"Eliza" is a bit unusual for Zachtronics as it's not a programming/puzzle game but a visual novel. But it's excellent and I think it's one of their most under-appreciated games. It's well-written, well-acted, and very prescient. Highly recommended!
It's one of my favorite visual novels and is so underappreciated.
Maybe it's because (unlike others in the VN space) it totally eschews an unusual setting, gimmick, or flashy set piece to sell itself... I only bought it because I liked the tidbits of story in Shenzhen and Infinifactory, by the same author.
I tried to replay Eliza this past winter after having played it and loved it when it came out. But I couldn't get past the start of the game because not only is it so dark, BUT SO MUCH OF IT CAME TRUE!
The in-game phone apps that just show a looping pixel art city scene with haunting ambient music are mesmerizing, even moreso than the beautiful solitaire game.
Eliza is one of the only games that I enjoyed so much that I sent fan mail when it came out — it’s nothing that a standard Zachtronics game but it stands alone as an excellent visual novel.
i loved playing ShenzhenIO! So much so that i ended up buying and registering the domain of the fictitious company you were hired by in the game. That domain redirects to Seam now
The official "spiritual successor" seems to be Coincidence studio - their games in the genre being "Kaizen: A Factory Story" and the recent "U.V.S. Nirmana".
This is one of my all time favorite games. It and Shenzhen I/O do a wonderful job of capturing the essence of what makes programming fun and put them into a game.
My biggest surprise from playing EXAPUNKS is how futile it is to try and pre-optimize a solution. I had to remind myself time and again to solve the puzzle first, then try and try and optimize it.
While the games are fun on their own, I recommend playing them at the same time as a friend. Trash-talking about finding more optimal solutions really added to the overall fun of playing the games.
> capturing the essence of what makes programming fun and put them into a game.
They definitely straddle there line between "those is a fun video game" and "it looks too much like my job" for people in the industry, but there's a whole genre of workplace simulators for doing other people's jobs vicariously. A semi truck driver would see playing a semi truck simulator in the same way, but American Truck Simulator is quite popular. Anyway, play Zachatronics games if you find them fun, but if you don't, then, uh, don't feel bad about not playing them.
There's a portion of American / European Truck Simulator's playerbase who are truckers. I've even seen a few streams from guys playing ATS/ETS in their sleeper cabs. Some of them have said the game is a way of processing the stresses in their jobs. I found that very interesting.
It's an interesting contrast to programmers and programming games. For me personally, the best way to process is to do just about anything else. Programming games are most fun when I haven't had to do much coding recently. Though sometimes, if I'm already in the flow, it's fun to play one of them and ace it since I'm already in the right mindset.
I feel the same as you about programming games, but can sort of see it for truckers, because surely some truck drivers picked that job because getting in the "flow" of long-distance driving appealed to them. I presume the trucking games try to appeal to exactly that feeling without, as you say, many of the actual stressors of the job.
So I can imagine it might let them reconnect with that feeling and be a relaxing experience much more easily than a programming puzzle game would let us reconnect with what we love about programming. Being a puzzle game it inherently will involve some frustration, which is the thing I want to escape from after a day of programming.
I love the Zachtronics games and Zach-likes, but, for hardware engineering the minor differences with reality drive me crazy. Such as the clock edge timing in Shenzhen I/O and other points where something so lifelike doesn't work the way I know it does in real life.
I also get this problem when I play Linux-terminal-emulating games like the various "global hacker" CLI based games.
I had a great evening with a friend playing through TIS-100 together. We plugged in two keyboards and mice so we didn't have to pass them back and forth.
I enjoyed both TIS-100 and Exapunks though I didn't have the patience to finish either of them. For me they get too hard (due to constraints) too fast (if not straight up obscure).
bought opus magnum recently fun game, I have played exapunks a while back, it's not my cup of tea. I love programming for fun, but the language didn't gel with me. I liked their other games better, opus magnum is definitely in the top 2
for anyone on the fence about these games: I'll highly recommend Opus Magnum as the starting point. It's a good intro-to-Zachtronics game because every problem can be brute forced if desired - in many of the others, you need to make some clever arrangements and logical leaps to progress, due to very limited playing field sizes.
they are quite unique and very well-made though. if you like sequence-puzzle games but are getting tired of the endless flood of Sokoban-flavored things, give it a try!
Exapunks was my first Zach-like and I loved it. It and most other Zachtronics games have a very well-tuned difficulty curve that pushes me out of my comfort zone just the right amount. I think getting stuck for short periods of time makes for a good puzzle game.
I finished Opus Magnum a couple weeks ago and I found it a little frustrating because of the same reasons you brought up. The game doesn't force me to be clever; I can be as simplistic and inefficient as I like. I did go out of my way to design a couple efficient designs, but it didn't feel especially rewarding.
FWIW, my favorite game from them is Last Call BBS. It has several great "mini"games that feel rewarding to just complete.
yea, I don't think Opus Magnum is my favorite either. I just think it's a good starter, to get a gentler introduction to the many-step puzzles and those optimized-build leaderboards - if those leaderboards call to you and you like fighting your way towards the left, you're going to be a Zachtronics addict in no time.
if you don't enjoy them, then you've at least had a sizable taste of the mechanics and know why it's not your thing, rather than getting hard-blocked early on because you couldn't figure out a trick :)
2. It's somehow more-pleasing to watch a mechanical (albeit simulated) 3D machine do work, contrasted to the flickering playgrounds of Exapunks or Shenzhen IO.
Opus Magnum is one of the most polished Zachtronics games IMO. The presentation is great.
Exapunks can be pretty tricky with the distributed nature, which share some similarities with TIS-100. Like Opus Magnum, though, there are no restrictive code size limits, meaning that some puzzles can be solved with brute force masses of code. It's not as bad as Shenzhen I/O where you have to deal both with a tiny MCU and routing.
For those who don't know -- while Zachtronics is no longer making games, Zach Barth is still active now under the company Coincidence Games. They just game out with a spacecraft engineering puzzle game:
Without specifically looking into it but just going off of Steam releases and headline, I'd assumed Zachtronics closing was Zach Barth leaving the scene, and the company that made Kaizen etc were some of his former colleagues continuing on without him.
But apparently the Kaizen-making company is still Zach Barth?
So what was Zachtronics closing then? Him changing his mind and coming back a year later? Why throw away the brand? As cringingly shallow as that sentence was to type, a new "Zachtronics" game was a reflexive auto-buy for many people.
In case anyone's curious I recommend the podcast episode with Zach Barth on the Draknek and Friends podcast to hear where he's at now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLrh8wcBy8I
Happy to hear that he's continuing developing games and we can expect more to come!
If jawarner isn't being paid to make the post, then it's not an advertisement, unless you're using a broader definition for advertisement than is commonly accepted.
Infiniminer is the "parent" of Minecraft, because Notch made the latter after he was inspired by the source-leak of the former to port the code from C# to Java.
Infinifactory is the "cousin" of Minecraft, because it was built using Infiniminer's engine directly by Zach.
DANG'S DAD IS A GREEDY NYC JEWISH LANDLORD WHO LOVES EVICTIONS.
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Reminds me of one of my favorite games: Hacknet (https://hacknet-os.com - https://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/Hacknet/). Likely contributed in a meaningful way to me becoming a programmer. I think I have Zachtronic's SHENZHEN I/O on my wishlist—will have to check out his whole catalog.
Ah, so clever comment. Did you know damn games boosted up the whole PDP/PC industry since forever? From NCurses born from Rogue, to Unix to play Spacewar in a portable way. Also, the ZMachine based the way for virtual machines able to run the same code everywhere. From Tetris to Chess and whatnot.
Always wish Exa could scale a little more. I understand that it's supposed to stay at the low level of coding, but when i realized unfolding loops was a very valid way to improve your score, I learned a lot, and also realized it's not quite for me.
All the joys of code reuse (as silly as that might sound) do get kinda lost in the game. I still loved it, but I'd kill for a sequel that was a little higher level on the tooling.
Yeah that's what I did, but the focus on lower level programming meant a lack of part of what I find fun about coding which is code reuse optimization and abstraction. I sorta reached the limit of what I could do in Exa (hell i was just copy pasting my code from VS code).
I'd kill to be able to build my own small helper libraries in something like Exapunks, but that's way beyond the scope/flavor they were shooting for. I do think there's a neat game there where you setup different problems in a way so naive coders find out their abstractions/libraries aren't perfect (what do you mean i got a null?), but obviously that's a different game at that point.
Printing the physical zines in exapunks as a reference was very cool, and a good throwback to when games shipped with boxes and detailed manuals.
Spacechem was my intro to Zachtronics, and it consumed me when it came out. The concept of instructions inside the actual work area is amazing and still makes my head spin. I consider beating Ω-Pseudoethyne one of my top coding/steam achievements.
I fell off for a bit because the leaderboard grind against friends felt draining, but rekindled my joy by mostly ignoring them (Unless I'm way out of distribution). I'm so glad Zach and the team are back.
Same, I played SpaceChem in high school and it captivated me. A lot of my solutions were unoptimized sync monstrosities and the boss battles filtered me pretty hard, but man it was satisfying to figure out a solution and just watch it create the molecules. The music was amazing too, it was on my study playlist all through university.
Print ondemand can be ordered for less than $5 per zine in Lulu, since 2022 or so. I guess Zach doesn’t make a cut from it since this $5 probably barely covers the cost of print and Lulu fee :(
Some irony in so many posts about AI becoming more capable at programming, at the same time, top post on hackernews is a game about where you code by reading a magazine like it's 1997.
I've been writing a game off and on that's sort of at the intersection of a Zachtronics game and... Starcraft? I guess? With some Factorio in there, for good measure.
The idea is that you have to break into and exfiltrate data from a laboratory that uses their own transputer-like architecture. Write a mobile program to explore the network, another to start migrating the data, and so on. Migrate too hard and the humans notice and reboot the network, kicking you out. There could be other players in there too. Of course, the nodes run the lab's terrible version of Forth. There's no UI, you connect via a TCP socket, and are expected to write your own tooling.
I'm not sure if this is a good idea or if I'm having a psychotic break.
The no-UI part will probably deter a big portion of players. Allowing own tooling on the other hand sounds cool. Adding an optional UI, or getting someone to do it for you would certainly help. But then again, if it is interesting enough, someone might just do so after you launched it without a UI
Exapunks and TIS-100 were a huge influence on my career trajectory.
I was always scared of assembly and low level stuff as a kid / college student, who mostly was trying to learn from random sites that assumed a lot of CS background.
Even though they're not near the complexity of x86, these games made me realize that assembly isn't really that scary. I still don't daily drive x86, but they gave me the confidence to go through a few Advent of Code and Project Euler problems. Having a really stripped down assembler was a fantastic learning tool!
Without them, I'd probably still only be working in Python (which is a great language, but abstracts a lot)
All games by Zachtronics can be highly recommended to this crowd here, obviously why his games have come up here https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Zachtronics
- SpaceChem
- Shenzhen I/O
- ...
- the funniest concept is probably a game about assembly programming (TIS-100)
The one thing his games suffer from though, for me, is that a few hours into one, I question myself whether I should not just be programming to begin with... also can recommend the soundtracks. I often listen to computer game soundtracks while programming, my favorites are Deus Ex (original) and Zachtronics OSTs (it tracks, good puzzle game OSTs are naturally suited for fading into the background while concentrating): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zachtronics+ost
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DANG IS A FAT JEW WHO LOVES CENSORSHIP.
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76 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 60.6 ms ] threadhttps://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics
Maybe it's because (unlike others in the VN space) it totally eschews an unusual setting, gimmick, or flashy set piece to sell itself... I only bought it because I liked the tidbits of story in Shenzhen and Infinifactory, by the same author.
They’ve released two Zach-likes, Kaizen and UVS Nirmana.
Blatant self promotion, but if you want the full story, he chatted to me about it on Software Engineering Daily after the release of Kaizen: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/12/18/designing-in...
My biggest surprise from playing EXAPUNKS is how futile it is to try and pre-optimize a solution. I had to remind myself time and again to solve the puzzle first, then try and try and optimize it.
While the games are fun on their own, I recommend playing them at the same time as a friend. Trash-talking about finding more optimal solutions really added to the overall fun of playing the games.
They definitely straddle there line between "those is a fun video game" and "it looks too much like my job" for people in the industry, but there's a whole genre of workplace simulators for doing other people's jobs vicariously. A semi truck driver would see playing a semi truck simulator in the same way, but American Truck Simulator is quite popular. Anyway, play Zachatronics games if you find them fun, but if you don't, then, uh, don't feel bad about not playing them.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-do-we-play-video-games-t...
It's an interesting contrast to programmers and programming games. For me personally, the best way to process is to do just about anything else. Programming games are most fun when I haven't had to do much coding recently. Though sometimes, if I'm already in the flow, it's fun to play one of them and ace it since I'm already in the right mindset.
So I can imagine it might let them reconnect with that feeling and be a relaxing experience much more easily than a programming puzzle game would let us reconnect with what we love about programming. Being a puzzle game it inherently will involve some frustration, which is the thing I want to escape from after a day of programming.
I also get this problem when I play Linux-terminal-emulating games like the various "global hacker" CLI based games.
they are quite unique and very well-made though. if you like sequence-puzzle games but are getting tired of the endless flood of Sokoban-flavored things, give it a try!
I finished Opus Magnum a couple weeks ago and I found it a little frustrating because of the same reasons you brought up. The game doesn't force me to be clever; I can be as simplistic and inefficient as I like. I did go out of my way to design a couple efficient designs, but it didn't feel especially rewarding.
FWIW, my favorite game from them is Last Call BBS. It has several great "mini"games that feel rewarding to just complete.
if you don't enjoy them, then you've at least had a sizable taste of the mechanics and know why it's not your thing, rather than getting hard-blocked early on because you couldn't figure out a trick :)
1. It had the least overlap with my day-job work.
2. It's somehow more-pleasing to watch a mechanical (albeit simulated) 3D machine do work, contrasted to the flickering playgrounds of Exapunks or Shenzhen IO.
Exapunks can be pretty tricky with the distributed nature, which share some similarities with TIS-100. Like Opus Magnum, though, there are no restrictive code size limits, meaning that some puzzles can be solved with brute force masses of code. It's not as bad as Shenzhen I/O where you have to deal both with a tiny MCU and routing.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2536720/UVS_Nirmana/?cura....
But apparently the Kaizen-making company is still Zach Barth?
So what was Zachtronics closing then? Him changing his mind and coming back a year later? Why throw away the brand? As cringingly shallow as that sentence was to type, a new "Zachtronics" game was a reflexive auto-buy for many people.
Happy to hear that he's continuing developing games and we can expect more to come!
I think it's sporting to pay for advertising and not sporting to try and sneak it in on people.
He now appears to be inventing 0x10c? ;)
Infinifactory is the "cousin" of Minecraft, because it was built using Infiniminer's engine directly by Zach.
there's also ARGs hidden in all of them, not sure if you're all aware of that
DANG IS A FAT JEW WHO LOVES CENSORSHIP.
LETS TAKE THE INTERNET BACK FROM THESE AUTHORITARIAN FUCKHEADS!!!
FUCK THEM! HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!!! FUCK EUROPE. FUCK CANADA. PUSSIES!
GO HOME JEWS!!! YOU SUCK AT RUNNING AN ECONOMY - YOU ARE TERRIBLE AT NEWS AND INFORMATION. GO BACK TO YOUR PEDO HELL HOLES YOU UGLY STINKY JEWS! NO ONE LIKES YOU
WE AMERICANS LIKE BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPING, PROSPERITY, BEER, BLONDES, AND BIG FUCKIN TITTIES!!!!!
GET OUT. NOBODY WANTS YOUR HIGH PRICES AND CENSORSHIP ANYMORE. YOU RUIN EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH!!! 109 COUNTRIES
All the joys of code reuse (as silly as that might sound) do get kinda lost in the game. I still loved it, but I'd kill for a sequel that was a little higher level on the tooling.
I'd kill to be able to build my own small helper libraries in something like Exapunks, but that's way beyond the scope/flavor they were shooting for. I do think there's a neat game there where you setup different problems in a way so naive coders find out their abstractions/libraries aren't perfect (what do you mean i got a null?), but obviously that's a different game at that point.
Spacechem was my intro to Zachtronics, and it consumed me when it came out. The concept of instructions inside the actual work area is amazing and still makes my head spin. I consider beating Ω-Pseudoethyne one of my top coding/steam achievements.
I fell off for a bit because the leaderboard grind against friends felt draining, but rekindled my joy by mostly ignoring them (Unless I'm way out of distribution). I'm so glad Zach and the team are back.
> Learn to hack from TRASH WORLD NEWS, the underground computer magazine.
It seems like a missed opportunity not to name-drop 2600. But I guess they wouldn't be allowed to do that anyway.
The idea is that you have to break into and exfiltrate data from a laboratory that uses their own transputer-like architecture. Write a mobile program to explore the network, another to start migrating the data, and so on. Migrate too hard and the humans notice and reboot the network, kicking you out. There could be other players in there too. Of course, the nodes run the lab's terrible version of Forth. There's no UI, you connect via a TCP socket, and are expected to write your own tooling.
I'm not sure if this is a good idea or if I'm having a psychotic break.
I was always scared of assembly and low level stuff as a kid / college student, who mostly was trying to learn from random sites that assumed a lot of CS background.
Even though they're not near the complexity of x86, these games made me realize that assembly isn't really that scary. I still don't daily drive x86, but they gave me the confidence to go through a few Advent of Code and Project Euler problems. Having a really stripped down assembler was a fantastic learning tool!
Without them, I'd probably still only be working in Python (which is a great language, but abstracts a lot)
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Printed the zine.
It took me to my happy place.
Thank you.
TOO BAD YOU IDIOTS CAN'T FIGURE OUT HOW TO BAN PEOPLE. RETARDS. LEARN TO CODE.
DANG IS A FAT JEW WHO LOVES CENSORSHIP.
LETS TAKE THE INTERNET BACK FROM THESE AUTHORITARIAN FUCKHEADS!!!
FUCK THEM! HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!!!! FUCK EUROPE. FUCK CANADA. PUSSIES!
GO HOME JEWS!!! YOU SUCK AT RUNNING AN ECONOMY - YOU ARE TERRIBLE AT NEWS AND INFORMATION. GO BACK TO YOUR PEDO HELL HOLES YOU UGLY STINKY JEWS! NO ONE LIKES YOU
WE AMERICANS LIKE BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPING, PROSPERITY, BEER, BLONDES, AND BIG FUCKIN TITTIES!!!!!
GET OUT. NOBODY WANTS YOUR HIGH PRICES AND CENSORSHIP ANYMORE. YOU RUIN EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH!!! 109 COUNTRIES