Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Aug 11, 2018

  [b]Zachtronics games just keep getting better and better.[/b] The constant refinement of this niche genre they have created is really paying off. The high level of polish, charm, and atmosphere is just remarkable. The only way I wouldn't recommend getting this is if you don't like programming puzzles. And difficult ones at that. This is much more than just a series of puzzles, though. [i]Essentially, you are thrown into a hacking subculture complete with physical (print-outable) 'zines, lively characters and a story more interesting than it ought to be.[/i] Every detail is dripping with TLC. The humor is spot-on and the pacing is good. It holds your hand just long enough to get you going. [b]Pros:[/b] +The whole experience is just awesome +The artwork and voice acting are second to none +The puzzles are very fun and very rewarding +The characters are likable and you really feel a part of this hacking subculture +The IRL 'zines are just icing on the cake; I can't emphasize this aspect enough - it just adds so much to the whole experience [b]Cons:[/b] -While there is a lot going on, you have to fundamentally like solving programming puzzles; they say no experience is needed, but you definitely need to understand programming logic to get anywhere with this [b]Another grand slam for Zachtronics.[/b]
• gamedeal user

  Dec 22, 2021

  Procrastinate doing actual programming by playing a game about programming. 10/10
• gamedeal user

  May 25, 2019

  I'll keep this short. I moved from a very violent city in CA(Victorville) to a not so violent one(Banning). In doing so I had to give up everything that made my life my life. My friends, my job, my family. I will never return to that place. All topped off with having to sue my own sister for my property, my first instance ever in court. Then retrieve that property(a 26 ft trailer) with a court order I was awarded, under duress, while my Brother-in-Law recorded me. I had never moved anything like that before. Needless to say, by the time I got to where I live now, I felt like shit. Weeks of strain pushing me down a hole. And on that first day here, the special edition guide arrived in the mail. A guide I never paid for, but had spoken to Zach briefly about before I moved in which I told him nothing except I didn't have the money at the moment and was about to change location. No pity story, nothing about where I lived or suing my sister. He had no reason to do that, and I stood in my driveway crying with his guide in my hands. Could it have been a mistake? Yes, but I don't think it was. He will probably never know how much that meant to me at that time, and how much it means to me now. He gave me the first "housewarming" gift I have ever received, and the only congratulations I ever got for escaping that hellhole alive. Please support Zachtronics. I support Zachtronics because he supported me. EDIT: Since this review has garnered a bit of attention, I would like to mention that Zach has, since my original review was written back in Feb/March, begun offering his games to teachers at absolutely NO cost to the teachers or their schools. I think it's important to support people like Zach, as such, Zachtronics is developing yet another great looking game, the link to which you can find below. You can help him by wishlisting the game to boost its visibility in the Steam store. https://store.steampowered.com/app/716500/Eliza/
• gamedeal user

  Oct 22, 2018

  Best Zachtronics game yet! Exapunks is all the fun parts of code optimization. There is a made up distributed programming language, there are lots of simply-stated levels with many ways to approach, there are three metrics to try to optimize for, and the debugging is very visual so it's easy to tell what's going on in your program. There is a lot of replayability, I'm 400+ hours in and still have plenty to do. When you first solve a level, you'll want to just get something hacky working. Then comes the part where you improve your solution - maybe you can split your code between two workers and speed things up 2x. The optimization has diminishing returns, you'll get the low hanging fruit first, and eventually you may get to a point where your solution feels very tight and hard to improve further. But then you squeak out another cycle or find a way to do the same thing in one fewer line of code and that is very satisfying. If it's something that motivates you, this game will definitely make you better at actual programming.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 10, 2018

  A highly polished puzzle game that should be quite fun for anyone interested in programming puzzles. The game is much more engaging than previous titles like TIS-100 thanks to loads of beautiful retro art and a more fleshed-out narrative. The game is still more complex than the likes of Human Resource Machine but seems significantly more approachable than something like TIS-100. Seems to work quite well on linux, too. As for a criticism, this game falls into the same stat trap as HRM. After completing a puzzle, you're presented with the number of steps your solution took and the number of lines of code you had (allowing you to optimize for space or for speed, as programmers are taught to do). However, some puzzles will have a specific solution that is highly optimized for one or the other. That solution tends to essentially rely on hardcoded exploitation. Each puzzle requires you to pass 100 randomized tests (like fuzzing tests) to make sure you didn't just hardcode the solution for the one specific problem you were given. But that randomization doesn't always go far enough to catch all the edge cases. Case in point, the puzzle where you have to empty the bank's ATMs. You're only allowed to empty one bill at a time from a given ATM and fail if you request something from an empty ATM, so the "nominal" solution averages something like 3000 cycles. However, the "randomized" tests never seed an ATM with fewer than ~30 bills, so the speed-optimized solution is to have two loops: one empties 28 or 29 bills in a row before checking on the counter and another empties one bill at a time, once the counter gets below 28 or 29. That drops the time to around 1000 cycles or so. But it's clearly not representative of the spirit of the challenge (where an ATM certainly could have fewer than 20 or 30 bills). Similarly, there was another puzzle where the speed-optimized solution was just to copy and paste the same line many times in a row before entering your loop, as none of the tests required fewer than a certain number of iterations. Half of real-world programming is just error-checking and cautious code to navigate all the edge cases. It might be nice if programming puzzle games (after so many iterations) didn't allow so much latitude for overfitting solutions to the exact parameters of a given problem.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 4, 2019

  Full disclosure, I learned to program using a Vic-20 with a register set almost as limited as the devices represented in the game. So needless to say I'm absolutely loving this game, and I'm only 3 hours into it. Zach truly nailed it with this game. It has dystopian cyberpunk and body hacking elements, mixed with 80's/90's hacker zines with a nice story line to boot. As replay bonus, I imagine I will go back and optimize my solutions to try to rank higher in the leaderboards. Much fun for a software engineer such as myself, and I can see it spurring the interests of those learning to code. Edit: 44 hours later and I have finished the game (with no hints from anyone). I will go back now and work on the achievements. I LOVED this game! I'd say the final challenges were incredibly demanding.The final challenge in particular was quite difficult, but as a result I am left with an incredible feeling of accomplishment In the end I solved it with a solution that is 147 out of 150 instructions long. This is obviously a game, but I truly felt like I was coding in those 8-bit days again, creating machine language on the fly, even using some of my old tricks. Such fun!
• gamedeal user

  Dec 5, 2021

  I feel like I need to start the review by saying that I have a BS in Computer Science, and a PhD in a computational field... I've been programming for 20+ years although nowadays spend most my time overseeing an organization and not doing the coding that got me here. For me, this game is wonderful. It takes me back to days of pushing code through an autograder program, learning assembly. It's a ton of fun programming assembly is something you think would be fun. If not, then stay far far away as it definitely has a huge difficulty/learning curve, especially if you've never programmed before!
• gamedeal user

  Jul 1, 2021

  Are you a CS major, a cyberpunk aesthetic, or just want to get smart with writing code? This game might be for you. Exapunk is essentially assembly with a giant twist, where memory management is crazy and multi-threading becomes a nightmare. And then after you burned through every brain cell to get through a level, only to see your code efficiency being trashed on the leader-board. This is the Dark Souls of coding experience. 11/10 would recommend to all of my CS friends.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 3, 2019

  Even for an experienced programmer, this is a challenging game. I've never coded in assembler, which is what this compares to. You write primitive, low-level code to make your little bots (EXAs) do things like copy or alter files. Like some related games, it comes with two PDF zines you can print and staple to use as reference material. It's frustrating yet addictive. Very nicely produced. It's a tough little puzzler, but if you're in any way interested in how computers actually work, this is a semi-realistic simulation.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 16, 2023

  Disclosure: I am a programmer. I learned to program on the Z80, first in TI-BASIC then assembly. This is like that but harder, but also as colorful as kid pix and has great hacker-friendly tunes and a story that's far too interesting for a puzzle game where you type actual assembly code as the core gameplay component. The instruction set is SIGNIFICANTLY restrictive. Some reviews say this is bad. Those reviews miss the point of hacker culture. It wouldn't be fun if the instruction set had niceties like, oh, subroutines. Also, don't print the zines with the duplexer set to long edge unless you want to relive figuring out how to manually print double-sided before the print dialogue gave instructions on how to do that. (The result is, admittedly, amusing, and reminds me of grade school when teachers messed up the duplexer and you had to constantly flip the packets. I think I'll keep that batch... add some authenticity. Thanks, Zach. I'd forgotten about that.)