Today's update makes a few improvements to the game's windowing behavior, allowing it to be arbitrarily resized and toggled in and out of fullscreen by pressing Alt-Enter. It also fixes a typo (!) in the final puzzle.
Today's update makes a few improvements to the game's windowing behavior, allowing it to be arbitrarily resized and toggled in and out of fullscreen by pressing Alt-Enter. It also fixes a typo (!) in the final puzzle.
Boot up your Z5 Powerlance and dial into Last Call BBS , the last game from Zachtronics! The Barkeep’s loaded up his retro computer with a full set of puzzle games for you to download and play. No need to worry about copy protection, they’re all fully cracked and ready to enjoy!
Boot up your Z5 Powerlance and dial into Last Call BBS, the last game from Zachtronics!
The Barkeep’s loaded up his retro computer with a full set of puzzle games for you to download and play. No need to worry about copy protection, they’re all fully cracked and ready to enjoy!
Includes eight full games:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1511780/Last_Call_BBS/
Today's update fixes a minor bug where typing a forward slash into a text field would paste the contents of your clipboard instead, in addition to some tweaks to make the "mirror vertically" feature more intelligent.
Today's update fixes a minor bug where typing a forward slash into a text field would paste the contents of your clipboard instead, in addition to some tweaks to make the "mirror vertically" feature more intelligent.
SpaceChem, the classic Zachtronics design-based puzzle game not only got a sweet update recently to improve the tech behind the game, it's also now super easy to grab the updated community version.
SpaceChem, the classic Zachtronics design-based puzzle game not only got a sweet update recently to improve the tech behind the game, it's also now super easy to grab the updated community version.
Today's update brings SpaceChem into the future with an upgrade from SDL 1.2 to SDL 2.0 and 64-bit builds for macOS so that the game now runs on macOS Catalina. It looks like it also contains a few fixes for obscure crashes and scroll wheel support for some of the game's UI.
Today's update brings SpaceChem into the future with an upgrade from SDL 1.2 to SDL 2.0 and 64-bit builds for macOS so that the game now runs on macOS Catalina. It looks like it also contains a few fixes for obscure crashes and scroll wheel support for some of the game's UI.
Satisfactory review A first-person industrialism sim that sees you wrestling with machinery on an alien planet to create the perfect factory. Developer: Coffee Stain Studios Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing Release: Out now On: Windows From: Steam , Epic Price: £27/€30/$30 Ther
Satisfactory review
A first-person industrialism sim that sees you wrestling with machinery on an alien planet to create the perfect factory.
There it is, the trans-planetary pipeline. One long tube of metal scarring a rural alien planet. It brings coal and water to my power stations, and electricity to my factories. It has taken a day of planning, construction and pumping. Now, the pipeline stands before me, a snaking behemoth of energy consumption. Suddenly, a thought comes. Why didn’t I just build coal stations next to the vein? I could have stretched a cheap wire across the planet, instead of a kilometre-long death pipe.
This is Satisfactory, a cracking first-person factory-builder that’s been in early access on Epic for a while. It’s coming to Steam today, so RPS management dispatched me to inspect the game’s machinery and ruin the extraterrestrial idyll with smog and incompetence. They sent the right person.
Today's update is all bug fixes, brought over from the game's unofficial "community edition": Fixed a Windows-only display bug when using a high-DPI monitor. Fixed an exploit where you could disconnect a pipe from its reactor. Fixed a crash when loading invalid ResearchNet puzzle
Today's update is all bug fixes, brought over from the game's unofficial "community edition":
It is so likeZach to release a Zachlike (just a Zach to his friends) about creating drugs in a small Romanian apartment. Molek-Syntez is now squatting on early access, trying to hook you in with the good stuff as you program your molecular synthesiser. Your goal is to turn chemic
It is so likeZach to release a Zachlike (just a Zach to his friends) about creating drugs in a small Romanian apartment. Molek-Syntez is now squatting on early access, trying to hook you in with the good stuff as you program your molecular synthesiser. Your goal is to turn chemicals into medicines and other substances with “various pharmacological effects”.
Zach-like , the book about Zachlikes by Zach Barth , creator of the genre, is now free albeit notably less papery now. Zachtronics’s previously Kickstarter-exclusive book was a collection of design documents from the creator of Spacechem , Opus Magnum , Infinifactory and many mor
Zach-like, the book about Zachlikes by Zach Barth, creator of the genre, is now free albeit notably less papery now. Zachtronics’s previously Kickstarter-exclusive book was a collection of design documents from the creator of Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Infinifactory and many more, showing just how he engineers his puzzles. Now anyone can read a digital version for free, and it comes bundled with a pile of his early browser games, unreleased prototypes, and even a card game if you’ve got printer ink to burn. Grab it free on Steam. I feel smarter just having it on my PC.
Today's update includes the following: Fixed a crash when starting a pipeline with too many reactors. Removed impossible scores from the histograms for the "Swapite" journal puzzle. Bumped the version number from 1013 to 1014. When things settle down with these changes I'll uploa
Today's update includes the following:
When things settle down with these changes I'll upload a build to non-Steam stores as well.
Today's update includes the following changes: Fixed a bug in production inputs with variations of the same molecule. Fixed a bug with reactors being slightly too roomy at the right and bottom. Fixed a bug with the Reset option and "ancient" reactors. Fixed a bug that would spawn
Today's update includes the following changes:
Can you believe it's been over eight years since SpaceChem first launched? Today we're releasing a community-driven update featuring a host of bug fixes, improvements, and new journal puzzles. Special thanks to 12345ieee and Csaboka, who did most of the actual work for this updat
Can you believe it's been over eight years since SpaceChem first launched? Today we're releasing a community-driven update featuring a host of bug fixes, improvements, and new journal puzzles. Special thanks to 12345ieee and Csaboka, who did most of the actual work for this update.
I reckon most of the RPS Treehouse gang love us some Zachlikes, since well before Alice Prime coined the term in 2016 in reference to Shenzhen I/O . Puzzlemeister Zach Barth likes the term too, as he’s borrowed it for the title of his book. Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter (
I reckon most of the RPS Treehouse gang love us some Zachlikes, since well before Alice Prime coined the term in 2016 in reference to Shenzhen I/O. Puzzlemeister Zach Barth likes the term too, as he’s borrowed it for the title of his book. Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter (500% funded in one day), Zach-Like shows the workings and the processes behind his practical puzzlers. There’s design docs for his major games, sketches and documents for some that never got made and some early design exercises. There’s even some pen-and-paper brainteasers in there, because we’re gluttons for punishment.
Today's update fixes a crash on Mac when importing custom puzzles. No other platforms should be affected.
Today's update fixes a crash on Mac when importing custom puzzles. No other platforms should be affected.
After a few years of SpaceChem not being officially supported on Mac, we've finally gotten around to getting it working again! It ought to work out of the box for everyone now, and not require Mono to be installed separately or anything like that. If you experience anything weird
After a few years of SpaceChem not being officially supported on Mac, we've finally gotten around to getting it working again! It ought to work out of the box for everyone now, and not require Mono to be installed separately or anything like that.
If you experience anything weird please send me an email ([email protected]).
This is The Mechanic , where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they ve taken to make their games. This time, Exapunks . It s pretty obvious that the excellent Exapunks is a game about hacking. Specifically, it s a game about programming viruses a
This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they ve taken to make their games. This time, Exapunks [official site].
It s pretty obvious that the excellent Exapunks is a game about hacking. Specifically, it s a game about programming viruses and sending them into networked systems to monkey around with data, set in a great alternative 90s Wired cyberworld of PC cases flashed with black and red decals and zines set in Apple Garamond.
For its makers, though, Exapunks is a game about limitations. Its format is the result of hard decisions about how much space you get to write your code in, how much freedom you get to solve its puzzles, and how it s presented on your screen. And even now, creative director Zach Barth isn t totally sure he and his team got it right. (more…)
A proposal: puzzles games focused on assembling or programming – or both – should be called Zachlikes. Following the atom-assembling SpecChem , production line ’em up Infinifactory , and the computer-programming TIS-100 , Zach Barth and his Zachtronics have announced a new Zachli
A proposal: puzzles games focused on assembling or programming – or both – should be called Zachlikes. Following the atom-assembling SpecChem, production line ’em up Infinifactory, and the computer-programming TIS-100, Zach Barth and his Zachtronics have announced a new Zachlike. SHENZHEN I/O [official site] will combine assembling and programming to build circuits from components and then write code for them. It’s due to hit Steam Early Access in October and, for now, you can check it out in this wee announcement trailer:
survey fridays Every week we ask you to rank a series or just reminisce about PC games in a not-very-scientific survey. Look for the survey link in our Twitter and Facebook feeds each week, and the results every Friday. Previously, we ranked the Mass Effect and Call of Duty serie
survey fridays
Every week we ask you to rank a series or just reminisce about PC games in a not-very-scientific survey. Look for the survey link in our
Twitter and Facebook feeds each week, and the results every Friday. Previously, we ranked the Mass Effect and Call of Duty series.
You guys really love hard games, or at least, you love whichever game you remember as the hardest. In my latest survey, I asked respondents to rank the hardest game they've played on a scale of 1-10. Over 40% scored their most challenging experience a 10, and 70% scored it an 8 or higher.
You also love a lot of different hard games, and have different ideas about what makes a game 'hard.' Among 2,660 respondents, the top game cited as the hardest they've ever played was only mentioned 385 times—around 14% of the total. (Actually, one person wrote in
SEGA Bass Fishing 1,006 times, but I've cut that from the results, along with several variations of "your mom.")
the top 10
Click the icon in the upper right to enlarge.
Unsurprisingly, Dark Souls got the most mentions, with 14% saying it was the hardest game they've ever played. It was followed by Dark Souls 2, which took in about 5% of the results. From there, though, the results are immediately diverse, with shooters, platformers, puzzle games, strategy games, and MOBAs all bunched together. When I cut out jokes, console games, games with specific caveats, and those that received only one or two mentions, I was still left with over 70 games. (Here's my curated list of the top 77.)
The top 10, naturally, are the
most popular hard games—and games that are arguably best known for being hard—so the results actually get more interesting the deeper into the list I go. At number 11, for instance, you'll find I Wanna Be The Boshy, a fan game based on number six, I Wanna Be The Guy, an intentionally difficult tribute to early platformers.
Further down (and I'm skipping around a bit), we find
StarCraft II, STALKER, Insurgency, Alien Isolation, Kerbal Space Program, the Touhou series, VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, SpaceChem, Dustforce, Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, and, of course, Bad Rats, a notoriously awful game which has accrued a positive rating on Steam, because ironic Steam reviews are all the rage.
It's good to see the Touhou Project's bullet-hell games earn some mentions. We recently published an introduction to the series, which is currently being localized by Playism.
VVVVVV, Volgarr the Viking, Dustforce, and SpaceChem all come recommended (I don't think I ever made it past Vogarr's first stage, though). I did expect to see a few more puzzle games. One game no one mentioned, I presume because it's newer and a bit more niche, is TIS-100. It's made by the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, and might be one of the most challenging puzzle games I've played (though it's presumably easier for experienced programmers, and anyone who paid more attention in school than I did). Print out the manual if you can.
difficulty levels
Click the icon in the upper-right to enlarge.
All of the games I mentioned up there can easily be described as 'hard,' if for different reasons. Against skilled opponents, CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and StarCraft 2 are very hard, and they're complex. Dwarf Fortress and Kerbal Space Program require a lot of learning. Super Hexagon, and the bullet-hell games and platformers, require precision control.
But plenty of games which aren't known for being hard can be very hard. The Witcher 2, for instance, came in at 19, in part due to its permadeath mode and first boss. Those damn RC missions from GTA: San Andreas also came up. Civilization V on Diety difficulty, too.
In the survey, I asked which difficulty setting (based on four generic settings) the takers were most likely to choose when starting a new game. The distribution is about as I expected: almost no one takes the easy route, the most people (39.8%) leave it on the normal difficulty, and slightly fewer choose the hard (28.7%) or the hardest modes (26%).
When asked to tell us the worst thing they've done to express frustration with a game, plenty said that they don't react physically—they curse, uninstall the game, go outside, or do other healthy-sounding things. " stopped playing for few months to get over my anger and hopefully renew my interest," said King_Matt. A calm and wise king is Matt. We can all learn from the great King_Matt.
And apparently, a lot of us need to. The word "broke" came up 222 times and "smash" was included in over 100 responses. Banana peels came up an awful lot, too. Here are a few examples:
I chucked my keyboard at my brick wall. It dragged the desktop with it. It corrupted my hard drive, broke my keyboard and most functions on the case didn't work properly. - Abernath
Thrown a banana peel out the window. But I picked it up later. - Kenu
I once got so frustrated while just trying to get fuel up to my ship [in Kerbal Space Program] that was trying to get to Mun that I decided to fly all my rockets into Kerbol (the sun). I spent about 5 hours just designing the booster/fuel ships to help get my whole fleet there and give them the last push into its blinding embrace. Once every single one was burned to ash, and all the crew with it, I deleted the save and went to bed. It was only after I woke up that I realized what I had done. To say the least, I cried. - Nerd__Guy
Threw my lamp out the window. It was a damn good lamp too. - Anonymous
Literally ripped out a chunk of hair in frustration once. - Nate Dogg
I actually broke my grandfather's trackball mouse while playing when I was a kid on his PC. I had to buy him a new mouse from Walmart. - Brain
Threw more money at it. This is a recurring theme with me in multiplayer games. - Ryan Daniels
In my grandest fit of frustration, I suppressed my volatile feelings with the warm, cheesy comfort of Hot Pockets. A lot of them. It turns out one man can eat a lot of Hot Pockets. They come out a lot faster than they go in. - Chudbunkis
Threw a banana peel at the screen. - As7iX
Broke a finger. - Dodie
I predicted that Dark Souls would be the most popular game in the survey, so I added an extra question. I asked everyone, regardless of which game they put down as the hardest, to agree or disagree with the statement "Dark Souls isn't even that hard, ugh." I think we can all agree that I chose an extremely unscientific way to phrase the question, but we definitely can't all agree on whether or not Dark Souls is hard.
SpaceChem and Infinifactory creator Zach Barth has released his latest thing-making puzzle game, which sits somewhere between fiddling with chemistry and building automated factories. TIS-100 is an assembly programming puzzler, having you literally learn and write code to fix up
SpaceChem and Infinifactory creator Zach Barth has released his latest thing-making puzzle game, which sits somewhere between fiddling with chemistry and building automated factories. TIS-100 [official site] is an assembly programming puzzler, having you literally learn and write code to fix up corrupted code in the mysterious eponymous ’80s computer. Yes, you do need to learn and write the TIS-100’s assembly code. Computers are puzzles!
After a seven-week stretch in Steam Early Access, TIS-100 properly launched yesterday.
… [visit site to read more]
If you liked SpaceChem there's a good chance you'll love Infinifactory, the latest design-based puzzle game from Zachtronics! LIKE SPACECHEM… IN 3D! Design and run factories in a first-person, fully 3D environment. HISTOGRAMS ARE BACK! Optimize your solutions, and then optimize t
If you liked SpaceChem there's a good chance you'll love Infinifactory, the latest design-based puzzle game from Zachtronics!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/300570/