Comment by JimiofEden

Comment by JimiofEden a day ago

13 replies

I keep returning to Zachtronics games endlessly in my free time, despite doing engineering work for 8-10 hours a day for the last months. Sure they're a bit of a facsimile of a programming challenge, but they're pretty tough problems, especially in the ones that are basically using assembly. I even had someone reference that my latest Opus Magnum creation looks like cellular automata.

If you can simplify the problem/solution space into a puzzle, give me a leaderboard to compete against, more specifically let me compete against the people I care about, and give it the barest amount of polish, it's the kind of thing someone like me would obsess over.

ryandv a day ago

> Sure they're a bit of a facsimile of a programming challenge, but they're pretty tough problems, especially in the ones that are basically using assembly.

They are indeed "real," bonafide (though perhaps sophomoric) programming problems. There is an Exapunks puzzle that has you implement a form of binary tree search/traversal in assembly.

  • recursivegirth 19 hours ago

    Esoteric programing languages is the term you both are looking for. I think the Zachtronic languages fit firmly in there somewhere.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_programming_language

    • ryandv 18 hours ago

      Usually I see that term applied to Turing tarpits, intentionally obfuscated languages, joke/meme languages, or ones with highly heterodox syntax. Zachtronic languages are really none of these and closer to an assembly (reduced) instruction set architecture. What makes them toy-like languages is that the "machine" you're writing assembly for is rather oversimplified, and is in fact totally fictitious.

jader201 a day ago

I need to try some of their other ones. I’ve only played Opus Magnum, which I loved.

But being the completionist that I am, I stopped playing it once I got to a level I wasn’t able to perfectly optimize across all three measurements.

the__alchemist a day ago

Zachtronics games are great! Very challenging. They made a big splash with Space Chem a while back. I need to go back to Opus Magnum and finish it...

  • hcs a day ago

    Zach's next game Kaizen comes out tomorrow! https://coincidence.games/kaizen/

    • xingped 11 hours ago

      I thought Zachtronics shut down/wasn't making any more games? Are they back? If so, why?

    • zeristor 17 hours ago

      Sounds like it’s come out just in time.

      I thought Zachtronics had given up making games for some reason. Or did I dream that, if I did that would be really weird.

      • xingped 11 hours ago

        They did stop. I'm also confused that there's a new game.

    • JimiofEden 15 hours ago

      Very exciting - Thank you for sharing! I knew that there was a new game on the way, but I had no idea it was so immediate!

    • jader201 a day ago

      Oooh… a factory automation Zachtronics game??

      Take my money.

RataNova a day ago

Wild how often these games end up sparking ideas or techniques I end up using IRL