Several Zachtronics games are just "programming, but intentionally annoying".
I don't really see the appeal compared to ordinary programming. My favorite programming game has actually been a flash game where your goal was to transform binary strings (represented as sequences of blue/red dots) into other binary strings. You were still writing in Befunge, but the rest of it came off as trying to be helpful to the extent possible, rather than giving you a goal and then disabling the tools you'd want to use to get there.
I feel like there are different types of constraints. Some are useful for creativity (limited number of specific resources), some are annoying (making you work harder to achieve known goal).
I stopped playing exapunks because of this before the end. The limited instruction set, limits on movements, etc. are cool - they force new solutions. Not having functions or advanced templates is just annoying - I need to implement the same thing multiple times, by copy-pasting.
I see Zachrtonics games as just the fun part of programming. Programming, but you don't need to mess with build files, tooling, unit testing, deployment, maintenance, customers, PMs, etc... It's just the puzzle solving part of programming, which is my favorite part of programming.
They're the line for me. Factorio is fun, Zachtronic not so much. And within those: Opus Magnum was better than others because the presentation appealed to me. Factorio I do not play "efficiently" because the "just plop blueprints and let bots handle it" style is boring - I much more enjoy organically grown chaos. Sometimes play challenges with artificial limitations.
It's one of the games I was thinking of as "programming, but intentionally annoying". Checking my installation, I seem to have completed the first three chapters.
Some things off the top of my head that I find annoying:
- Puzzles start feeling like they're asking more for busywork than for puzzle-solving. I enjoy thinking about "how do I do this?" I don't enjoy thinking "well, I know exactly what I want to do, but it's a huge slog to actually go through the motions."
- You can't rotate the thing that accepts a polymer. So if you end up making the correct thing, but your orientation is off, you get to manually re-lay every part of your machine, instead.
- Everything uses the same clock.
- You can't even apply purely mechanical fixes for everything using the same clock, like a three-arm grabber with one of the arms cut off. There goes the conceit that the rules are justified by the theme.
I like that Opus Magnum scores you separately on time, space, and monetary cost. That was a good idea. I like working out fundamental minimums for how quickly I can produce something (based on the source pieces I'm allowed...) and designing something that can achieve that. The animation of a completed machine is fun to watch.
I think the monetary-cost mechanic seems underdeveloped.
> Puzzles start feeling like they're asking more for busywork than for puzzle-solving. I enjoy thinking about "how do I do this?" I don't enjoy thinking "well, I know exactly what I want to do, but it's a huge slog to actually go through the motions."
Wow, I just finished the first level and I can already tell that I'm going to love this game. Tightly crafted puzzle games are my favorite genre - thanks for mentioning this one.
I much prefer Spacechem. Opus Magnum has the control separated from the machine, so it’s easy to optimise all the timings. With Spacechem, you have to play with having the red Waldo control the blue, because the blue already has a command at that point.
I guess it’s like Harvard vs. Von Neumann. Harvard is more practical, but Von Neumann allows more fun hacks.
Factorio is like programming. But without management or customers messing anything up. You are in full control of the whole project and have fairly clear requirements. That makes it a lot more enjoyable.
Sounds like you could get the same thing by writing a real software project to scratch some itch you have. Sure, other users might come eventually and, but you can just ignore those and keep building what you like.
Yeah. I recently bought a game on steam where you create and manage a startup. You have to do stuff like research landing page, hire devs, ux people etc. About 10 mins in I was just thinking that my time would be better spent actually doing this stuff rather than doing it in a game.
This. I would even suggest it might be good training to coop with the manager if it was a possibility. I bet manager would learn quickly whats a technical debt, why it shouldn't be ignored and that sometimes high level goals cannot be pursued directly. Also devs would learn quickly that sometimes we have to stop the crazy conveyors doing binary operations on the payload and just keep it simple.
Depends - Some games like this are addictive and great fun for programmers too. I played "Spacechem" to death. It's effectively a two-thread, multiprocess, visual turing-alike machine with an organic chemistry theme. It's awesome.
I liked the idea of these games but I was the opposite. I couldn't shake the feeling that it was just work. I found myself procrastinating them. Wish I could enjoy the puzzles more.
Though I already have weekend programming projects that are more fulfilling and work towards something more concrete than "yay, solved a puzzle", and the games just made me wonder why I wasn't putting this time into those hobby projects. Factorio made me feel this way too.
On the other hand, I've been playing Morrowind lately (OpenMW) which gives me a nice mental break from programming. Apart from the fact that I couldn't help but write a parser for its game files once I saw how simple and documented the format was. Bit more fulfilling to have a `tes3_parser.go` at the end of my puzzle-solving session than to have solved some contrived TIS-100 puzzles for a fantasy computer.
Factorio was fun at first, but then it quickly felt like a pencil and paper optimization problem for something that doesn't even exist. Whether that tickles your fancy or not is probably like whether cilantro tastes like soap to you or not.
Exactly my review. I usually play it when work is slow to keep my brain entertained, but when I get proper work at work - factorio is no longer my friend. Game is like drugs - ill just do small updates to my fab - boom its 4am.