10 ms·
Exapunks (2018)
- markx2 3mo agoTheir catalogue is well worth buying. https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics
- nbaksalyar 3mo ago"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!
- squeegmeister 3mo agoI think about this game often
- noduerme 3mo agoI'm good friends with the writer of Eliza. If you enjoyed it, you might like his novel. https://matthewseiji.com/process https://matthewseiji.com/process
- npinsker 3mo agoIt's one of my favorite visual novels and is so underappreciated. Maybe it's because (unlike others in the VN space) it totally eschews unusual settings, gimmicks, or flashy set pieces to sell itself... I only bought it because I liked the tidbits of story in Shenzhen and Infinifactory, by the same author. Every part of it is unbelievably strong though.
- Schlagbohrer 3mo agoI 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!
- Schlagbohrer 3mo agoThe 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.
- arn3n 3mo agoEliza 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.
- __sy__ 3mo agoi 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
- twentyfiveoh1 3mo agoOlder, but I love me some Zachtronics.
- deelowe 3mo agoI wish Zach would start making games again. :-(
- ACCount37 3mo agoThe 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".
- jna_sh 3mo agoHe never stopped, he’s just under a different label: https://coincidence.games/ https://coincidence.games/ 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-innovative-puzzle-games-with-zachtronics-with-zach-barth/ https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/12/18/designing-in...
- altairprime 3mo agoThis is an excellent interview; thanks for posting it.
- rafram 3mo agoWhat's up with the AI narration at the beginning? Or is it just someone with an incredibly steady voice and AI cadence? It's uncanny and weird considering that this is a podcast hosted by actual humans!
- jf 3mo agoThis 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.
- fragmede 3mo ago> 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.
- yoyohello13 3mo agoToo true. I used to absolutely love Zachtronics games. Then I became a professional programmer and I just can’t play the programming themed ones anymore. Kind of a shame because TIS-100 is what made me want to be a programmer in the first place.
- Thanemate 3mo agoI used to feel the same but, with the LLM mandates made me have more fun playing Shenzhen I/O than actually programming at work. I'm one of "those people".
- dysoco 3mo agoI have a strong feeling that with the advent of AI these kind of games are going to come back in style. Many programmers myself included aren't doing that much "coding" in the workplace anymore.
- minraws 3mo agobought 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
- Groxx 3mo agofor 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!
- fleebee 3mo agoExapunks 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.
- Groxx 3mo agoyea, 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 :)
- jawarner 3mo agoFor 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: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2536720/UVS_Nirmana/?curator_clanid=45526806 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2536720/UVS_Nirmana/?cura....
- comeonbro 3mo agoWithout 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.
- jna_sh 3mo agoZachtronics wrapped up because they all got a bit burned out by the yearly release pace, and Zach tried to become a teacher. He didn’t like it, and when the rest of the team continued making games, he joined up with them and thus Coincidence. Further down the discussion I shared a podcast where he tells the story.
- comeonbro 3mo agoI understand why he might not want to and hope I would have the character to do similarly in his place, but they should really lead with "by Zach Barth" rather than "from the original Zachtronics team", which still sounds great, but tbh at least for me bumped it from "buy and play immediately" to "wishlist". From other comments in this thread, it seems I am not the only one who misinterpreted that as not including Zach himself
- mattbee 3mo agoMaybe he sold his company, or never completely owned the name himself?
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- figbert 3mo agoReminds me of one of my favorite games: Hacknet (https://hacknet-os.com https://hacknet-os.com - https://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/Hacknet/ 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.
- sejje 3mo ago85% off and $1.49 USD right now for the summer sale
- sleepybrett 3mo agoEvery zachtronics game is a gem.
- bobbytheblkbear 3mo ago[flagged]
- recursive 3mo agoI think that only a fraction of spreadsheets are games, but I enjoy a much larger fraction of Zachtronics' catalog.
- vortegne 3mo agowhat a miserable human you are?
- bobbytheblkbear 3mo agoBecause I analyzed the non-game accurately? Grow up and get over yourself not everyone is delusional enough to enjoy spreadsheets.
- anthk 3mo agoAh, 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. Every BSD comes with games, which are THE testbed platform for 'new' code such as pledge/unveil under OpenBSD. If the game doesn't break, consider it well done. Also, in modern days, the best way to get the hjklyubn burned in your forehead is to play Nethack or any other roguelike with that keyset, and not with vi.
- Eji1700 3mo agoAlways 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.
- matusp 3mo agoThe thing is, you can play it in any way you like. You don't have to optimize for speed at all if you don't enjoy it
- Eji1700 3mo agoYeah 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.
- flockonus 3mo agoSome 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.
- omgbear 3mo agoPrinting 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.
- hakkoru 3mo agoSame, 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.
- omgbear 3mo agoOh man, the music in all their games is top-notch!
- yu3zhou4 3mo agoPrint 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 :(
- CWuestefeld 3mo agoI haven't played this, but just reading the description... > 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.
- egypturnash 3mo agoTWN is totally 2600 fanfic. Except for the part where it's got a bit too much in the way of gorgeous art. Same size, same rhythms, same vibe. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2515197025 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=25151...
- Schlagbohrer 3mo agoTrash World News has a way less annoying editor than 2600
- Tepix 3mo agoMy favourite Zach game so far is Infinifactory. TIS-100 was also fun, until it started feeling like work.
- joshu 3mo agoI'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.
- dtj1123 3mo agoI'd play it.
- joshu 3mo agohooray! one potential user, market validated
- ortichic 3mo agoThe 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
- joshu 3mo agothat's all true. i'm not really trying to get a huge audience, just make a fun internet thing...
- StableAlkyne 3mo agoExapunks 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)
- hosel 3mo agoI spent so so much time playing SpaceChem. My favorite game of all time.
- bobbytheblkbear 3mo agoembedded youtube video on an advertisement site how do I unsubscribe from your blog's ads?
- jtxt 3mo agoI unlocked the Redshift handheld video game system; became obsessed and made a video player ( https://www.reddit.com/r/exapunks/comments/tzv1m5/redshift_video_player_wanted_to_add_sound_but/ https://www.reddit.com/r/exapunks/comments/tzv1m5/redshift_v... ) among other things. So fun! I should progress past Redshift.
- Sivart13 3mo ago[dead]
- jackdoe 3mo agoIts discounted on steam summer sale, I bought it and played all evening yesterday. Printed the zine. It took me to my happy place. Thank you.
- b-kf 3mo agoAll 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 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Zachtronics - SpaceChem - Shenzhen I/O - ... - the funniest concept is probably a game about assembly programming (TIS-100) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zachtronics+ost
- tomfow 3mo ago[flagged]
- tomuow 3mo ago[flagged]
- zimmund 3mo agoWhy is this relevant to HN? (especially since it's nothing new?)
- qarl2 2mo agoHey. Stop stalking me. It's creepy as fuck. Be better.