ComPressure

First and foremost: This is a positive review. I'm unable to beat this game however (PEBKAC) though, so I'm going to caution prospective players: This game is HARD, and the tests in each level are NOT comprehensive, nor will they give the same results when run individually versus the 'run all tests' results. It's VERY possible to make solutions which pass in test-all but fail on every single test when run individually. Chasing the test scores can easily box you into a dead-end solution path. The test score results are NOT an actual metric for how usable parts you design are, and almost every part is meant to be used later after it's made, without any clear description of errors compounding or what to watch out for. I hit a stone wall of progress in a level in the late 20s and while the folks in the official Discord tried to help my solutions earlier simply have numerous subtle issues that I don't understand and wasn't able to understand even when explained to me. As the only way forward would be discarding all my work and pasting in someone else's entire set of solutions to progress further I simply stopped playing the game at that point instead as lack of understanding is not satisfying and neither is using someone else's solution set whole-cloth. Note the above is still a positive review; the game itself is very nicely implemented, and enjoyable if you keep making progress, but the difficulty has VERY brutal ramp-up points as well as the nebulous 'cumulative failure' that can build up and stop further progress. The cumulative nature of things is it's most striking difference from, for example, Zachtronics games where each level is entirely distinct and separate from all previous and future.

Ooof. This game does almost everything wrong, is incredibly niche, and is only saved by fitting that niche *really* damn well and doing an absurdly good job at it. Have you played Zachlikes and found yourself thinking "these idealized discrete components are making things too easy, where's the delay, where's the errant transitions, where's the power supply?" Or found yourself wanting to create from scratch, not flip-flops and ALUs, but delay-line memory, transistors/amplifiers, even more fundamental analog electronics components? Then you're one of the 1% of Zachlike players (already a vanishingly small percentage of Steam users) that will actually enjoy this one. And you're still in for a challenge with many frustrations. I love it. And I don't care if that counts as me bragging. This brings me back to my first textbook in electronics, my first fumbling experiments with transistors and transformers, trying to wrap my head around edge detectors and building my first radio. To reading about the history of computing (in addition to the game alluding to it with its fumbling story).

Like an early Zachtronics game, except the objectives aren't well defined, and the graphics are somehow even worse. I loved SPACECHEM, but this game is just painful. I really wanted to like this game, and I played until I got to the "build an addition unit" challenge. The description is so poorly written I can't figure out what I'm supposed to do, and the hint is actively misleading. Can't progress without basically trying things at random because the basics are so poorly explained.

Three years ago I got my master's degree in chemical engineering, but only now do I feel like a qualified plumber. You can literally use steam and pipes to calculate the Fibonacci sequence. We definitely need more games featuring ANALOG circuits! One issue: the game encourages you to build custom modules to reuse in future levels, but this inevitably increases pipe length, which slows down the system's response time and ultimately lowers your score.

[h1]As someone, who actually completed the game (28.6 hours, 1.3% of players), I recommend it![/h1] [h2]It’s very crude in many aspects[/h2] - UI: controls are inconvenient: I can’t count the number of times I clicked on an element because I wanted to select it for placement, only to be transported to the corresponding level (because there are a couple of very similar tabs for level selection and placement selection) - Testing is inconsistent: the same test on the same solution might sometimes barely pass and sometimes not - Debugging tools are practically absent: there is no timeline to scroll through execution and not even a “Pause” button (the button which looks like “Pause” is actually a “Stop testing” button) - Some descriptions are ambiguous: you need to make a “Clock” with a duration of “1-tick”, but without any details on what “1-tick” is - Some levels are quite harsh with testing. Is some sense, you can’t complete them “casually”, you have to optimize/”speedrun” them. There is an option to use previously implemented components in the future levels, but that often adds an unacceptably large delay, that in practice you need to “hardwire” (copy paste) previous components directly into the solution. [h2]So why do I recommend this game?[/h2] + Very-interesting fundamental mechanics, which allow for complex computations from just 3 basic building blocks (this is completely unlike Zachtronics games I’ve played (SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen IO), which are all contrived to begin with) + Tasks are not contrived (unlike, again, Zachtronics games): you get to build real-world components and work your way towards the “CPU” (although you don’t quite get to build one) + This game resembles (although in a different setting, with some parts, of course being different) real-life low-level electronics, so you gain some intuition about real-life stuff + Fundamentally different un-intuitive cool new: Analog Logic with its own set of cool new Analog Tricks to make things work + The problems I described above only start to affect the game feel later into the game (after around ≈50+% ≈14+ hours). They are present the entire time, but you don’t feel them early in the game as the levels are much easier. + Helpful dev in the Discord, which you more or less have to join to progress in some later levels, because of ambiguous descriptions and un-intuitive Analog tricks that are hard to come up with yourself [h2]Summary[/h2] This game is way below Zachtronics games on technical level, but also well above them with fundamentals. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be many games featuring low-level transistor-like logic and if you’d like to get a glimpse of it, with some cool Analog stuff (with its own cool set of challenges) mixed in, I highly recommend this game 👍

Fun puzzle game. Its not the simple electronic or booleans signals most games of this style use. The pressure works slightly differently. Has a few quality of life tools too, that these types of games tend to lack. Also the source for the game is available on github. Props.

An excellent Zachlike with some very fun analog computation. The component reuse is really neat, but it does mean that you're required to improve earlier levels to beat the later ones which sometimes makes it hard to figure out what you need to do.

First 10 minutes or so sucked harder than a stale lollipop. The UI and controls were extremely confusing. Each level has a requirements that must be met, and it's explained using symbol. Focus on learning how to read and understand that first to make your life easier. I then managed to solve puzzle after puzzle without realizing what the hell I was doing until it clicked that I was designing analog circuits similar to relay logic. Side note, I NEED THE SOUNDTRACK RIGHT NOW!!!!!!

A demanding but intriguing logic-puzzle-programming game. Worth a look if you like this sort of thing! Just grab the demo. It's all based in real electrical and computer engineering principles, too, so it's secretly educational. Nice touches: A fun historical-fiction storyline, and a great little soundtrack that reminds me of Risk of Rain.

一款看似簡單卻燒腦的蒸汽管路遊戲 -目標：製作出一台蒸氣管路製成的製成的電腦 -教學關卡：由簡單到困難 -關卡即元件，到了後面關卡會想不斷把前面的元件進行優化，突破自我的能力 -可透過作者交流社群與其他玩家交流學習