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by Apocryphon 1045 days ago
This is pretty nerdy but c'mon, it's like Cookie Clicker or some other idle game when compared to Zachtronics titles.
4 comments

TIS-100 is certainly far up there in "nerdiest game" rankings, and I must offer Bombe as well, the only game I know of that embeds Z3: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2262930/Bombe/
I think Core War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War) is even nerdier, too bad there's no updated, polished implementation.

P.S: I'm also a big fan of Zachtronics games: TIS-100, Shenzen I/O etc etc

It fits very comfortably into the category of "time management" game, which was a fairly popular casual genre 10-15 years ago. Cook Serve Delicious is probably the one notable example which is still going strong.

Definitely distinct from idle games.

Wilmot's Warehouse is the one it most reminds me of (maybe the graphics), which is quite fun (except for the random crashing :( that seems to get worse after it starts happening). This one needs a lot of work, though. I did it wrong it seems looking at the other comments here but nothing about this one makes me want to try again. Wilmot's Warehouse has excellent pacing. The theme of this one could be made to work well but throwing everything at the player right away and see how long they can keep going is not my idea of fun. I'd suggest automation options combined with changing the use pattern of the system over time. Plus something to give the player more customization options so it isn't just "do this repetitive task as quickly as you can". Maybe a choice of cute loading icons that you can display in certain circumstances?

Mini Metro is another well known game in the time management genera. I've seen some recent games with this design and played a demo of a not yet released game. It seems like a common small indie game genera since larger developers don't seem to touch it that I can think of (except possibly some mini games? I can't think of anything off hand but there must be some). I guess the larger developers go for RTS games instead.

Possibly the OS theme could be turned into a kind of "bot combat" game (at least I think that would be the general genera I'm thinking of, but without direct combat in this case) if the internals are automated and then compared to the market as a whole, with established OSes that are fairly good at everything but not great at anything. These established OSes could then take various anti-competitive actions along the way that force you to get better at a different specialty than you previously targeted.

Unlike cookie clicker, this game can actually teach you something.
I learned a great deal about the dangers of grandmas from cookieclicker.
I’m not contesting that, just making an analogy to quibble against “the nerdiest game ever” claim. Like I appreciate its existence but just saying there are entire genres of this stuff.
> Zachtronics

Kinda sad that the dev quitted