NebuLeet

An adage I learned is the biggest difficulty in learning something new, like a tool, or platform, is learning the rules of the thing itself. To get this during the Programming Steamfest when the dev chose to mark it with a 90% discount even if it's quite robust? Helps a ton to highlight fun > profit in my opinion. I've been watching this since before Dec 2025 and loved the demo, being a pretty robust game (especially where it comes to touching on manually programming details--which I got lost in, though it did touch on the wonder of trial/error and exploring what does which! "Learning the language of the game" is fundamental here [as it is in the whole psychology of gaming] when it comes to learning coding weapons and similar--and there's puzzles to help/export to reverse engineer/study from!) I do wish there was more QoL in these aspects though, when it comes to measuring distances or reference points, but it's overall a good game especially seeing the decision for accessibility in pricing!

Nebuleet is a winner! Things you should know: - The game does not require programming (but it does offer a lot of programming if you want to try it). - The gameplay loop involves building up a fleet, in RPG style. I.e. bigger guns equals better odds of winning. - The game was just released a few months ago - I.e. I consider myself an early adopter. - This is a single developer effort. - I have no reason to believe this, but I tend to think the game will keep improving over time even though it has already been released. Call it a gut feeling. For example, it's not a long stretch at all to think they might add more solar systems eventually - because that sort of change seems almost trivial. Then again it might not be necessary or really improve the game very much. Strong points: - The economics, flavor texts, level of detail and music are all excellent. This is why this game can carry its own without the player ever touching the programming. There's plenty to do, and plenty to want to do. - As a programming game, this is a VERY AMBITIOUS game - because unlike Shenzhen I/O or Magnum Opus or those other Zachtronics games, the programs you write won't just solve a single-simple problem. Instead the programs will run in many different environments. So it's a bit mind-boggling. - The programming has function calls, but you have to unlock them! There's a lot of math that I want to do but either I haven't unlocked it, or I just have to make do without. But I can also build some logic that will go into function calls to... program. It's very cool programming. I'm not sure if I can make variables that persist from one animation frame to the next though which would be nice. Some of the functions almost don't make sense without that feature, so I'm HOPING I just haven't unlocked it, but I'll ask in the forums. It's also VERY LIKELY I just didn't read the documentation and this is staring me in the face this whole time. PEBKAC Weak points: - The programming currently always only runs at full speed. It's difficult, or impossible, to really see what's going on, and so the game gets in the way of the player understanding what the program is doing. It's a major problem, but the dev is also looking at it. As a result, it's really easy to think there might be a bug in the game when really it's a bug in your program, but you can't see all the parts moving around inside - it plays a bit like a black-box. And on the flip side, if there ARE real bugs in the game (and of course there must be - it's inevitable) then the developer is likely to not be aware of them, because the player has to exert a lot of effort to show that the code they've written isn't behaving as it should. And so they won't. I certainly won't. I just shrug when I see a part acting weird.... maybe I'll try to figure it out, but more likely I'll just go on playing and stick with the stuff I already understand. Also some of the puzzles suffer from "overly super technical are you kidding me?" I mean... yes it's a thing. It's always going to be a thing. But sometimes it's good to stretch yourself. For example: I just beat a challenge where it took a lot of finesse in the navigation computing to make sure the ship would fly just outside the enemy's range. Some of it was luck too - like if I tried to beat the challenge a random number generator might cause me to get killed most of the time, but sometimes I'd get lucky and it would pass the challenge. It's just compelling enough to 1) feel impossible at first, and 2) keep me looking at the problem and trying different ideas to see if they might work. Some of the challenges feel like they might be impossible at first, but if you beat and unlock some modules in other challenges then they might be easier. But I am not sure if this is by design or if those unlocked modules will even be available in other challenges - it's just an idea I'm wondering about. At least so far I've been able to beat challenges without any such handicaps, but I can tell you the game currently makes them almost impossibly difficult to a non-programmer, and even overly difficult (to the point of not being fun) even after understanding how things work. And again, it doesn't help that everything is always running at full speed, which can hopefully be addressed eventually. -- However, I will say for all the difficulty, there is something blissful and wonderful in these challenges, when the strange AI I've come up with actually works. It is a great feeling and very memorable. -- This game might not be a good introduction to programming for the non-programmer, but if you know your way around it might present a satisfying, albeit temporarily uncomfortable experience. I knew all this stuff already while playing the demo, and the gameplay was interesting enough to say "fine I'll buy this anyway". The game is fun, and I'd like to see what's hiding in there. If you don't mind too terribly at being bonked on the head by a game, this might be for you too. Definitely try the demo!

This game dares to ask a simple question, "What if Starsector were good?"

This game has a lot going on, but what really hooked me is the spaceship programming system for battles. You can ignore it and still progress, but I find it way more compelling than the other aspects. I've already spent hours in simulation mode trying to min-max battle outcomes, even with the fairly limited initial instruction set. The cool part is that you unlock new instructions as you acquire equipment for your ships, and I'm excited to see what becomes possible with these expanded capabilities.

Good programming game with a decent assembly-style language. Lacks some documentation, which is understandable for an indie project. I talked to the devs, and we have some disagreements about the design—for example, they don't want to add sqrt() for fear of programs becoming too mathy—but I can see why they made it like this. In no other game can you have the pleasure of implementing a ballistic computer with 2nd-order path approximation!

Залипательная игра. Из-за большого количества менюшек не сразу понял как тут программировать и управлял всем сам, в целом даже так игра достаточно увлекательная. Но когда нашел редактор кода, на долго в нем завис. Возможностей очень много, пока далеко не все изучил. Очень не хватает pvp режима, но он вроде как в разработке, будет интересно попробовать свои силы против других игроков.