I do love the Zachtronics games. But, to me, they're this new, weird, completely self-contained system to learn, where boring "responsibly engineered" solutions

I do love the Zachtronics games. But, to me, they're this new, weird, completely self-contained system to learn, where boring "responsibly engineered" solutions very quickly become infeasible (due to space, limited primitives, and the difficulty of organization). KOHCTPYKTOP is probably the strongest attempt to resemble a real system, but it essentially requires digital logic design knowledge from elsewhere (and if I knew more about chip design I'd probably find it just as unrealistic). The games tend to take themes from real engineering, but few actual mechanics besides testing and debugging (which the player has to get good at on their own). Which is fine, Zach makes excellent puzzle games. These games also tend to have a very little pre-scripted narrative, which is why I also didn't mention Kerbal Space Program or sims generally. Opus Magnum and Exapunks have more, but it's still just a way of introducing self-contained puzzles, nearly completely disconnected from what the player does. Hack 'n' Slash isn't a great champion at this, either, but it's a little better integrated. I bounced off Exapunks pretty early, haven't opened the second zine. I'll give it another try, your points about forking and IPC are interesting.