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Comment by kibwen | Hacker News Reader

Zachtronics is a contender for the greatest game studio you've never heard of.

If you're a fan of Factorio, you owe it to yourself to play SpaceChem, TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, Opus Magnum, Exapunks, and Last Call BBS.

(In fact, since Factorio was inspired by a Minecraft mod, and since Zachtronics' Infiniminer was the direct inspiration for Minecraft, there's no Factorio without Zachtronics!)

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I think the best introductory recommendation would be the missing item: Infinifactory.

It may not be as nakedly algorithmic as some of the others, but the visual impact of a solution is very satisfying--you might even be able to show it of to family members without their eyes totally glazing over. :p

I tend to recommend Opus Magnum as an introduction, it's a lot easier to plan with, nice to look at, and has a somewhat more engaging story than most.

I'm a big fan of all of the puzzle ones, though. SpaceChem had a huge impact on me, my most-viewed YouTube video is this one little clip from January 2, https://youtu.be/dlJmKqi6EEc . But very hard to explain why it occupied my whole soul for a week!

I tend to recommend that people ignore any recommendation to start with a specific Zachtronics game (unless they're getting the recommendation from someone who knows them personally). Different flavors of nerds seem to have vastly different preferences for the games, so it's probably much better to take a few minutes and check how interesting the core mechanic of each one is to you and pick based on that.

Personally I enjoy working with electronics and assembly, and that translated to me really liking TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O. Meanwhile Opus Magnum wasn't anywhere near as interesting to me and felt like kind of a slog.

Another couple of games in the same vein are Human Resource Machine and its "sequel" Seven Billion Humans (by roughly the same people who gave us World of Goo many years ago).

Yes! Spacechem is my favorite game ever, I finished the game a few times on tablet version (which has a few less puzzles than the desktop one if I remember correctly). Their other puzzle games are great too, but there is some minimalism and the simple tablet compatible UI (unlike say TIS100 which is minimalist in a way, but the interface is not as great - Spacechem can be played by kids easily) which for me makes it superior to the others.

Turing complete is also fun and challenging.

But the aesthetics are completely different and in a way different game mechanics. Both computer puzzles. No doubt TC is literally the representation of a computer as the goal of the main storyline.

Have you played kobctpyktop?

http://thesiteformerlyknownas.zachtronicsindustries.com/kohc...

The game itself 404s for me, and looking it up, it used Flash. But it's included in Zach-like.

I've tried many but never gotten into any Zachtronics games for one simple reason: they are all puzzle games.

For me the motivation just never materializes. Contrast this to 100s of hours w/ each of Factorio, Satsifactory, and DSP amongst others.

SpaceChem is ok, I didn't really like Shenzhen IO. Exapunks is pretty fun, but Opus Magnum is my favorite by a large margin.

Your preferences are the exact reverse of mine!

Try Infinifactory if you haven’t!

I liked nearly every games by zachtronics (I even enjoyed Ironclads tactics which I don't think was as popular as some others) but not infinyfactory. I couldn't find the added value of 3d in a puzzle game.

> Never heard of

We are on HN

> We are on HN

xkcd lucky ten thousand

> a contender for the greatest game studio you've never heard of.

If getting 1 in 10,0000 right makes you a contender.

>HackerNews

>Zachtronics

>Never heard of

Pick two.

HackerNews and Never heard of.

That's why we're all here, aren't we?

To discover things we haven't heard of. That's why it's Hacker News, not Hacker Common Knowledge.

I had never heard of Zachtronics, and I've been on Hacker News since 2012.

OK, I stand corrected.

I keep running into his games whenever I'm on the lookout for games, and he is heavily targeting engineer-minded people.

I too have never heard of Zachtronics and I used to play lots of video games

Well, then you're about to discover something that might very much fit your interests.

I am not a huge fan because it feels a bit too close to actual work, but TIS-100 has been on my to-play list for a long time (I've bought it ages ago).

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