I think it becomes more of a hassle than a benefit to the game to have to refer to an outside source this often, and some kind of better tooltips and searchable index in-level would have been appreciated. It's a nice concept, especially here where there's a lot of story flavor mixed in too, but even once you have the language down, this game has you going back to the book again and again to learn levels' individual gimmicks. Like in TIS-100, the programming language info is all put inside these PDF booklets that are meant to be either printed out or viewed on a second screen. Speaking of that documentation, it's one aspect of the game I'm a bit mixed on. A few hours in, it felt very natural to use these systems without referring much to the included documentation. Programming for multiple little robot dudes at once also works really intuitively and is a lot of fun when it's needed. Though the puzzles can be tough to crack, the invented programming language for the game is great. Programming for multiple little robot dudes at once also works really intuitively and is a lot of fun when … More After each level, your code's performance is stacked up against other players in 3 core metrics to give some extra motivation on how to improve the solution. and have to build your solution around that.Īs you can imagine, there's a huge variety of ways you can solve puzzles like this, a fact that the game really leans into for its replayability factor. ![]() You can see all these different files you could access, their contents in real-time, as well as different hosts you could visit, security protocols, etc. In the above level, for example, I'm tasked with overwriting a list of large payments to a specific user with smaller payments totaling the same amount. Seeing this little robot guy move around, and watching file manipulation and other things in real-time is really clear and helpful. Furthermore, each level (and the game as a whole) now has story around it involving hackers in a techno-disease-ridden alternate history 1997, with each level getting a unique visual theme and an extra bit of memorability and context. While TIS-100 offered a totally barebones, old-school terminal style look, EXAPUNKS ratchets up the presentation in every way, with each level having an isometric view of a little robot who travels around interacting with physical hosts, modems, files, and more. I haven't played the dev's other titles, so I'll just be comparing these two to one another when needed. The game is complete, and polished, but Zachtronics always has a few months of EA to react to feedback and tweak the games.This game is a brilliant evolution of the programming puzzles introduced in the developer's earlier titles like TIS-100, which I played and loved around this time last year. Note that the game is in early access, but this is completely different from the early access you might have in mind. Or maybe I'm totally into cyberpunk and 90s hacker counterculture. ![]() Oh, and while the setting and world-building is surprisingly good in all Zachtronics games, especially considering the genre and focus, I feel like EXAPUNKS might be their best yet. Optimizing your solutions can become highly addictive.įrom what I have played so far, EXAPUNKS also steps up the production values compared to previous Zachtronics games, with e.g. ![]() in the case of EXAPUNKS, one of them is Cycles (speed) - and you get to compare your solution against a histogram of all of them, as well as your friends. If you are not familiar with them, the common theme is that you build something- it could be an electronics gadget, or a chemical reaction, or a program - to accomplish a given task.Ī huge part of what makes these games so addictive to aficionados is the competitive aspect.Įach solution you create has several nonfunctional aspects which determine its quality - e.g. EXAPUNKS is the latest in Zachtronics' series of absolutely amazing puzzle games.
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