You see, Spacechem is set - wait for it - in space!īut yeah, Spacechem is set in a future where humanity has expanded into space, and taken its bureaucracy with it. But honestly, I don’t think the game would have caught my attention nearly as firmly if it weren’t for its setting. So, the puzzles start simple enough, but they quickly become more challenging, especially once you need to start using multiple reactors to make your products. If your instructions cause two atoms to collide, production will halt so the challenge is to build reactors that will smoothly and consistently produce the molecules you need. You do this using elemental “reactors” which physically rearrange the atoms with the aid of two “waldos” capable of picking up and rotating atoms and molecules along routes that you, the player, determine. It is a visual/spatial puzzle game, wherein you use elemental atoms (such as hydrogen, oxygen, carbon etc.) to create specific molecules. This is the first Zachtronics game I ever played, and despite how later titles improved upon it in almost every way, it somehow remains the iconic Zac game in my mind. With that in mind, I’d like to run through the various Zachtronics games, in chronological order, and give my thoughts and impressions. Finally, the outliers don’t have anything to do with these metrics, literally lying outside what I think of as a typical(?) Zac title. “Programming,” on the other hand, is about manipulating numbers (and occasionally strings of text) using a fictional(?) programming language to achieve various results. By specifying “visual/spatial,” I mean games in which you manipulate an “object” of some sort, where you can see it move around, and combine and separate from other objects. Setting aside the outliers, most Zac games involve taking an input of some kind, manipulating it in various ways, and outputting the correct solution. Therefore, in my mind, Zac makes three types of games: visual/spatial puzzle games, programming puzzle games, and outliers.Īs those categories are probably a bit unclear, let me explain. –And then I remember that they have a few games that don’t fall into either of those categories, and have to quickly make a third category for them. Mostly.Īnyway, when I think about Zac games, I tend to divide them into two arbitrary categories. Not that the games themselves are all that similar, in setting, tone, or gameplay but at the same time, it’s really easy to grasp that they were all made by the same group. Which is also all of them, in one way or another. What I do know for certain is that I absolutely adore the games made by Zachtronics (henceforth to be abbreviated as Zac). So now I know two actual facts about Zachtronics, and so do you.
Spacechem fishcake free#
A quick look at their website tells me that, one, they are a branch of Alliance Media Holdings (which I know absolutely nothing about and am not sure I’ve even ever heard of before), and two, “all Zachtronics games are free for public schools and school-like non-profit organizations.” Which is really cool. Even as I write this, it occurs to me that I don’t actually know much about the development company called Zachtronics itself.
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