ALAN-13 Reformation

Interesting beginner's coding puzzle game. Great music and great puzzles. However not the best game if you are trying learn how to code because unusual gamey limitations like, in most coding games you name a loop and can use that loop by name but in ALAN-13 you can loop commands multiple within a loop but you cannot reused that loop later.

I'm another that found this on 9gag and happy to pay full price for it. I'm enjoying the game so far and as someone who is wanting to switch to programming as a career it is helping me frame my thinking as well.

It’s a fun puzzle game centered around "coding," but as you progress you start to notice the flaws in the interface, and how unfriendly this game is; there’s no autosave; and if it crashes you risk losing all the progress from that session. I experienced this firsthand and had to redo two levels after a crash. As the levels grow more complex, you may want to organize things by naming certain objects, but doing so can break a unrelated loop in another part of the curcit.

This game has too many issues, so I cannot recommend it at all. The UI has many issues and clunky interactions, such as being unable to type spaces for component names (because it closes the menu) or underscores and other characters (for no reason). Further, general menu navigation is slow and painful, and there appears to be a lot of issues with the resolution and quality of certain assets. The actual UI for creating and managing solutions requires significant polish. And it doesn't give you any hints as for how to achieve optimal solutions on each level (which is required to unlock later levels in the game). I love the genre, so I was more than willing to look past all that, however... Levels 11 and 12 are where I really called it on trying to see this game through to the end. These levels introduce obstacles that are randomised each time you play, which is fine, because that's what this type of game is about: creating adaptive solutions. These random elements function as hazards. When functioning as hazards, they play animations. The issue is that these animations are completely disconnected from the game speed, so running a simulation at 1x speed can have completely different outcomes to running the same simulation at 4x speed. As a result, the only way I could pass level 11 was to actually run the simulation at varying speeds, to babysit my robots to avoid the obstacles... That's what the programming is meant to do! And then, another major problem that both these levels had was... It was never actually explained how the hazards work. On these levels, you're supposed to program the robot to detect the color of a light. The light is tied to the presence of several hazards. However, it's not explained even remotely what the colors of the light mean. They appear to fluctuate randomly, with minimal connection to the actual state of the hazard, producing completely inconsistent results from run to run. And I can't preview or observe the hazards in motion because they don't operate unless there's a robot actually doing something. Add to it that the hazards and the lights appear to change far more rapidly than the robot can detect or respond to, and you're left feeling completely helpless, with no idea how to actually solve the problem. I spent a good 20 minutes on each of these levels, where I had spent no more than 10 minutes per level up to this point. After barely finishing level 11, and not being able to make a lick of progress son level 12, I had to quit the game. It is not fair, and it is not fun.

This game is the best puzzle/programming game I played so far. Starts out simple, but then gets really challenging in a good way. 100% reccoemnd it for everyone who wants to test their problem solving abilities.

I like this game. This is just perfect to learn basic algorithmic. But 14€ is far too expensive for this game. I finished it in 3 hours and optimized almost all levels in 1 more hour. Furthermore in my opinion the last level is pointless. I cannot recomand this game unfortunatly.

I love puzzle games