Exapunks (2018)

142 pointsposted 2 hours ago
by yu3zhou4
(zachtronics.com)

49 Comments

jawarner

2 hours ago

For those who don't know -- while Zachtronics is no longer making games, Zach Barth is still active now under the company Coincidence Games. They just game out with a spacecraft engineering puzzle game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2536720/UVS_Nirmana/?cura....

comeonbro

2 hours ago

Without specifically looking into it but just going off of Steam releases and headline, I'd assumed Zachtronics closing was Zach Barth leaving the scene, and the company that made Kaizen etc were some of his former colleagues continuing on without him.

But apparently the Kaizen-making company is still Zach Barth?

So what was Zachtronics closing then? Him changing his mind and coming back a year later? Why throw away the brand? As cringingly shallow as that sentence was to type, a new "Zachtronics" game was a reflexive auto-buy for many people.

krispykrem

an hour ago

Here is something I (Zach) wrote up a while ago in an attempt to explain it:

> Back in 2016, we sold Zachtronics to a company called Alliance, who we worked for as employees and made all the Zachtronics games from SHENZHEN I/O onward. In 2022 we stopped working for them and started a new studio called Coincidence, which we own and run as a sort of co-op that allows us to work on projects together, or not together, or anything in-between. (By "we" I mean the five of us who made all the Zachtronics games from SHENZHEN I/O onward; the team was much more dynamic before that, as described in the first few pages of ZACH-LIKE.)

> I still work for Alliance and maintain the Zachtronics games, but we don't own any of that IP, so anything new we make is going to be attached to the new studio and the new name.

(I did spend a year teaching computer science at a public high school, but that overlapped the last year of Zachtronics, rather than being between Zachtronics and Coincidence like it's often reported.)

At Coincidence, we have released two puzzle games so far, Kaizen: A Factory Story and U.V.S. Nirmana, and have more (four?) in the works. I'm hoping that I'll get to work on some less-obviously-in-the-genre games soon, but I haven't git initted anything yet so I guess it's too early to say.

apublicfrog

a few seconds ago

I just want to say thank you. I've bought most of your games and they scratch an itch for me that few things in life do. I really appreciate it!

mycocola

5 minutes ago

I adore your games. Would be curious to know your thoughts about using AI for game development. Personally I find it gross, but I am trying to be open to different views.

j-pb

12 minutes ago

You don't know how much more vibrant the world is knowing that you still make games in it.

Thank you for all of those hours. (And making the tools that help me teach my apprentices.)

computerliker

an hour ago

Hi Zach, Fortune’s Foundation is my favorite game ever. Thank you!

krispykrem

43 minutes ago

Thanks! I still play it often, which is not true of any of my other games.

0cf8612b2e1e

an hour ago

Any chance of making it onto GOG? I prefer to pickup games from there whenever I can.

krispykrem

an hour ago

It's unlikely. We do have a DRM-free version of Kaizen on itch.io, which also includes a Steam key so that you can enjoy the best of both worlds:

https://astralogicalgames.itch.io/kaizen-a-factory-story

gradstudent

27 minutes ago

Can you extrapolate a bit? Why is GOG an undesirable platform to be on, especially as you seem to be fine with DRM-free releases elsewhere (which is awesome, btw)

Finally, thank you for SpaceChem! Still great, even after all these years

optionalsquid

12 minutes ago

My understanding is that GOG is not necessarily undesirable, but they are very selective: Unlike Steam or Itch, you have to convince them that it's worth their while to sell your game. And their choices of what (not) to sell are not infrequently baffling. Lots of developers have gotten burned by that, including Zachtronics

jna_sh

2 hours ago

Zachtronics wrapped up because they all got a bit burned out by the yearly release pace, and Zach tried to become a teacher. He didn’t like it, and when the rest of the team continued making games, he joined up with them and thus Coincidence. Further down the discussion I shared a podcast where he tells the story.

comeonbro

an hour ago

I understand why he might not want to and hope I would have the character to do similarly in his place, but they should really lead with "by Zach Barth" rather than "from the original Zachtronics team", which still sounds great, but tbh at least for me bumped it from "buy and play immediately" to "wishlist".

From other comments in this thread, it seems I am not the only one who misinterpreted that as not including Zach himself

saghm

an hour ago

> So what was Zachtronics closing then? Him changing his mind and coming back a year later? Why throw away the brand? As cringingly shallow as that sentence was to type, a new "Zachtronics" game was a reflexive auto-buy for many people.

It's not clear that this happened here, but I could imagine that someone successful enough not to need the money might literally prefer to have their work evaluated on its own merits and not have the outsized level of attention that being well-known brings. I remember reading in Eric Clapton's autobiography (which might or might not be an accurate retelling of course) that the original plan for Derek and the Dominoes was to name them "Del and the Dominoes" and basically hide the fact that he was the guitarist since he was tired of all of the attention. According to him, "Derek" was a slip of the tongue from someone on stage one night, and the record label eventually decided to try to capitalize on his hype by marketing the fact that he was behind it.

mattbee

an hour ago

Maybe he sold his company, or never completely owned the name himself?

komadori

an hour ago

Yes, as I recall, he sold Zachtronics to investors sometime after TIS-100 so that he could focus on making the games and have someone else worry about the business.

uludag

an hour ago

In case anyone's curious I recommend the podcast episode with Zach Barth on the Draknek and Friends podcast to hear where he's at now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLrh8wcBy8I

Happy to hear that he's continuing developing games and we can expect more to come!

markx2

2 hours ago

Their catalogue is well worth buying.

https://store.steampowered.com/developer/zachtronics

nbaksalyar

an hour ago

"Eliza" is a bit unusual for Zachtronics as it's not a programming/puzzle game but a visual novel. But it's excellent and I think it's one of their most under-appreciated games. It's well-written, well-acted, and very prescient. Highly recommended!

__sy__

44 minutes ago

i loved playing ShenzhenIO! So much so that i ended up buying and registering the domain of the fictitious company you were hired by in the game. That domain redirects to Seam now

jf

2 hours ago

This is one of my all time favorite games. It and Shenzhen I/O do a wonderful job of capturing the essence of what makes programming fun and put them into a game.

My biggest surprise from playing EXAPUNKS is how futile it is to try and pre-optimize a solution. I had to remind myself time and again to solve the puzzle first, then try and try and optimize it.

While the games are fun on their own, I recommend playing them at the same time as a friend. Trash-talking about finding more optimal solutions really added to the overall fun of playing the games.

fragmede

2 hours ago

> capturing the essence of what makes programming fun and put them into a game.

They definitely straddle there line between "those is a fun video game" and "it looks too much like my job" for people in the industry, but there's a whole genre of workplace simulators for doing other people's jobs vicariously. A semi truck driver would see playing a semi truck simulator in the same way, but American Truck Simulator is quite popular. Anyway, play Zachatronics games if you find them fun, but if you don't, then, uh, don't feel bad about not playing them.

yoyohello13

an hour ago

Too true. I used to absolutely love Zachtronics games. Then I became a professional programmer and I just can’t play the programming themed ones anymore. Kind of a shame because TIS-100 is what made me want to be a programmer in the first place.

StableAlkyne

16 minutes ago

Exapunks and TIS-100 were a huge influence on my career trajectory.

I was always scared of assembly and low level stuff as a kid / college student, who mostly was trying to learn from random sites that assumed a lot of CS background.

Even though they're not near the complexity of x86, these games made me realize that assembly isn't really that scary. I still don't daily drive x86, but they gave me the confidence to go through a few Advent of Code and Project Euler problems. Having a really stripped down assembler was a fantastic learning tool!

Without them, I'd probably still only be working in Python (which is a great language, but abstracts a lot)

joshu

39 minutes ago

I've been writing a game off and on that's sort of at the intersection of a Zachtronics game and... Starcraft? I guess? With some Factorio in there, for good measure.

The idea is that you have to break into and exfiltrate data from a laboratory that uses their own transputer-like architecture. Write a mobile program to explore the network, another to start migrating the data, and so on. Migrate too hard and the humans notice and reboot the network, kicking you out. There could be other players in there too. Of course, the nodes run the lab's terrible version of Forth. There's no UI, you connect via a TCP socket, and are expected to write your own tooling.

I'm not sure if this is a good idea or if I'm having a psychotic break.

flockonus

39 minutes ago

Some irony in so many posts about AI becoming more capable at programming, at the same time, top post on hackernews is a game about where you code by reading a magazine like it's 1997.

omgbear

an hour ago

Printing the physical zines in exapunks as a reference was very cool, and a good throwback to when games shipped with boxes and detailed manuals.

Spacechem was my intro to Zachtronics, and it consumed me when it came out. The concept of instructions inside the actual work area is amazing and still makes my head spin. I consider beating Ω-Pseudoethyne one of my top coding/steam achievements.

I fell off for a bit because the leaderboard grind against friends felt draining, but rekindled my joy by mostly ignoring them (Unless I'm way out of distribution). I'm so glad Zach and the team are back.

CWuestefeld

an hour ago

I haven't played this, but just reading the description...

> Learn to hack from TRASH WORLD NEWS, the underground computer magazine.

It seems like a missed opportunity not to name-drop 2600. But I guess they wouldn't be allowed to do that anyway.

Eji1700

an hour ago

Always wish Exa could scale a little more. I understand that it's supposed to stay at the low level of coding, but when i realized unfolding loops was a very valid way to improve your score, I learned a lot, and also realized it's not quite for me.

All the joys of code reuse (as silly as that might sound) do get kinda lost in the game. I still loved it, but I'd kill for a sequel that was a little higher level on the tooling.

Tepix

42 minutes ago

My favourite Zach game so far is Infinifactory. TIS-100 was also fun, until it started feeling like work.

deelowe

2 hours ago

I wish Zach would start making games again. :-(

ACCount37

2 hours ago

The official "spiritual successor" seems to be Coincidence studio - their games in the genre being "Kaizen: A Factory Story" and the recent "U.V.S. Nirmana".

jna_sh

2 hours ago

He never stopped, he’s just under a different label: https://coincidence.games/

They’ve released two Zach-likes, Kaizen and UVS Nirmana.

Blatant self promotion, but if you want the full story, he chatted to me about it on Software Engineering Daily after the release of Kaizen: https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2025/12/18/designing-in...

rafram

an hour ago

What's up with the AI narration at the beginning? Or is it just someone with an incredibly steady voice and AI cadence? It's uncanny and weird considering that this is a podcast hosted by actual humans!

jna_sh

2 minutes ago

It’s not AI, that is an honest to goodness human! She reads the intro to every episode on a daily podcast, she’s just well practiced.

altairprime

2 hours ago

This is an excellent interview; thanks for posting it.

minraws

2 hours ago

bought opus magnum recently fun game, I have played exapunks a while back, it's not my cup of tea. I love programming for fun, but the language didn't gel with me. I liked their other games better, opus magnum is definitely in the top 2

ack_complete

32 minutes ago

Opus Magnum is one of the most polished Zachtronics games IMO. The presentation is great.

Exapunks can be pretty tricky with the distributed nature, which share some similarities with TIS-100. Like Opus Magnum, though, there are no restrictive code size limits, meaning that some puzzles can be solved with brute force masses of code. It's not as bad as Shenzhen I/O where you have to deal both with a tiny MCU and routing.

Groxx

2 hours ago

for anyone on the fence about these games: I'll highly recommend Opus Magnum as the starting point. It's a good intro-to-Zachtronics game because every problem can be brute forced if desired - in many of the others, you need to make some clever arrangements and logical leaps to progress, due to very limited playing field sizes.

they are quite unique and very well-made though. if you like sequence-puzzle games but are getting tired of the endless flood of Sokoban-flavored things, give it a try!

Terr_

an hour ago

I think I liked Infinifactory the most because:

1. It had the least overlap with my day-job work.

2. It's somehow more-pleasing to watch a mechanical (albeit simulated) 3D machine do work, contrasted to the flickering playgrounds of Exapunks or Shenzhen IO.