CHR$(143)

This is a title hand-tailored for people with specific interests: - Difficulty - Puzzle-solving - Physical programming - (extremely) Retro audio and visuals - Computer science history - Zachtronics fans Huge nostalgia moment, playing this title. Reminded me of my early childhood, trading shareware with my nextdoor neighbor, and playing on my dad's C64. I have a lot to say about this game, but I'm not sure how much I can share without spoiling some of the puzzles. Suffice it to say: I played through the entire thing over the course of 8 days and was never bored. The "final" stage took me nearly three days to solve! If you're looking at this page, and going so far as to look at the reviews, then you should probably pull the trigger. Every level you complete will fill you with big brain pride!

全７２面、クリアしました。いや～凄かった。 パズルのようで冒険でもあり、工業シミュレーションのようでもある不思議なゲーム。 クリアには結構頭を使うのだけれど、解法は非常に多くパズル特有の堅苦しさがないのが良かった。 なによりこのゲームの世界から溢れんばかりの多彩な遊びと、それを形にした製作者の情熱には圧倒されました。恐れ入ります。 もっと話題になっていいゲームだと思うのですが、プレイヤーにできることがあまりに多すぎる為に どうしてもチュートリアル的なレベルが多くなり、それ故に人を選んでしまっているのかもしれません。 一度使ったきりで、その後の活躍が無いギミックが多いのも勿体ない。 難易度の高さもやはり気になるところです。 このゲームを買う人って、恐らくかなりのゲーマーだと思うのですが、その上でクリア率２％ですからね。 特に序盤の難関として用意されてる２２面はやりすぎです。 微調整が難しい割に溶岩等の危険物に隣接しただけでアウト、視界制限に加えて長丁場というのは流石にライト層には厳しいのでは。 その分緊張感は凄いものがあるので、ゲームに自信ありの方には是非遊んで欲しいですね。 冒険的なロマンも多分に秘めていて、ただのパズル以上の満足感があります。 クリア後はレベルエディターも解放されて終わりのない遊びが用意されています。凄いですね。□大～～

It's Boulder Dash / Lode Runner with engineering. If that doesn't entice you, I don't know what else to tell you. Jokes aside, I do have quite a few more things to say. First of all, if you're going to play this, be prepared to stock up on some patience. The tutorial part of the game is quite lengthy. It goes over some concepts and interactions multiple times, making triple extra sure you understand what it's trying to tell you, while also expecting you to figure out other important concepts and interactions on your own, often through dying repeatedly. It will be a while before the game lets you into the meat of things and allows you to create your own ingenious contraptions. There's this charmingly amateurish lack of structure to the whole thing -- one level you'll be exploring an alien planet, next level you're tasked with filling a bathtub with hot water. You certainly can't blame the game for not having variety. The 72 levels can be divided into four categories: tutorials, arcade levels, adventure levels, and engineering levels. The engineering levels are by far the best in my IMHO: you get given a task and some tools, and you gotta construct a system that fulfils the task. Straightforward but rarely obvious, and always satisfying! The adventure levels take place across an enormous map, requiring you to gradually figure out how to get past each obstacle in your way. And although cool and impressive, they're also much more tedious. If you make a mistake and screw yourself up (which you will), you'll have to start the entire thing from the beginning, unless there's a checkpoint -- but there isn't always one. And while you can save your contraptions and load them again later, building them over and over again takes a significant amount of time, so be prepared for a lot of repetitiveness. Some of the levels have an annoying time limit on top of that. Thankfully, you can always switch to the easier difficulty, which will probably increase it to be more manageable. It's very easy to screw yourself up, and the clunkiness of the controls doesn't help. You'll need the entire length of your keyboard AND your mouse to get the game to do what you want it to do, and sometimes you have to press all those inputs in quick succession -- having three hands is highly recommended. The keys are [strike]non-rebindable[/strike] fully rebindable! and the developer has uploaded a keyboard reference sheet as a guide. I recommend you look through it at least once, especially if the game is behaving in an unexpected way -- it's easy to unintentionally press something that changes the game's mode. It can be found over yonder: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2553214006 Then, on around level 50, the game goes full Zachtronics on you, gives you a technical manual, and asks you to do some LIFO stack programming. The game tries to be careful and gentle with this -- it gives you plenty of examples you can copy and play with, every line is helpfully commented, and you only have to change a few variables around in existing programs at first. But it will gradually become more demanding, and I feel that, despite the game's great efforts, the coding part might be a bit too overwhelming for someone with no prior programming experience. One particular thing that got me miffed is the WATCH_CELL (w) command: [spoiler]I don't think the game ever tells you this, but if the watched cell is contaminated, the command no longer returns the constant of the cell's object. The manual doesn't exactly communicate this in clear language, either (good luck if you don't know what bitmasking is!). What you gotta do is an extra step: (MTMK)& to convert the returned number to the actual object constant, or (CTMK)& to convert it to the cell's contamination level.[/spoiler] Despite all of that, I still had a good time with the game. I might have felt annoyed, but I never felt too hardstuck on any of the levels. The game almost always gives you many more tools than you actually need, allowing for a number of different approaches and enabling your creativity, even if that comes at the cost of making some of the levels cheesable. And there are user-created levels on top of the base 72! tl;dr had this game some sort of quicksave system, it would have been a real hidden gem; but, as is, it's still a very enjoyable experience for us unique indie game connoisseurs. ːnecroshovelː P.S. If level 25 seems broken -- it's not, it's just that it's expecting the solution to work quickly -- something it doesn't communicate very well. If your solution requires manual input, that won't be good enough!

Really no words to describe this one. Not going to be everyone's cup of tea, but it is certainly a masterpiece.

レトロPCをモチーフにしたステージクリア型パズルゲーム 一見レトロだが数値やら操作やらがかなり現代風 建築による自動化構成のパズルや独自言語プログラミングもある ステージの多くは「新しく登場する機能やアイテムをうまく使え」で構成 たまにストーリーのあるステージが登場するが、障害となる要素が多くひたすら長いものが多い 総じて難易度は高め(簡単モードが最近追加されてましたが高難易度のオリジナル版しかプレイしてないので違いは分からないです) かなり没頭して一気にクリアした パズルがかなり好きでちまちましたブロック配置もいいという人はオススメ

great game, let you think differently, perfectly designed puzzles ;)

Really challenging puzzles with rewarding results. Would recommend only to people with lots of time to kill

I like the graphics, let me remember the old days of technology (MS-DOS) Also, each level comes with nice hints to learn how to pass it GREAT GAME DESIGN (Some levels are difficult at the start, so be ready!)

I built myself a bathyscaphe so small I did not leave any room for air so I suffocated. This game is just BRILLIANT! Do not be deceived by the graphics. It has a steep (somewhat rollercoastery) learning curve - but you can skip levels and usually that helps to understand what were you meant to do in a previous level xD Another minus is sometimes very small room for error in certain puzzles and inability to restart the level with your buildings intact (you can save the layout but you have to build everything from scratch) So 10 points - 2 = 8/10! I LOVE it!

It was 50/50 for me. It has interesting mechanics and potential, but it also has horrible ergonomics, cumbersome digging/building, poorly introduced mechanics, and the overheating/blackout mechanic is just very annoying to deal with.