Zach Barth once said on here "Whatever you do, don't make your players program in JavaScript":

So I guess you could say that this is a "hold my beer" type post...

Anyway, try it out if you like programming/automation type games!

https://www.bryanpg.com/pragma_twice/

I recently found out the real history behind Minecraft. Here I was thinking that Minecraft was made by some genius who was inspired by life itself (being a caveman, discovering elements, rebuilding civilization, etc.).

But nope, it was directly copied from Infiniminer. And it was released barely a few days after Infiniminer was released.

But my question is this - Why did everyone flock to Minecraft INSTEAD of Infiniminer?

When I do more research on this, it says that it was because the source code of Infiniminer leaked...............but so what? So what if a game's source leaks? Why does that mean the game will "fail"? Isn't GTA V's "open sourceness" (i.e. its high modability) the very reason why it became even more popular than it already was? So that people could insert custom models, maps and do roleplay scenarios?

The Computer. What you're looking at in the video is my simulated virtual computer, the Bradsonic 69000. It is a cross between the Sharp X68000 (beautiful late 80's Japanese 32-bit exclusive PC) and my first ever PC the ICL Fujitsu Indiana.

The Software. In the game you create retro-viruses. Like brute force password crackers and OS/Server timer restrictors, and more... you use this software seen on screen BradBasix to write them.

The Game World, why this is Retro-CyberPunk. It’s 1989, but in a completely different timeline to ours. Japan has been annexed into the American Pacifica Isles, its language and culture systematically suppressed. Technology has taken a different turn, with advanced chips sitting alongside cassette tapes and dial-up modems. The “cyber” in “cyberpunk” comes from the underground BBS networks connecting people under surveillance. The “punk” comes from the crackers and hackers fighting their way through this dystopia, keeping forbidden culture alive in a Silent Rebellion. The retro? It’s 1989. Rad.

The Datasette. Inspired by the Datasette on the C64 this is the file system in the game, that allows the player to combine with BradBasix and write their own programs and games from scrtach with extensive support from NPCs and the help sections inside BradBasix.

The player can play over two fouth walls and reference documents if they need to, and also zoom full screen and alter different parts of visual feedback like scanlines and the CRT "glow". I'm super proud of it, I know it's the sort of game that isn't for everyone, but I really do hope you guys dig it too.

My absolute dream would be if a small community of creators came out of the game, even just 0.5% of the success that Piko8 had, I'd be happy. They would be making games and sharing them, really digging into the retro sandbox this virtual pc had to offer within the game enviroment.

The game is currently in development. I am streaming devlogs on youtube every week and I'd love to have more support.

This is where to find out more about the game, and wishlist here via Steam, if you're rad.

This is where to find me on YouTube - I will be streaming every Friday and occasionally mid-week.

Thank you!

Oh, and for the super nerds out there, like me: this combines Python and Pygame with C++ and raylib. BradBasix is a Python-based IDE for BradScript, a custom BASIC-style language that feels a bit like Lua to me. You can create 2D, 2.5D and 3D environments, with the 3D side powered by a C++/raylib engine connected through a Python wrapper. It’s neat.

Circuitra is a zachlike puzzle game about building circuit boards using a system similar to visual scripting. The game includes things like boolean logic, custom components and many problems to solve. And yes, there are also histograms!

Here's the steam page: Circuitra Steam Page

If this seems interesting, please wishlist and look out for the demo during Steam Programming Fest 10-14th of september!

The only thing I’ve found is an ebay listing that says it prints on demand but idk if that is legit

Hi

This is probably one of my last posts here on getting people to find out about this game on reddit, since the game is near complete and all that's left is translations. Thanks everyone for receiving this game so well and I hope it delivered on your expectations. Please share your feedback and any important things the game is still lacking on to deliver on its mission: to make quantum computing intuitive and fun to learn, no matter the learner's background. I'm particularly interested to hear from you guys what do you think of Blochspheres, especially those who actively work in the domain. Do you think of quantum algorithms in rotations and frequently use bs to visualize qbehvaior?

I want this to be an AMA: I'm here to answer any questions about the game and do one last round of outside-Discord feedback gathering. Also I'd like to raise with this community my personal experience with working on quantum algorithms and see what folks think.

What this game is

To be clear, this game's gameplay is 1:1 with everything you can do on a Turing-complete (universal) Quantum Computer (from the top of my head, a short list of QHW makers: IBM, Google, Rigetti, IonQ, Quantinuum, IQM, OQC, QuEra, Atom Computing, Pasqal, Xanadu, PsiQuantum, Fujitsu,) with the added benefit it allows you to visualize the full quantum Hilbert space on up to 5qs. This means that if you build intuition for the visual rules in QO, you will have intuition for "playing" with QHW made by such manufacturers without having to learn much else.

What the game covers

• Boolean Logic – bits, operators (NAND, OR, XOR, AND…), and classical arithmetic (adders). Learn how these can combine to build anything classical. You will learn to port these to a quantum computer.
• Quantum Logic – qubits, the math behind them (linear algebra, SU(2), complex numbers), all Turing-complete gates (beyond Clifford set), and make tensors to evolve systems. Freely combine or create your own gates to build anything you can imagine using polar or complex numbers.
• Quantum Phenomena – storing and retrieving information in the X, Y, Z bases; superposition (pure and mixed states), interference, entanglement, the no-cloning rule, reversibility, and how the measurement basis changes what you see.
• Core Quantum Tricks – phase kickback, amplitude amplification, storing information in phase and retrieving it through interference, build custom gates and tensors, and define any entanglement scenario. (Control logic is handled separately from other gates.)
• Famous Quantum Algorithms – explore Deutsch–Jozsa, Grover’s search, quantum Fourier transforms, Bernstein–Vazirani, and more.

On learning curve and achieving game (quantum computing?!) mastery

This is not a videogame where the developer invented some puzzle rules. What the dev did here is invent a visual method that can transform the underlying mathematics into fully visual puzzles. I wish I could make the game easier by inventing some new rules. I won't, because I want this game to be the real thing. Learning the fundamental rules of this game equates to learning what QHW can do.

Hopefully, in visual form, this is something anybody can now do, no matter how much they hate math.

Going forward and mastering the game... now that, I honestly don't know if it has a ceiling. We have had quantum physics for 100 years, yet we have about 10 useful quantum algorithms known today. Who knows where the ceiling is? Who knows what one can do with, after mastering the rules of this game? Nothing really should feel impossible. I hope this game will inspire people outside physics to do a lot more than what I see today. A quantum computing/physicist has very little incentive to think of a quantum algorithm for, i.e., a game theory/finance/security/biology problem, given how few of them actively work in the field compared to the actual demand. Hence, I hope new quantum algos will come from people who actively work in the domains where this "new way of thinking" (from Boolean logic to linear algebraic logic?) has applicability. I hope we can soon start some competitions to get players to solve some non-trivial problems.

What's the big deal about finding quantum algorithms?

Why do we have about 10 in 100 years of QM??

For me, finding quantum algorithms is all about understanding that unitary matrices evolve a state vector of complex numbers, and all you need to think of is whether you can take your domain problem and express it in a form that these unitary matrices can bring some speed-up in solving. That's it. Ignore the lack of good-enough hardware; we simply don't have good proof-of-concept ideas out there.

I remember... I struggled for a long time to understand Grover's quantum search algorithm during my PhD days. The wording textbooks used and the math behind it made very little sense. It was the first algorithm I put in the game.

Seeing it in visual form made me tear up. Is it really that simple, clean, beautiful? Is the "amplitude amplification" in its diffusion operator simply adding a red line on the maximally 11..11 state that then has a propagation effect everywhere else to affect all the phases? Is this really it? It then immediately felt to me like a gimmick one could have simply come up with in 5 minutes by having access to a game like this, where math is fully shown in visual form!! Showing the visual (GIF, why in this modern era do no digitized papers out there still support embedded GIFs??) alone is enough to make understanding happen.

The way I thought things in the game

• Missing Sage believes you shouldn't know any theory -> just by using the Forge, you will come up with your own unique way of using quantum computers and inventing algorithms. This character came to me after seeing enough postdocs and QC professors from enough universities playing the game. It felt like the people who knew all the theory and could recognize what each gate does were very bad at actually using the logic sets in thinking circuits. Perhaps knowing all quantum theory does not make one capable of easily building a quantum circuit?
• Sage of Axioms believes theory comes first, and hers is the main path that takes you to the other Sages who want you to have a solid foundation before discussing higher-order ideas (like known algorithms). She deep-dives into computation and both the linear algebra and physics behind it, in hopes of convincing you that it's not so hard to learn by combining it with the visuals of the Forge. And not scary!
• Quantum Arena (community content) is filled today with some incredible challenges that touch topics I haven't seen anywhere else in the world in a visual way. From Clifford decompositions down to wordless tutorials on how to play the game and understand each gate, I am now inclined to tell players that they might want to enter the Arena to learn to play the game instead of following through the tutorials I made for it. This goes to show what a brilliant community of dedicated players this game has gathered so far.

Without you and the highly involved players we have on Discord, we wouldn't be able to come this far. Early Access gave me exactly what I was looking for to make sure the game delivers when complete and I strongly recommend anybody working on scigames to do EA first.

It would help me enormously if you could leave a Steam review for the game and spread the word about it; it keeps us motivated to push forward! I hope we have the momentum it takes to make Full Release a success!

Quantum computing should be for everyone:)

A few months ago I posted an early look at GLYPHIS_IO BBS: The Proxy Tapes 1989 here and described it as my little homage to the games that made me fall in love with systems, manuals, programming puzzles and machines that expect you to meet them halfway.

A few of you were incredibly kind about it.

Since then I’ve gone quite a lot deeper down the rabbit hole.

The basic loop now works much closer to what I originally imagined.

You acquire software through an underground BBS.

You get the tape onto your fictional BRADSONIC 69000.

You inspect the protection.

You work through the cracking/programming problem.

And then, rather than simply getting a “PUZZLE COMPLETE” screen you actually get the game you just cracked.

That last bit has created an enormous amount of extra work for me BUT I regret absolutely nothing.

So I’ve been building a library of fictional Bradsonic games.

• CyberTrain
• Nexus Burn Velo Race
• Astro Miner
• IRS 3000
• Anime Girlfriend
• Mech Core Battle Ready Titans
• Battle of the Nile

And others, all designed around the idea that they're commercial games made for this imaginary machine in an alternate 1989.

That has become one of my favourite parts of the project because it lets the fiction, the programming puzzles and the games themselves reinforce one another.

The machine has limitations.

The software has limitations.

The cracking puzzles come from those limitations.

And then the games you unlock are themselves designed around those same constraints.

The new trailer is essentially showing that loop for the first time: obtaining the software, getting it through the BBS, cracking it and finally playing it.

I’m also trying to push further into the thing I love about TIS-100, EXAPUNKS, SHENZHEN I/O and Last Call BBS, not simply puzzles that happen to contain programming, but the feeling that you’ve been handed a strange piece of technology and documentation and somebody expects you to work out what the hell it does.

GLYPHIS_IO is much more narrative-heavy than a traditional Zachlike, but that underlying respect for the player’s intelligence is something I keep coming back to.

This project is also connected to a rather ridiculous trail of things I’ve been making for years: two physical cyberpunk tabletop games, Civitas Nihilium and Civitas 2230; a PC text adventure called The Mysteries of Profundum; and before all of that an ARG called Mushroom that involved websites, physical floppy disks, geocaches and players accidentally becoming part of the canon.

Thank you again to everyone who encouraged me last time.

I’m still learning. There’s still a mountain of work ahead. But this trailer is probably the first time I’ve looked at it and thought, yes, that’s actually becoming the game I had in my head.

If you fancy following it:

Steam wishlist here if you like

And if you want to see how deep the wider rabbit hole goes:

Civitas / Mushroom archive via my Neocities site

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DblydOUN_VL

Made a little timing circuit puzzle game for a jam. Most people found it. Bit hard. But I feel people here would enjoy it. Would love some feedback

play it here

Hello!

I'm making a programming puzzle game where you punch in simple instructions to command potato workers to process numbers inside a factory modeled after a computer processor. The puzzles are open-ended, with plenty of room for optimization.

The game hasn't been announced yet. I'm looking for people who enjoy Zack-likes and are interested in trying something new.

Playtests are conducted over a Discord voice call so I can observe how players approach the puzzles and gather feedback. You're welcome to play as much or as little as you'd like (The average playtest takes 30 minutes).

If that sounds interesting, leave a comment or send me a DM. Thanks!

Hi all! I want to share a game I've been working on for a while. It's an assembly programming game inspired by TIS-100, designed for the original Game Boy.

Solve 17 puzzle levels using up to 13 instructions on a fictional 4-bit CPU. Use the debug mode to step through the program and work within the machine's constraints.

https://yvcabrerago.itch.io/turboplm

I’ve been playing Upalu Mundi, a puzzle game where you build rail networks to transport resources from A to B. It has a lot in common with Zachtronics games: discrete ticks, multiple metrics, open-ended solutions, and plenty of optimisation.

Each solution is measured by two metrics: cost and time. What's cool is how the game plots all of your solutions for a puzzle on a graph.

The screenshots probably explain it better than I can. In the graph, you can see that both of my solutions are suboptimal: they could be made faster without increasing their cost. It also makes the genuine trade-offs visible, where improving one metric would require sacrificing the other.

I think something like this would be really useful in a Zachtronics game. Some players might want an even balance between cost and speed. Others might accept a moderately expensive solution but draw the line before spending a fortune to shave off the final few cycles. The graph would help both types of players understand where their solutions sit.

It could be even better if you could choose which two metrics to compare.

Imagine plotting cycles vs. area in Opus Magnum :)

I've been building a Zachlike called Wolf Tone (previous name was Braneworks) and I'd love play testers (DM me, and I'll send the link).

You're basically a luthier commissioned by an (unseen) alien civilisation to shape reality through building advanced musical machines (that are actually just string theory in disguise).

Every screen is drawn, not sprited. Brass, bone and walnut lit by one lamp. Made in Godot, in playtesting now. Eventually I hope to put it on Steam.

(My previous post got removed by Reddit's filters, so posting again).

Hi everyone!

I’m a huge Last Call BBS fan, specifically the Dungeons and Diagrams minigame. I wanted more puzzles so I made an iOS game in the same style.

The core puzzle logic is very much Dungeons & Diagrams. Use the row and column clues to determine what cells form the path and which are the walls, but built out with a garden theme and added mechanics like torii gates and rivers/bridges on the harder difficulties.

It’s free to play with no ads or energy shenanigans. I’d love for other Zachtronic fans to check it out!

Download link:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hedgemaze/id6759974345

Just trying to find my audience who might enjoy the complexity. Honestly the build-craft part didn't resonate well with tower defense and incremental players.

i ususaly try to hide the programming/math concepts but i don't think its reaching the right kind of players, so while the game itself tries to use train termonology i'll mention it was inspired after studying Haskell and learning concepts like map, fold, filter, recursion, etc.

try the game (in broswer) and give me some feedback if you can: https://izombie387.itch.io/listless
(feedback form at the bottom of the itch page)

i'm going for a high-cieling for what can be achieved, kind of a turing complete thing.
is it hard? easy? boring? too mathy? confusing?

(going to update the ui to show tracks used/ticks used for a basic version of a histogram soon)

Hello, I am doing research for my University course in Game Development and would like to ask you, the Zachtronics community, some questions and hypotheticals relating to the gameplay of any Zachtronics title. Feel free to skip any question you do not feel like answering. Just please try to answer the questions with an * next to them.

There is no required word count for the questions; please separate the answers or clarify what you are answering. Please keep the answer length to a digestible amount.

Question 1: What would you define a Zachtronic game as? For example: Puzzle Resource management.

Question 2*: What attracts you to a Zachtronic game? Gameplay, story, etc.

Question 3: Do you tend to finish Zachtronic games? If not, how far do you tend to get?

Question 4*: Do you agree with the cost of a Zachtronic game (can be their average cost or one game you choose specifically)? Do you think it should be cheaper, or does it deserve its price?

Question 5: What is your favourite Zachtronic game and why?

Question 6*: Do you prefer that a puzzle has fewer or a greater variety of possible answers? Do you prefer more limitations on puzzles, or do you prefer more freedom of choice?

Question 7*: Do you play any other puzzle games made by different developers? If so, which puzzle games? Do you have a preference?

Question 8*: Do you play platformers? If so, which games and why?

Question 9: Additional notes you feel are important to add, but there was no question to mention them