don't think anything has
| helped me in my day-to-day decision making at work more
| than the time I've spent planning and designing my
| factory(s) in Satisfactory.
| benoliver999 wrote:
| Playing Zelda Breath of the Wild atm and I sort of feel
| this way. I love riding around the map but I'm getting a
| bit... tired
| boardwaalk wrote:
| There doesn't have to be (as much) nonsense on a personal
| project where you're only beholden to yourself, can pick
| your own tech, etc.
|
| (I'm sure people also have less nonsense and make money
| from it, but I don't right now.)
| scubbo wrote:
| Less, but not zero. Personal projects can still suffer
| from obscure bugs or undocumented behaviour in
| dependencies, unattainable goals, costs, and other non-
| bureaucratic frustrations. A significant part of the
| satisfaction of Factorio for me comes from the knowledge
| that, if something isn't operating as I expect/hope it
| to, I can _just look at_ the surface-level representation
| of the system to diagnose it. This isn't possible in
| software projects without a huge amount of investment in
| observability - which is rarely fun or prioritized.
| ansible wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The programming game TIS-100 gives you a view of the
| internal state of the machine far superior to what exists
| with most systems. The exception being that Commodore 64
| emulator that shows _everything_ going on in memory in
| real time.
|
| More often (in the embedded world) you are debugging
| things via JTAG and a serial port (if you are lucky) or a
| GPIO-driven LED (if you are not lucky or this is super-
| early in the boot process). And often the JTAG is less
| than 100% reliable.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Yeah, I enjoy having a definitely-solvable problem with
| good restraints.
|
| Unfortunately, the latter half of the programming games
| generally gets too messy for me. I lose patience with them
| and never end up completing them.
|
| I don't regret buying them, though. I have a lot of fun
| with them before that.
| p1mrx wrote:
| Zachtronics games give you a limited playing field with a
| limited set of operations. The fun comes from thinking
| carefully about small problems, and doing a lot with a
| little.
|
| Factorio is more like work, because they don't know when to
| stop. There is just too much going on, too much complexity.
| samiam_iam wrote:
| so long "I don't know half of you half as well as I should like;
| and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
| loufe wrote:
| I seriously loved Shenzhen I/O, thank you for your service,
| Zachtronics.
| Centigonal wrote:
| a whole article about Zachtronics, and not a single mention of
| _Infiniminer?_
|
| https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/
|
| Released in 2009, and a direct inspiration to one Markus Persson
| to create a game called Minecraft.
| ycta20220624 wrote:
| Wait, I thought development of Minecraft started in 2007?
| Wouldn't that put it before Infiniminer?
| papercrane wrote:
| > I thought development of Minecraft started in 2007?
|
| The first version of Minecraft was developed May 2009,
| Infiniminer was released April 2009.
| fartcannon wrote:
| According to Notch, Infiniminer was "the game I wanted to
| do". https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer
| capableweb wrote:
| Straight from the horse's mouth:
|
| The World of Notch - The origins of Minecraft | https://web.a
| rchive.org/web/20160604071857/https://notch.tum...
|
| > While looking through some project folders, I found an old
| protype of a game that never quite became anything. Kinda.
|
| > It was called "RubyDung" (for various reasons), and was
| supposed to be a base building game inspired by Dwarf
| Fortress
|
| > As the RubyDung engine got more advanced, I started
| thinking about adding a first person view for following your
| minions around, kinda like in Dungeon Keeper. It worked ok,
| but the graphics got very pixellated and distorted, so I left
| it out.
|
| > But then I found Infiniminer. My god, I realized that that
| was the game I wanted to do. I played it in multiplayer for a
| while and had a blast, but found it flawed. Building was fun,
| but there wasn't enough variation, and the big red/blue
| blocks were pretty horrible. I thought a fantasy game in that
| style would work really really well, so I tried to implement
| a simple first person engine in that style, reusing some art
| and code (although not as much as you'd think) from RubyDung,
| and came up with this:
| http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k
|
| Unfortunately, that last YouTube link is not viewable for me
| ("This video contains content from Nizzotch. It is not
| available in your country.").
|
| But the conclusion is: Infiniminer was definitely a huge
| inspiration on Minecraft.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I just searched the title "cave game tech test" and found a
| bunch of re-uploads:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMpv5kZ9-rE
| franknine wrote:
| People Make Games made a video about this
| Infiniminer/Minecraft story and they interviewed Zach
| Barth. When Microsoft was reviewing the 2.5B Minecraft
| deal, Zach was working for Microsoft and was on those
| meetings.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__Nq2vNcpIo
| [deleted]
| mathstuf wrote:
| Oh. I remember when Zach presented that to a club we both were
| in at college (I feel like it was a very early demo). I never
| linked that directly with Minecraft...
|
| I remember Sauerbraten from before that (released in 2004
| according to Wikipedia) and had assumed it was more in the
| inspiration line.
| laserbeam wrote:
| So long! And thanks for all the fish.
| bstar77 wrote:
| I'm still in shock since the initial announcement. These guys are
| so good at game design, I thought they would be doing it forever.
| I guess you can't confine very special devs to one thing for most
| of their career. I hope the teaching thing goes well, but I
| equally hope Zachtronics makes a return at some point in the
| future.
| ehsankia wrote:
| Looks like he's already considering it
|
| > I was hoping that I'd really like teaching and stay with that
| for a few years, but I learned that's definitely not the case
| and I'm having a hard time imagining anything other than games
| in my future, in some shape or form.
|
| They will likely be doing it forever, they just want to try
| something else than a small 5-member indie team maybe?
| bstar77 wrote:
| Wow, that was unexpected. They should take a break if they
| need to, but please don't close up shop.
| wccrawford wrote:
| That's easy to say for a 1-person shop, but when other
| people are depending on the job, too, it's a lot harder.
| kryptn wrote:
| I loved all of the puzzle Zachtronics games! They're great puzzle
| games on their own but some also have leaderboards which give you
| the feeling that you can do better or solve them in different
| ways.
|
| I'd revisit older games to see which steam friends beat my
| scores, and then I'd go back through and rediscover, optimize,
| and get back on top.
|
| I'll definitely miss their games.
| nindalf wrote:
| Noooo! I'm glad they're doing it because they want to, but I'm
| still sad as hell about this. Goodbye Zachtronics!
|
| Time to replay shenzhen.io
| convexfunction wrote:
| I've found it difficult after starting to work full-time to fully
| enjoy Zachtronics games, since they use much of the same parts of
| my brain as my day job, but the sheer joy I got out of Zach's
| earlier games (SpaceChem, KOHCTPYKTOP, Codex of Alchemical
| Engineering) contributed a lot to my decision to work in
| software. I've experienced little else that scratches the "design
| itch" in such a pure and thoughtful way, whether games from other
| developers or actual software development.
| FredPret wrote:
| Same here. I was playing TIS-100 one day when I thought - why
| not just do Leetcode?
| solidangle wrote:
| TIS-100 brought back some of the same joy that I had when I
| began with programming many years ago. Since then programming
| has become boring for me, but the weird limitations of
| TIS-100 almost made it feel like I was starting fresh again.
| I loved learning tons of small tricks that I could apply to
| beat the harder levels.
|
| Shenzhen I/O otoh felt like work.
| FredPret wrote:
| Shenzen has that card game though, so you can slack off at
| work
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Exapunks was my favorite of the three. If you liked TIS-100
| I'd highly recommend trying out Exapunks.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Completely agree. I was completely sucked in by Opus Magnum,
| but other than that, I've bounced off all of them.
|
| But I know understimulated teenage-me would have been all over
| that stuff, so there's definitely a market for it.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Same here. I loved Spacechem, was told that if I enjoyed
| spacechem I would enjoy programming, and that was what
| kickstarted my journey.
|
| I miss the particular challenge of the older games like
| Spacechem.
| jameshart wrote:
| If you work somewhere where
|
| - the requirements for each piece of work are expressed
| completely clearly
|
| - you get immediate feedback on whether your solution works
|
| - you are given, without having to build it yourself, accurate
| metrics for how your solution measures up in terms of costs,
| speed and so on
|
| - you get to revisit problems as many times you like at your
| leisure and reoptimize your solutions to make them more elegant
| or to prioritize different properties
|
| then I definitely envy you. For me, those things being part of
| the zachtronics experience turn playing the games into a
| shortcut to the dopamine-producing parts I love about coding.
| blueblimp wrote:
| I liked Infinifactory the most because being in 3D space
| maximizes the difference from normal programming.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I've started to feel this way about Factorio... I only can play
| it if I've felt I've been productive or that I've e.g.: a model
| training or code compiling in the background.
|
| The reason being that I stop and think: "This is scratching an
| itch that something _actually_ productive would as well". So
| whenever I feel like playing Factorio, I pick up a side-project
| instead if one's been neglected.
| dageshi wrote:
| Yes, I felt very much the same after my first playthrough. I
| came back and was suddenly thinking through all these
| possible solutions to factory management only to realise it
| felt exactly like programming work and I should probably go
| and do that instead.
| dixego wrote:
| Opus Magnum is very fun and doesn't use _too_ much of the
| Programming parts of the brain!
| Tepix wrote:
| I love their games (i think TIS-100 and Infinifactory are my
| favorites) and i hope someone will do the minimal amount of
| maintenance so they will keep working.
| throwawayhnacc wrote:
| I don't want to be tinfoil about this, but I suspect there is
| maybe some more corporate politic stuff happening here than Zach
| lets on (and rightfully so). Zachtronics is wholly owned by
| Alliance Media Holdings. Alliance is run primarily by two people
| Jay Gelman (CEO) and Nathan Gelman (Director of Publishing +
| Stuido Operations). Last year, Nathan Gelman expressed some real
| crazy zionist opinions on Twitter during the most recent wave of
| the Israel-Palestine conflict. I didn't screenshot it, but you
| can sort of see some of the wake of it by searching his account
| name on twitter and seeing the replies to the now deleted tweet:
|
| https://twitter.com/search?q=nathangelman&src=typed_query
|
| Nathan also pretty consistently likes orthodox jewish content on
| Twitter, which, to be clear, isn't bad on its own, but with that
| plus the deleted tweet during the latest I-P conflict, thing I
| think it's maybe safe to say that Nathan, likely Zach's direct
| report as he is the "Director of Publishing and Studio
| Operations", has got some STRONG political beliefs. What I
| SUSPECT is that Zach probably just got tired of dealing with that
| and, given the ownership structure, has to "end" Zachtronics to
| step away from them.
|
| It's tenuous evidence and maybe doesn't mean anything, but the
| only other point that makes me think Alliance is a not-great-
| company to be under, is that on the episode of Eggplant show
| where they interview Bravery Network Online creators (other
| studio/game Alliance published), The BNO people said that "the
| legal issues that came up on the game were some of the worst
| things our lawyer said they ever encountered". (Don't have the
| exact timestamp but here's the episode)
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bravely-replacing-rand...
|
| Again, maybe nothing, but maybe something. idk.
| leoc wrote:
| It seems like one possibility. Reading between the lines of the
| comments about different risk tolerances and so on, another
| possibility is that the team reached an impasse in trying to
| decide what their next game project or projects should be.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| I loved TIS-100 and Shenzhen-IO. I'm wishing all of them the best
| on whatever they endeavor to do next. :)
| Delfino wrote:
| He said he's going to teach high school computer science. As
| someone who made the same leap, it's cool to hear! He was
| really awesome about giving his games to teachers to use in
| their classrooms for free.
| pvitz wrote:
| Actually, he is going to quit teaching high-school computer
| science to continue working on games.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| He tried teaching for a year but sounds like he isn't going
| to stick with it.
|
| "I just finished my first year of teaching and Last Call BBS
| hasn't even been released yet! I was hoping that I'd really
| like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I
| learned that's definitely not the case and I'm having a hard
| time imagining anything other than games in my future, in
| some shape or form."
| eterm wrote:
| Ten years is long enough to inspire the next generation to make
| zach-like games.
|
| Games like Signal State or Turing Complete.
|
| But it's a sad goodbye to Zachtronics. They have a certain style
| of layering story to take you out of the raw mechanics which most
| their rivals don't. I think Shenzhen I/O was their peak but
| TIS100 is also a must-play and I certainly enjoyed most their
| other games.
| xbar wrote:
| Well said.
|
| I wish I could have convinced more people to play TIS100. I
| will have to try some more.
| l8nite wrote:
| I'm proud of myself for getting all the way through TIS-100,
| and I think I still hold the records amongst my few peers who
| tried it.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think Zach has a certain level of finesse and polish that is
| hard to find elsewhere. The further you look into the details,
| the more impressed you get.
|
| For instance, just browse through some of the datasheets of
| Shenzhen I/O. It mimics reality all too well (mistakes in
| datasheets, chinese-only text, various fonts and layouts,
| handwritten notes, etc.).
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| Wait, so he's not teaching anymore? That was fast. In this
| interview 2 months ago, he implied that he was shutting down
| Zachtronics so he could go teach. Maybe I misunderstood.
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1454395489?t=00h12m36s
| mdaniel wrote:
| It's addressed toward the bottom of TFA:
|
| > "My original plan was to wrap things up at Zachtronics and
| then find a new job teaching high school computer science, but
| the timing was off," he says. "I just finished my first year of
| teaching and Last Call BBS hasn't even been released yet! I was
| hoping that I'd really like teaching and stay with that for a
| few years, but I learned that's definitely not the case and I'm
| having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my
| future, in some shape or form."
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| Yes, I read that part. It's why I made my post. It appears to
| contradict the interview he gave 2 months ago. Again, unless
| I'm missing something?
| ziddoap wrote:
| He said he learned that loving being a teacher was 'not the
| case'. Perhaps he learned it in the last two months, or was
| trying to remain positive about the position publicly while
| reconsidering privately, etc. People change, I don't think
| there's anything profound to look for just because he
| changed his public opinion from a few months ago.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| High school CS would be awful to teach unless you were at
| some magnet school or elite private school with enough
| bright students to fill a classroom. But even then, still
| awful.
| [deleted]
| jna_sh wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the interview! Check back in on the end of
| the show, around 2 hours 10 minutes. I asked him if he intended
| to keep teaching, and he hedged a little bit but essentially
| said no.
| PainfullyNormal wrote:
| Doh, good catch. I missed that bit.
|
| edit: I'm dense. It's your interview! That was a great one,
| btw. I really enjoyed it.
| munificent wrote:
| I can't _imagine_ becoming a teacher right now. My kids are in
| public schools and the teacher attrition rate is off the charts
| because the past couple of years have been a horrific
| experience for many of them. Getting into teaching right now
| while the pandemic is still lingering and the education
| administration is a burned out husk is unlikely to go well,
| though I certainly admire Zach for trying.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| During the interview he talks about his experience teaching. I
| got the impression that a lot of the job of a teacher is having
| to babysit kids (take away their phones) and that many kids
| just don't care about the subject being taught.
| forty wrote:
| Spacechem is one of my favorite game ever, and I have purchased
| nearly every Zachtronics game since. Thanks Zach & team, looking
| forward to wherever you have next for us!
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I didn't like Zachtronics games, because from reviews I read, I
| expected them to be like programming, but instead they were
| merely puzzle games with programming window dressing on them.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| That's why I like them, they have more in common with the
| thought experiments you see in textbooks. TIS-100 teaches the
| principles of concurrency by presenting you with a computer
| architecture small enough to fit onto a single screen.
|
| It helps that there are multiple solutions, and you can try to
| optimize in a certain area like speed or size.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| I find TIS-100 and shenzhen io frustrating because of how
| limiting they are. There is a max line count per chip and the
| circuit board is very cramped. I actually finished Exapunks
| because I felt the language was expressive enough to not be as
| frustrating and the line limit is a lot higher than needed.
| TrickardRixx wrote:
| This is a funny thing for me to read. The reason I enjoy
| programming is because the act of programming feels to me much
| like playing a puzzle game.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I guess it depends on the puzzle game.
|
| I enjoy programming (when I'm programming something I'm
| interested in, anyway), but don't like almost any puzzle
| games.
|
| There are a handful of exceptions: I loved Factorio (which
| could be considered a puzzle game), Gorogoa, Inside, and The
| Swapper.
|
| But Zachtronics games and most other puzzle games leave me
| cold.
| db48x wrote:
| Out of curiosity, have you tried TIS-100? It's less of a
| game and more of an emulator for a machine that never
| existed.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| _" have you tried TIS-100?"_
|
| Yes. That's the first Zachtronics game I tried, and was
| sorely disappointed.
|
| In my view it's just a puzzle game.
| defaultcompany wrote:
| Which games did you play? TIS-100 and Schenzen IO and Exapunks
| definitely felt more like programming games than puzzle games
| to me.
| pmoriarty wrote:
| I played TIS-100. Expected it to be like assembly language
| programming, but it only has a veneer of programming over a
| puzzle game.
| knolan wrote:
| Spacechem on the iPad was a thing of beauty. It's a shame they
| abandoned iOS but they had valid reasons.
| haunter wrote:
| >We felt it was time for a change. This might sound weird, but
| while we got very good at making 'Zachtronics games' over the
| last twelve years, it was hard for us to make anything else. We
| were fortunate enough to carve out a special niche, and I'm
| thankful that we've been able to occupy it and survive in it, but
| it also kept us locked into doing something we didn't feel like
| doing forever.
|
| Sums up a lot of indie game developers perfectly. Find a niche,
| can't escape the niche.
| OnionBlender wrote:
| "I was hoping that I'd really like teaching and stay with that
| for a few years, but I learned that's definitely not the case and
| I'm having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my
| future, in some shape or form."
|
| He sold Zachtronics a few years ago so I wonder if he is free to
| start a new game company.
| synu wrote:
| I really loved Shenzhen I/O, it even got me into electronics. I
| started watching Ben Eater's series on breadboard computers and
| built some similar devices to what I was making in the game
| around a 6502. It's pretty cool that a game can trigger something
| like that.
|
| The game had a leaderboard, and at one point an old programmer
| colleague reached out to me to ask if I was cheating - that's
| something I'm still very proud of to this day!
| sitkack wrote:
| > "My original plan was to wrap things up at Zachtronics and then
| find a new job teaching high school computer science, but the
| timing was off,"
|
| Please do, but don't just teach CS! I'll go back to high school.
| My kid will hit high school in about 7 years.
| moritonal wrote:
| SpaceChem is still my primary tool in testing kid's (and adults)
| general aptitude for coding before trying to teach them.
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| That's insightful, having played the game.
|
| Do you believe there's perhaps a kind of student that would be
| proficient in coding while not showing particular skill (or
| engagement) in solving those kinds of puzzles?
| moritonal wrote:
| It's always possible, but the game calmly asks the user to
| focus, structure a problem in their head and then form a
| solution.
|
| I wouldn't ask them to finish the game, but watching how they
| absorb what they're shown and whether they can expand this to
| new solutions is a fairly easy tell most the time.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Zachtronics may be shutting down, but there is no way Zach Barth
| will stop making games no matter what he says, so this is kind of
| a non-story
| crazy211 wrote:
| theptip wrote:
| Massive kudos to Zachtronics for defining a micro-genre, and
| crafting such unique, fun, and interesting games with a small
| team.
|
| I have particularly fond memories of SpaceChem, and subsequent
| releases always switched things up enough to be fresh and
| interesting, while also riffing on the same fundamentally
| satisfying abstract game loop of "solve an algorithm with limited
| resources, then optimize".
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