- The, by far, most completed level of all, the NAND with more than 12k solutions -
A Look Back at the First 12 Months of Circuits, Chaos, and Community**
It’s surreal to say this… but Hard Chip just turned one year old. Twelve months ago, I hit “Publish” on a tiny, weird, transistor-obsessed puzzle game, unsure if anyone would actually enjoy spending their evenings building gated latches, optimizing CMOS paths, or shaving off a few ticks just for the sake of it.
Well, turns out a lot of you do!
And today, looking back at this first year, I’m honestly blown away by what Hard Chip has become, what you’ve built inside it, and the wild journey that’s unfolded along the way.
Let’s rewind a bit.
🚀 Humble Beginnings to Today - A Fast Recap
Hard Chip started in with a modest pitch:
“Here’s a set of puzzles for designing actual transistor-level logic. Make cool circuits and have fun.”
Version 0.0.0.1 was barebones - no fancy backgrounds, no MOSFET colors, no validations, and certainly none of the wild gauntlet challenges we run today. But the core feeling was there: that little click of getting a circuit to behave.
In just one year, we went from that humble start to:
An Early Access on Steam one year ago, released one and a half year after beginning the development
A simulation engine that’s faster, safer, and more accurate
65 puzzles, taking from seconds to hours to make.
Hundreds (thousands ?) of optimizations across UI, editor, camera, and rendering
The introduction of Foundry Gauntlet competitive seasons with real-time leaderboards and multi-metric scoring
Blueprint import/export, validation pipelines, and online/offline fallback
A dedicated wiki to help players get into HC more easily.
New editor features, new parts, new backgrounds, and more QoL than I can list without needing a scroll bar (still experimental! soon tm).
Translations in multiple languages, with the help of an ever-growing community
A growing ecosystem of players producing insane designs, content, and memes
and so many more than I can list here!
Hard Chip today is almost unrecognizable from that first build, and that’s entirely because of your feedback, your experiments, and your absolute refusal to settle for “good enough” when you can build a solution that breaks physics and aesthetics at the same time.
- A gauntlet stage with the reward Garnet Gauntlet Theme on -
💡Community Highlights — You Went Hard
This year has been full of jaw-dropping moments courtesy of you, the players:
🏆 Legendary Gauntlet Runs
We saw players squeeze entire memory banks into microscopic footprints, race for low tick scores, and somehow create circuits that look like industrial art installations.
I still don’t know how some of you make these satisfying symmetrical designs while also achieving best-in-class metrics.
📐 Circuits That Shouldn’t Work (But Do)
Floating state contraptions, time-sensitive sync monsters, cursed experiments, spiral-shaped things. Hard Chip has become the spiritual successor of retro engineering chaos in the best possible way.
📊 150 000 Submitted Solutions
This is the milestone that honestly blows my mind the most.
That’s 150k actual circuits - big ones, tiny ones, elegant ones, cursed ones, slightly different or completely different - each representing someone’s creativity, iteration, and perseverance.
Every single submission contributed to shaping leaderboards, balancing puzzles, refining the simulation engine, and evolving the community meta. It’s an incredible testament to how active, dedicated, and inventive you all are.
💬 A GREAT Discord Community
One of the most energizing things this year has been how lively the Discord server is. What started as a quiet corner for feedback has turned into a source of engaging conversations. People sharing screenshots, dissecting transistor quirks, debating Gauntlet strategies, theorycrafting, helping each other, posting cursed circuits, or just hanging out.
As a solo dev, those late-night message bursts, wild solution brainstorms, spontaneous tutorials, and even the small “hey I found a bug!” moments: they all feed directly into my motivation. A lot of Hard Chip’s ideas, improvements, and QoL features were born in those Discord threads. The community’s curiosity pushes the game forward, one nerdy conversation at a time.
It’s hard to overstate it: your discussions are fuel.
- An absolute 64Bit Adder Spaghetti Monster, don't try this at home -
🎁 Happy Birthday, Hard Chip
To celebrate, a little addition has been made to the game. The space where you spend so much time, the workstation, now has a new look! It is small, but I find it awesome, I hope you'll like it too! Launch your copy of HC to get this new workstation. Shoutout at Hoplite VFX studio for this amazing workstation, check their great short films on YT!
- The now a little bit more iconic workstation, where you spend so much time designing chips! -
❤️ Thank You for an Unforgettable First Year
Hard Chip exists because you showed up.
You tried challenges I worried were too niche.
You optimized circuits I thought were “already optimal.”
You turned this strange little transistor playground into a fantastic community of engineers, hobbyists, and puzzle maniacs.
Whether you’ve been here since the early 0.0.0.x days or you just popped in during the gauntlet, thank you. Seriously.
Here’s to another year of logic gates, floating states, cursed circuits, leaderboard drama, and late-night breakthroughs.
Happy 1-Year Anniversary, Hard Chip. Let’s build the next year together. ❤️
-Elorth