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

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.

> 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.

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

(at least, that's what I'm prematurely concluding based on ten frames of trailer footage)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancala?wprov=sfla1

I always wished they would make a management or simulation game, I think 90% of all programmers play Paradox games or Tycoon games etc. and I know their take on it would be amazing.

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

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

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/confusion-surrounds-gogs-rejec...

And GOG has its share of slop (e.g. a dozen Whale Rock Games which have obviously fake reviews).

Of course I cannot vouch that there aren't people who played games like Shenzhen I/O because they cared about building signs for a fictional corporation.

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

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.

This is really disappointing to me as many of his games are some of my favourite games of all time and I assumed he’d be set for life off them. I guess the target audience is just too small.

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

He now appears to be inventing 0x10c? ;)

I think it's sporting to pay for advertising and not sporting to try and sneak it in on people.

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.

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.

It's an interesting contrast to programmers and programming games. For me personally, the best way to process is to do just about anything else. Programming games are most fun when I haven't had to do much coding recently. Though sometimes, if I'm already in the flow, it's fun to play one of them and ace it since I'm already in the right mindset.

So I can imagine it might let them reconnect with that feeling and be a relaxing experience much more easily than a programming puzzle game would let us reconnect with what we love about programming. Being a puzzle game it inherently will involve some frustration, which is the thing I want to escape from after a day of programming.

I also get this problem when I play Linux-terminal-emulating games like the various "global hacker" CLI based games.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/why-do-we-play-video-games-t...

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

https://matthewseiji.com/process

Maybe it's because (unlike others in the VN space) it totally eschews unusual settings, gimmicks, or flashy set pieces to sell itself... I only bought it because I liked the tidbits of story in Shenzhen and Infinifactory, by the same author. Every part of it is unbelievably strong though.

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.

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)

  - SpaceChem

  - Shenzhen I/O

  - ...

  - the funniest concept is probably a game about assembly programming (TIS-100) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIS-100

also can recommend the soundtracks! I often listen to computer game soundtracks while programming, my favorites are Deus Ex (original) and Zachtronics OSTs (it tracks, good puzzle game OSTs are naturally suited for fading into the background while concentrating): https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zachtronics+ost

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.

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!

I finished Opus Magnum a couple weeks ago and I found it a little frustrating because of the same reasons you brought up. The game doesn't force me to be clever; I can be as simplistic and inefficient as I like. I did go out of my way to design a couple efficient designs, but it didn't feel especially rewarding.

FWIW, my favorite game from them is Last Call BBS. It has several great "mini"games that feel rewarding to just complete.

if you don't enjoy them, then you've at least had a sizable taste of the mechanics and know why it's not your thing, rather than getting hard-blocked early on because you couldn't figure out a trick :)

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

Printed the zine.

It took me to my happy place.

Thank you.

Every BSD comes with games, which are THE testbed platform for 'new' code such as pledge/unveil under OpenBSD. If the game doesn't break, consider it well done.

Also, in modern days, the best way to get the hjklyubn burned in your forehead is to play Nethack or any other roguelike with that keyset, and not with vi.

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...

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