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My understanding is that GOG is not necessarily undesirable, but they are very selective: Unlike Steam or Itch, you have to convince them that it's worth their while to sell your game. And their choices of what (not) to sell are not infrequently baffling. Lots of developers have gotten burned by that, including Zachtronics
The Turing Complete dev was pretty unhappy with them and ended up leaving again despite having been accepted and making it onto the GOG store.
Every zachtronics game is a gem.
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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.
Their catalogue is well worth buying. https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics
"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!
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Too 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.
I 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.
- SpaceChem
- Shenzhen I/O
- ...
- the funniest concept is probably a game about assembly programming (TIS-100) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIS-100
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
Printing 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 becau…
Same, 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.
Printing 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 becau…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Turing Complete dev was pretty unhappy with them and ended up leaving again despite having been accepted and making it onto the GOG store.
What were they unhappy about? Do you have a link to further information?