15 ms·

Goodbye Zachtronics

752 points by danso 4y ago

sitkack 4y ago
> “My original plan was to wrap things up at Zachtronics and then find a new job teaching high school computer science, but the timing was off,” Please do, but don't just teach CS! I'll go back to high school. My kid will hit high school in about 7 years.
toma_caliente 4y ago
Zachtronics leaving game development is such a blow to the industry. Zach is directly and indirectly responsible for a lot of games we see today. His game Infiniminer was a major inspiration for Minecraft, he published a game that was also a book explaining his philosophy on puzzle design, and his games were genuinely fun with no BS.
- 202206241203 4y ago
  I dislike the games, since they are too close to work/programming to be fun for me (just like Factorio). However, the success of Zachtronics - both business and creative, is undeniable. I wish they were the ones to gain success with the original 3D cube digging gameplay and not the massively popular Minecraft clone.
  - bstar77 4y ago
    I hear this a lot, but I personally don't get it. These games are the best part of my job (the problem solving) without any of the nonsense. Most games today are a grindfest that we convince ourselves is fun because it's happening in a beautiful virtual world.
    - benoliver999 4y ago
      Playing Zelda Breath of the Wild atm and I sort of feel this way. I love riding around the map but I'm getting a bit... tired
    - iamdbtoo 4y ago
      I view these games similarly. I don't think anything has helped me in my day-to-day decision making at work more than the time I've spent planning and designing my factory(s) in Satisfactory.
    - boardwaalk 4y ago
      There doesn’t have to be (as much) nonsense on a personal project where you’re only beholden to yourself, can pick your own tech, etc. (I’m sure people also have less nonsense and make money from it, but I don’t right now.)
      - scubbo 4y ago
        Less, but not zero. Personal projects can still suffer from obscure bugs or undocumented behaviour in dependencies, unattainable goals, costs, and other non-bureaucratic frustrations. A significant part of the satisfaction of Factorio for me comes from the knowledge that, if something isn't operating as I expect/hope it to, I can _just look at_ the surface-level representation of the system to diagnose it. This isn't possible in software projects without a huge amount of investment in observability - which is rarely fun or prioritized.
        ansible 4y ago
        Yes. The programming game TIS-100 gives you a view of the internal state of the machine far superior to what exists with most systems. The exception being that Commodore 64 emulator that shows _everything_ going on in memory in real time. More often (in the embedded world) you are debugging things via JTAG and a serial port (if you are lucky) or a GPIO-driven LED (if you are not lucky or this is super-early in the boot process). And often the JTAG is less than 100% reliable.
        bstar77 4y ago
        I absolutely loved playing TIS-100 despite having no clue what a real world counterpart would be. It was really nice understanding the limitations of the system and then trying to be creative to solve problems. I got through 3/4 of the game before I lost my save (on my GoG version). I just re-bought it on steam for the cloud saves. Same thing happened to my ExaPunks save.
        ansible 4y ago
        The closest real-world thing would be something like The Connection Machine, which combined 64Ki processors in a hypercube. Individually, they had just a small amount of RAM for programs. Today's GPUs are more about executing the exact same small program in a massively parallel way, and not individually programming each of the compute elements. You know... it would be a fun project to make a TIS-100 in actual hardware on an FPGA or something. Actually, if you aren't the FPGA type, you could just write an emulator on an 8-bit microcontroller, and connect them all together. Bonus points for having each one with a display that shows its current execution state.
    - wccrawford 4y ago
      Yeah, I enjoy having a definitely-solvable problem with good restraints. Unfortunately, the latter half of the programming games generally gets too messy for me. I lose patience with them and never end up completing them. I don't regret buying them, though. I have a lot of fun with them before that.
    - no_butterscotch 4y ago
      I don't get it either. I remember hearing the same thing about the show Silicon Valley. People in the workplace would say things like "OMG I can't even watch that, it's so like our daily lives!" -- is it? Yes we're coders, but is it? Having said that to each their own :)
  - p1mrx 4y ago
    Zachtronics games give you a limited playing field with a limited set of operations. The fun comes from thinking carefully about small problems, and doing a lot with a little. Factorio is more like work, because they don't know when to stop. There is just too much going on, too much complexity.
- bricemo 4y ago
  I always wondered how Zach felt about missing what’s arguably the biggest game industry boat of all time: his ideas in Infiniminer being the basis for Minecraft. In the early days the games looked almost identical. But one never became a household name and the other literally the top selling game of all time. It sounds like he’s found peace with it and had fun and is on to something else. Good for him. That would be hard for me.
  - daniel-cussen 4y ago
    Well Western Culture generally gives the most credit to the first person to have an idea, when I personally find the second people (like Persson, also Sergey Brin) to deserve--in these cases--more credit. There's a shortage of second parties to inventions.
  - aahortwwy 4y ago
    notch's decision to add survival and traditional RPG mechanics to Minecraft is what led to its mainstream success. Based on Zachtronics' other games, I really doubt Infiniminer would've gone in that direction had its development continued.
Centigonal 4y ago
a whole article about Zachtronics, and not a single mention of Infiniminer? https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ Released in 2009, and a direct inspiration to one Markus Persson to create a game called Minecraft.
- ycta20220624 4y ago
  Wait, I thought development of Minecraft started in 2007? Wouldn't that put it before Infiniminer?
  - fartcannon 4y ago
    According to Notch, Infiniminer was "the game I wanted to do". https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer
  - papercrane 4y ago
    > I thought development of Minecraft started in 2007? The first version of Minecraft was developed May 2009, Infiniminer was released April 2009.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Straight from the horse's mouth: The World of Notch - The origins of Minecraft | https://web.archive.org/web/20160604071857/https://notch.tumblr.com/post/227922045/the-origins-of-minecraft https://web.archive.org/web/20160604071857/https://notch.tum... > While looking through some project folders, I found an old protype of a game that never quite became anything. Kinda. > It was called “RubyDung” (for various reasons), and was supposed to be a base building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress > As the RubyDung engine got more advanced, I started thinking about adding a first person view for following your minions around, kinda like in Dungeon Keeper. It worked ok, but the graphics got very pixellated and distorted, so I left it out. > But then I found Infiniminer. My god, I realized that that was the game I wanted to do. I played it in multiplayer for a while and had a blast, but found it flawed. Building was fun, but there wasn’t enough variation, and the big red/blue blocks were pretty horrible. I thought a fantasy game in that style would work really really well, so I tried to implement a simple first person engine in that style, reusing some art and code (although not as much as you’d think) from RubyDung, and came up with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k Unfortunately, that last YouTube link is not viewable for me ("This video contains content from Nizzotch. It is not available in your country."). But the conclusion is: Infiniminer was definitely a huge inspiration on Minecraft.
PainfullyNormal 4y ago
Wait, so he's not teaching anymore? That was fast. In this interview 2 months ago, he implied that he was shutting down Zachtronics so he could go teach. Maybe I misunderstood. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1454395489?t=00h12m36s https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1454395489?t=00h12m36s
- OnionBlender 4y ago
  During the interview he talks about his experience teaching. I got the impression that a lot of the job of a teacher is having to babysit kids (take away their phones) and that many kids just don't care about the subject being taught.
  - Aeolun 4y ago
    > many kids just don't care about the subject being taught This sums up school and work for a lot of the population I think.
- mdaniel 4y ago
  It's addressed toward the bottom of TFA: > “My original plan was to wrap things up at Zachtronics and then find a new job teaching high school computer science, but the timing was off,” he says. “I just finished my first year of teaching and Last Call BBS hasn’t even been released yet! I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form.”
  - PainfullyNormal 4y ago
    Yes, I read that part. It's why I made my post. It appears to contradict the interview he gave 2 months ago. Again, unless I'm missing something?
    - ziddoap 4y ago
      He said he learned that loving being a teacher was 'not the case'. Perhaps he learned it in the last two months, or was trying to remain positive about the position publicly while reconsidering privately, etc. People change, I don't think there's anything profound to look for just because he changed his public opinion from a few months ago.
synu 4y ago
I really loved Shenzhen I/O, it even got me into electronics. I started watching Ben Eater’s series on breadboard computers and built some similar devices to what I was making in the game around a 6502. It’s pretty cool that a game can trigger something like that. The game had a leaderboard, and at one point an old programmer colleague reached out to me to ask if I was cheating - that’s something I’m still very proud of to this day!
- contingencies 4y ago
  Started playing Shenzhen I/O in 2016 after moving to real Shenzhen, enjoyed it and wrote a guide for the game on Steam,[0] having never designed a PCB in my life. Now own a 1000m² robotics factory with a decent electronics lab and personally push out 3 boards some days. Control boards for a custom four axis system with additional peripherals and three daughterboards today, seven axes system Sunday when machining is completed (we also have a mill and lasers to cut and weld our own metal). [0] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=780361834 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=78036...
- krallja 4y ago
  The same thing happened to me! I had just finished the main campaign of Shenzhen I/O and saw Ben Eater’s “Hello World on a Breadboard” video… now I have thousands of dollars in retro electronics, parts, and lab equipment
schnevets 4y ago
Before anyone writes a eulogy based on the headline, note the following: So it’s sad, but also awesome in its own way, that 2022 will see the end of Zachtronics. Not because their publisher shuttered them, or because their venture capital funding ran out, or because Activision made them work on Call of Duty, or any other number of reasons (bankruptcy! scandal!) game developers usually close their doors. No, Zachtronics is closing because...they want to. “We’re wrapping things up!” Barth tells me, way more enthusiastically than you would normally expect under these circumstances. “Zachtronics will release Last Call BBS next month. We’re also working on a long-awaited solitaire collection that we’re hoping to have out by the end of the year. After that, the team will disband. We all have different ideas, interests, tolerances for risk, and so on, so we’re still figuring out what we want to do next.” I play games too infrequently to invest the necessary bandwidth into a Zachtronic game, but I read some of ZACH-LIKE and always respected the philosophy. As long as no one is getting the rug pulled, this sounds like an awesome way to go and an awesome thing for the gaming industry. Hopefully this means more smart indie gems in the future.
- isk517 4y ago
  Yeah, reads more like a band splitting up than a company closing.
  - schnevets 4y ago
    Honestly, indie gaming would benefit from a better distinction between the company and the contributor (similar to bands and musicians or films and the director/producer/cinematographer). I know not everyone wants to self-promote, but I would love to see what games certain designers. contributed to before they had an opportunity to lead. I hope every Zachtronics contributor can get the resources to make their next dream project, and the entire industry becomes a pinch more Zach-like.
    - egypturnash 4y ago
      So basically you want IMDB but for video games? This exists to some degree but most of the examples I can think of are specifically about retro games, rather than any and all video games. Lemon64 and LemonAmiga exhaustively document who worked on what in the c64 and Amiga games scenes, for instance. MobyGames does cover modern games but a few checks of modern games sure don't have any credits beyond company. IMDB does cover games but also doesn't delve into any more detail than company.
nindalf 4y ago
Noooo! I’m glad they’re doing it because they want to, but I’m still sad as hell about this. Goodbye Zachtronics! Time to replay shenzhen.io
convexfunction 4y ago
I've found it difficult after starting to work full-time to fully enjoy Zachtronics games, since they use much of the same parts of my brain as my day job, but the sheer joy I got out of Zach's earlier games (SpaceChem, KOHCTPYKTOP, Codex of Alchemical Engineering) contributed a lot to my decision to work in software. I've experienced little else that scratches the "design itch" in such a pure and thoughtful way, whether games from other developers or actual software development.
- blueblimp 4y ago
  I liked Infinifactory the most because being in 3D space maximizes the difference from normal programming.
- jszymborski 4y ago
  I've started to feel this way about Factorio... I only can play it if I've felt I've been productive or that I've e.g.: a model training or code compiling in the background. The reason being that I stop and think: "This is scratching an itch that something _actually_ productive would as well". So whenever I feel like playing Factorio, I pick up a side-project instead if one's been neglected.
  - dageshi 4y ago
    Yes, I felt very much the same after my first playthrough. I came back and was suddenly thinking through all these possible solutions to factory management only to realise it felt exactly like programming work and I should probably go and do that instead.
  - ineedasername 4y ago
    I mostly enjoy my work, and it's nice to feel productive, but the two things are not the same for me. I can be very productive knocking out task after task I don't enjoy, while I can spend a days enjoying the process of chasing down a solutions to a a very minor task with very minor impact. I like the Zachtronics games not because I feel productive but because I enjoy the nature of the problems they present, and the fact that I can pursue them without any of the headaches or stress that may come with normal work.
pmoriarty 4y ago
I didn't like Zachtronics games, because from reviews I read, I expected them to be like programming, but instead they were merely puzzle games with programming window dressing on them.
- TrickardRixx 4y ago
  This is a funny thing for me to read. The reason I enjoy programming is because the act of programming feels to me much like playing a puzzle game.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    I guess it depends on the puzzle game. I enjoy programming (when I'm programming something I'm interested in, anyway), but don't like almost any puzzle games. There are a handful of exceptions: I loved Factorio (which could be considered a puzzle game), Gorogoa, Inside, and The Swapper. But Zachtronics games and most other puzzle games leave me cold.
    - db48x 4y ago
      Out of curiosity, have you tried TIS-100? It’s less of a game and more of an emulator for a machine that never existed.
      - pmoriarty 4y ago
        "have you tried TIS-100?" Yes. That's the first Zachtronics game I tried, and was sorely disappointed. In my view it's just a puzzle game.
        db48x 4y ago
        Hmm. You might still think that it’s “just” a puzzle game, but did you ever try Ruckingenur II? That one actually got my heart racing the first time I played it. https://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/ https://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/
moritonal 4y ago
SpaceChem is still my primary tool in testing kid's (and adults) general aptitude for coding before trying to teach them.
- ByThyGrace 4y ago
  That's insightful, having played the game. Do you believe there's perhaps a kind of student that would be proficient in coding while not showing particular skill (or engagement) in solving those kinds of puzzles?
  - moritonal 4y ago
    It's always possible, but the game calmly asks the user to focus, structure a problem in their head and then form a solution. I wouldn't ask them to finish the game, but watching how they absorb what they're shown and whether they can expand this to new solutions is a fairly easy tell most the time.
theptip 4y ago
Massive kudos to Zachtronics for defining a micro-genre, and crafting such unique, fun, and interesting games with a small team. I have particularly fond memories of SpaceChem, and subsequent releases always switched things up enough to be fresh and interesting, while also riffing on the same fundamentally satisfying abstract game loop of “solve an algorithm with limited resources, then optimize”.
kryptn 4y ago
I loved all of the puzzle Zachtronics games! They're great puzzle games on their own but some also have leaderboards which give you the feeling that you can do better or solve them in different ways. I'd revisit older games to see which steam friends beat my scores, and then I'd go back through and rediscover, optimize, and get back on top. I'll definitely miss their games.
knolan 4y ago
Spacechem on the iPad was a thing of beauty. It’s a shame they abandoned iOS but they had valid reasons.
haunter 4y ago
>We felt it was time for a change. This might sound weird, but while we got very good at making ‘Zachtronics games’ over the last twelve years, it was hard for us to make anything else. We were fortunate enough to carve out a special niche, and I’m thankful that we’ve been able to occupy it and survive in it, but it also kept us locked into doing something we didn’t feel like doing forever. Sums up a lot of indie game developers perfectly. Find a niche, can't escape the niche.
iterati 4y ago
I still have TIS-100 under the Languages skill section of my resume as an Easter Egg. I haven't played many of Zach's recent games, but SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, and TIS-100 were some of the best puzzle games ever made to me.
- krallja 4y ago
  Oh that's a hilarious great idea.
- sumtechguy 4y ago
  TIS-100 and Shenzen had that fun little bit of hacking using the docs. Or just fiddling with it and finding that one instruction that had enough of a side effect where it could let you shave off two other instructions. Where you could get that really fun rush of removing 1 cycle from something. It is a skill I do not get to use much anymore as most things are fairly cookie cutter.
- lufte 4y ago
  Oh I'm definitely copying this idea!
- anta40 4y ago
  As as assembly language enthusiast, TIS-100 is easily my #1 Zachtronics game. The closet contender would be... CoreWar. Seems like their implementations are rarely updated these days. Robocode is also cool, but you code in Java instead of assembly, anyway.
- blakebreeder 4y ago
  if you all like TIS-1000, play Exa Punks.
bstar77 4y ago
I'm still in shock since the initial announcement. These guys are so good at game design, I thought they would be doing it forever. I guess you can't confine very special devs to one thing for most of their career. I hope the teaching thing goes well, but I equally hope Zachtronics makes a return at some point in the future.
- ehsankia 4y ago
  Looks like he's already considering it > I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form. They will likely be doing it forever, they just want to try something else than a small 5-member indie team maybe?
  - bstar77 4y ago
    Wow, that was unexpected. They should take a break if they need to, but please don't close up shop.
    - wccrawford 4y ago
      That's easy to say for a 1-person shop, but when other people are depending on the job, too, it's a lot harder.
Night_Thastus 4y ago
I loved TIS-100 and Shenzhen-IO. I'm wishing all of them the best on whatever they endeavor to do next. :)
- Delfino 4y ago
  He said he's going to teach high school computer science. As someone who made the same leap, it's cool to hear! He was really awesome about giving his games to teachers to use in their classrooms for free.
  - pvitz 4y ago
    Actually, he is going to quit teaching high-school computer science to continue working on games.
  - OnionBlender 4y ago
    He tried teaching for a year but sounds like he isn't going to stick with it. “I just finished my first year of teaching and Last Call BBS hasn’t even been released yet! I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form.”
noduerme 4y ago
For anyone who hasn't read Matthew Burns's short fiction, it's as much of a treat as his writing for Eliza. I think he used to have more work online, but he's still got some short stories and interactive stuff here... https://matthewseiji.com https://matthewseiji.com Full disclosure, I'm an old friend and glad to see him mentioned. I'm lucky enough to be reading an early draft of a novel he's been working on as we speak.
- eswat 4y ago
  Although it was never promised, I enjoyed Eliza and was hopeful of another visual novel through Zachtronics + Burns. Hopefully something in a similar spirit comes out in the future.
- modeless 4y ago
  Wow, I just downloaded Eliza and man, it's like it was written specifically for me. So many parallels to my own life and interests, it's actually weird. I'd like to have a beer with that guy. I'll have to check out his other stuff.
  - noduerme 4y ago
    That's awesome. Eliza touched me on a lot of levels as well. In fact, Matt and I used to play with the original Eliza (the therapist) together in second grade on a Mac SE, between rounds of "The Manhole" and "Glider" and trying to write our own game in Hypercard. So I'm, uh, more than slightly biased hahah. But even just explaining the premise of Eliza in a sentence or two seems to make people do a double take and a Keanu style "Whoa." It didn't even dawn on me until later how much the voice acting and production also really pays off. The game immerses you in spite of the minimalism / simplicity, the way staring at a good painting does. I think it's truly a work of art, or an attempt to break through the noise and say something about the human condition. At first blush the concept is just vicious, and pitch perfect at exploiting the zone between getting you to play along and making you feel deeply uncomfortable. And then you get drawn into the deep disillusionment with corporate culture and it's a free ride on your neurons for the game designers. It's a hell of a statement, presented immaculately. I passed your comment along.
loufe 4y ago
I seriously loved Shenzhen I/O, thank you for your service, Zachtronics.
Bjorkbat 4y ago
Incidentally my first "true indie" game was SpaceChem. I'm tempted to play it again, maybe try and beat it this time. It's a very fun game, and cheap too, if you want to play along. Glad they got to go out on their own terms. They're such a niche game studio that I was really worried that they closing their doors because of market apathy or dissatisfaction with the status quo. This is a good ending.
frob 4y ago
Spacechem singlehandedly got me back into gaming 10 years ago. It was such a wonderful example of how a simple concept worked to its extreme could be more delightful and entertaining than shiny AAA games. RIP. I'm glad you went out on your own terms.
laserbeam 4y ago
So long! And thanks for all the fish.
throwawayhnacc 4y ago
I don't want to be tinfoil about this, but I suspect there is maybe some more corporate politic stuff happening here than Zach lets on (and rightfully so). Zachtronics is wholly owned by Alliance Media Holdings. Alliance is run primarily by two people Jay Gelman (CEO) and Nathan Gelman (Director of Publishing + Stuido Operations). Last year, Nathan Gelman expressed some real crazy zionist opinions on Twitter during the most recent wave of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I didn't screenshot it, but you can sort of see some of the wake of it by searching his account name on twitter and seeing the replies to the now deleted tweet: https://twitter.com/search?q=nathangelman&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=nathangelman&src=typed_query Nathan also pretty consistently likes orthodox jewish content on Twitter, which, to be clear, isn't bad on its own, but with that plus the deleted tweet during the latest I-P conflict, thing I think it's maybe safe to say that Nathan, likely Zach's direct report as he is the "Director of Publishing and Studio Operations", has got some STRONG political beliefs. What I SUSPECT is that Zach probably just got tired of dealing with that and, given the ownership structure, has to "end" Zachtronics to step away from them. It's tenuous evidence and maybe doesn't mean anything, but the only other point that makes me think Alliance is a not-great-company to be under, is that on the episode of Eggplant show where they interview Bravery Network Online creators (other studio/game Alliance published), The BNO people said that "the legal issues that came up on the game were some of the worst things our lawyer said they ever encountered". (Don't have the exact timestamp but here's the episode) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bravely-replacing-randomness-with-gloam-collective/id1435365252?i=1000518383836 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bravely-replacing-rand... Again, maybe nothing, but maybe something. idk.
- leoc 4y ago
  It seems like one possibility. Reading between the lines of the comments about different risk tolerances and so on, another possibility is that the team reached an impasse in trying to agree what their next game project or projects should be.
- puffoflogic 4y ago
OnionBlender 4y ago
"I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form." He sold Zachtronics a few years ago so I wonder if he is free to start a new game company.
samiam_iam 4y ago
so long “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
wly_cdgr 4y ago
Zachtronics may be shutting down, but there is no way Zach Barth will stop making games no matter what he says, so this is kind of a non-story
helloplanets 4y ago
“We felt it was time for a change. This might sound weird, but while we got very good at making ‘Zachtronics games’ over the last twelve years, it was hard for us to make anything else. We were fortunate enough to carve out a special niche, and I’m thankful that we’ve been able to occupy it and survive in it, but it also kept us locked into doing something we didn’t feel like doing forever.” So they basically got tired of making more Zachlikes, which is more than understandable at this point. Amazing games, but I think they can safely say their job is done after they've basically kickstarted a genre. Rather than being sad seeing Zachtronics go, I'm sort of anticipating to hear more about some of those smaller "weird" projects Zach alludes to in the article. Would be much more tragic to see a designer of that caliber left feeling stuck making games in a similar vein for longer than they feel is necessary.
eterm 4y ago
Ten years is long enough to inspire the next generation to make zach-like games. Games like Signal State or Turing Complete. But it's a sad goodbye to Zachtronics. They have a certain style of layering story to take you out of the raw mechanics which most their rivals don't. I think Shenzhen I/O was their peak but TIS100 is also a must-play and I certainly enjoyed most their other games.
- xbar 4y ago
  Well said. I wish I could have convinced more people to play TIS100. I will have to try some more.
  - l8nite 4y ago
    I’m proud of myself for getting all the way through TIS-100, and I think I still hold the records amongst my few peers who tried it.
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  I think Zach has a certain level of finesse and polish that is hard to find elsewhere. The further you look into the details, the more impressed you get. For instance, just browse through some of the datasheets of Shenzhen I/O. It mimics reality all too well (mistakes in datasheets, chinese-only text, various fonts and layouts, handwritten notes, etc.).
  - smrq 4y ago
    I've yet to find a Zachlike outside of Zachtronics proper that didn't feel like a knockoff rather than a true peer. Signal State was probably the closest aesthetically, but didn't capture at all the optimization puzzle that makes a Zachlike so addictive. Not to mention that it was simply far too easy. The rest that I've seen weren't even in the same ballpark of polish. Maybe in a world where we only got the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, they would seem more up to scratch. But we've had Opus Magnum and Exapunks.
    - 4y ago
crazy211 4y ago
Tepix 4y ago
I love their games (i think TIS-100 and Infinifactory are my favorites) and i hope someone will do the minimal amount of maintenance so they will keep working.
forty 4y ago
Spacechem is one of my favorite game ever, and I have purchased nearly every Zachtronics game since. Thanks Zach & team, looking forward to wherever you have next for us!
bspammer 4y ago
Zachtronics' games have given me so much joy over the years, very sad to hear this. My favourite of the bunch is probably EXAPUNKS, but Shenzhen I/O is also wonderful. I was also surprisingly taken by Eliza, given how different it is from the rest. Thank you Zach!
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Sad to see them go and a virtual BBS game makes me want to see even more from them.
robertheadley 4y ago
I own most of their games. I am not sure I have played any. I have a big backlog, but I supported the idea and presentation so I picked them up.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I play most of them about halfway through because I spend too much time optimizing the initial levels, then get bored of it after a little bit.
ddingus 4y ago
Thank you all for the cool games. And thank you in advance for what you choose to do in the future. You're very interesting developers.
TheDesolate0 4y ago
nirav72 4y ago
I'm unfortunate enough to only discover something when it's about to end. I did not know about zachtronics games ,until I saw this post.

752 points by danso 4y ago

> “My original plan was to wrap things up at Zachtronics and then find a new job teaching high school computer science, but the timing was off,” Please do, but don't just teach CS! I'll go back to high school. My kid will hit high school in about 7 years.

toma_caliente 4y ago

Zachtronics leaving game development is such a blow to the industry. Zach is directly and indirectly responsible for a lot of games we see today. His game Infiniminer was a major inspiration for Minecraft, he published a game that was also a book explaining his philosophy on puzzle design, and his games were genuinely fun with no BS.

202206241203 4y ago
I dislike the games, since they are too close to work/programming to be fun for me (just like Factorio). However, the success of Zachtronics - both business and creative, is undeniable. I wish they were the ones to gain success with the original 3D cube digging gameplay and not the massively popular Minecraft clone.
- bstar77 4y ago
  I hear this a lot, but I personally don't get it. These games are the best part of my job (the problem solving) without any of the nonsense. Most games today are a grindfest that we convince ourselves is fun because it's happening in a beautiful virtual world.
  - benoliver999 4y ago
    Playing Zelda Breath of the Wild atm and I sort of feel this way. I love riding around the map but I'm getting a bit... tired
  - iamdbtoo 4y ago
    I view these games similarly. I don't think anything has helped me in my day-to-day decision making at work more than the time I've spent planning and designing my factory(s) in Satisfactory.
  - boardwaalk 4y ago
    There doesn’t have to be (as much) nonsense on a personal project where you’re only beholden to yourself, can pick your own tech, etc. (I’m sure people also have less nonsense and make money from it, but I don’t right now.)
    - scubbo 4y ago
      Less, but not zero. Personal projects can still suffer from obscure bugs or undocumented behaviour in dependencies, unattainable goals, costs, and other non-bureaucratic frustrations. A significant part of the satisfaction of Factorio for me comes from the knowledge that, if something isn't operating as I expect/hope it to, I can _just look at_ the surface-level representation of the system to diagnose it. This isn't possible in software projects without a huge amount of investment in observability - which is rarely fun or prioritized.
      - ansible 4y ago
        Yes. The programming game TIS-100 gives you a view of the internal state of the machine far superior to what exists with most systems. The exception being that Commodore 64 emulator that shows _everything_ going on in memory in real time. More often (in the embedded world) you are debugging things via JTAG and a serial port (if you are lucky) or a GPIO-driven LED (if you are not lucky or this is super-early in the boot process). And often the JTAG is less than 100% reliable.
        bstar77 4y ago
        I absolutely loved playing TIS-100 despite having no clue what a real world counterpart would be. It was really nice understanding the limitations of the system and then trying to be creative to solve problems. I got through 3/4 of the game before I lost my save (on my GoG version). I just re-bought it on steam for the cloud saves. Same thing happened to my ExaPunks save.
        ansible 4y ago
        The closest real-world thing would be something like The Connection Machine, which combined 64Ki processors in a hypercube. Individually, they had just a small amount of RAM for programs. Today's GPUs are more about executing the exact same small program in a massively parallel way, and not individually programming each of the compute elements. You know... it would be a fun project to make a TIS-100 in actual hardware on an FPGA or something. Actually, if you aren't the FPGA type, you could just write an emulator on an 8-bit microcontroller, and connect them all together. Bonus points for having each one with a display that shows its current execution state.
  - wccrawford 4y ago
    Yeah, I enjoy having a definitely-solvable problem with good restraints. Unfortunately, the latter half of the programming games generally gets too messy for me. I lose patience with them and never end up completing them. I don't regret buying them, though. I have a lot of fun with them before that.
  - no_butterscotch 4y ago
    I don't get it either. I remember hearing the same thing about the show Silicon Valley. People in the workplace would say things like "OMG I can't even watch that, it's so like our daily lives!" -- is it? Yes we're coders, but is it? Having said that to each their own :)
- p1mrx 4y ago
  Zachtronics games give you a limited playing field with a limited set of operations. The fun comes from thinking carefully about small problems, and doing a lot with a little. Factorio is more like work, because they don't know when to stop. There is just too much going on, too much complexity.
bricemo 4y ago
I always wondered how Zach felt about missing what’s arguably the biggest game industry boat of all time: his ideas in Infiniminer being the basis for Minecraft. In the early days the games looked almost identical. But one never became a household name and the other literally the top selling game of all time. It sounds like he’s found peace with it and had fun and is on to something else. Good for him. That would be hard for me.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
  Well Western Culture generally gives the most credit to the first person to have an idea, when I personally find the second people (like Persson, also Sergey Brin) to deserve--in these cases--more credit. There's a shortage of second parties to inventions.
- aahortwwy 4y ago
  notch's decision to add survival and traditional RPG mechanics to Minecraft is what led to its mainstream success. Based on Zachtronics' other games, I really doubt Infiniminer would've gone in that direction had its development continued.

Centigonal 4y ago

a whole article about Zachtronics, and not a single mention of Infiniminer? https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ https://www.zachtronics.com/infiniminer/ Released in 2009, and a direct inspiration to one Markus Persson to create a game called Minecraft.

ycta20220624 4y ago
Wait, I thought development of Minecraft started in 2007? Wouldn't that put it before Infiniminer?
- fartcannon 4y ago
  According to Notch, Infiniminer was "the game I wanted to do". https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Infiniminer
- papercrane 4y ago
  > I thought development of Minecraft started in 2007? The first version of Minecraft was developed May 2009, Infiniminer was released April 2009.
- capableweb 4y ago
  Straight from the horse's mouth: The World of Notch - The origins of Minecraft | https://web.archive.org/web/20160604071857/https://notch.tumblr.com/post/227922045/the-origins-of-minecraft https://web.archive.org/web/20160604071857/https://notch.tum... > While looking through some project folders, I found an old protype of a game that never quite became anything. Kinda. > It was called “RubyDung” (for various reasons), and was supposed to be a base building game inspired by Dwarf Fortress > As the RubyDung engine got more advanced, I started thinking about adding a first person view for following your minions around, kinda like in Dungeon Keeper. It worked ok, but the graphics got very pixellated and distorted, so I left it out. > But then I found Infiniminer. My god, I realized that that was the game I wanted to do. I played it in multiplayer for a while and had a blast, but found it flawed. Building was fun, but there wasn’t enough variation, and the big red/blue blocks were pretty horrible. I thought a fantasy game in that style would work really really well, so I tried to implement a simple first person engine in that style, reusing some art and code (although not as much as you’d think) from RubyDung, and came up with this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9t3FREAZ-k Unfortunately, that last YouTube link is not viewable for me ("This video contains content from Nizzotch. It is not available in your country."). But the conclusion is: Infiniminer was definitely a huge inspiration on Minecraft.

PainfullyNormal 4y ago

Wait, so he's not teaching anymore? That was fast. In this interview 2 months ago, he implied that he was shutting down Zachtronics so he could go teach. Maybe I misunderstood. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1454395489?t=00h12m36s https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1454395489?t=00h12m36s

OnionBlender 4y ago
During the interview he talks about his experience teaching. I got the impression that a lot of the job of a teacher is having to babysit kids (take away their phones) and that many kids just don't care about the subject being taught.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  > many kids just don't care about the subject being taught This sums up school and work for a lot of the population I think.
mdaniel 4y ago
It's addressed toward the bottom of TFA: > “My original plan was to wrap things up at Zachtronics and then find a new job teaching high school computer science, but the timing was off,” he says. “I just finished my first year of teaching and Last Call BBS hasn’t even been released yet! I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form.”
- PainfullyNormal 4y ago
  Yes, I read that part. It's why I made my post. It appears to contradict the interview he gave 2 months ago. Again, unless I'm missing something?
  - ziddoap 4y ago
    He said he learned that loving being a teacher was 'not the case'. Perhaps he learned it in the last two months, or was trying to remain positive about the position publicly while reconsidering privately, etc. People change, I don't think there's anything profound to look for just because he changed his public opinion from a few months ago.

synu 4y ago

I really loved Shenzhen I/O, it even got me into electronics. I started watching Ben Eater’s series on breadboard computers and built some similar devices to what I was making in the game around a 6502. It’s pretty cool that a game can trigger something like that. The game had a leaderboard, and at one point an old programmer colleague reached out to me to ask if I was cheating - that’s something I’m still very proud of to this day!

contingencies 4y ago
Started playing Shenzhen I/O in 2016 after moving to real Shenzhen, enjoyed it and wrote a guide for the game on Steam,[0] having never designed a PCB in my life. Now own a 1000m² robotics factory with a decent electronics lab and personally push out 3 boards some days. Control boards for a custom four axis system with additional peripherals and three daughterboards today, seven axes system Sunday when machining is completed (we also have a mill and lasers to cut and weld our own metal). [0] https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=780361834 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=78036...
krallja 4y ago
The same thing happened to me! I had just finished the main campaign of Shenzhen I/O and saw Ben Eater’s “Hello World on a Breadboard” video… now I have thousands of dollars in retro electronics, parts, and lab equipment

schnevets 4y ago

Before anyone writes a eulogy based on the headline, note the following: So it’s sad, but also awesome in its own way, that 2022 will see the end of Zachtronics. Not because their publisher shuttered them, or because their venture capital funding ran out, or because Activision made them work on Call of Duty, or any other number of reasons (bankruptcy! scandal!) game developers usually close their doors. No, Zachtronics is closing because...they want to. “We’re wrapping things up!” Barth tells me, way more enthusiastically than you would normally expect under these circumstances. “Zachtronics will release Last Call BBS next month. We’re also working on a long-awaited solitaire collection that we’re hoping to have out by the end of the year. After that, the team will disband. We all have different ideas, interests, tolerances for risk, and so on, so we’re still figuring out what we want to do next.” I play games too infrequently to invest the necessary bandwidth into a Zachtronic game, but I read some of ZACH-LIKE and always respected the philosophy. As long as no one is getting the rug pulled, this sounds like an awesome way to go and an awesome thing for the gaming industry. Hopefully this means more smart indie gems in the future.

isk517 4y ago
Yeah, reads more like a band splitting up than a company closing.
- schnevets 4y ago
  Honestly, indie gaming would benefit from a better distinction between the company and the contributor (similar to bands and musicians or films and the director/producer/cinematographer). I know not everyone wants to self-promote, but I would love to see what games certain designers. contributed to before they had an opportunity to lead. I hope every Zachtronics contributor can get the resources to make their next dream project, and the entire industry becomes a pinch more Zach-like.
  - egypturnash 4y ago
    So basically you want IMDB but for video games? This exists to some degree but most of the examples I can think of are specifically about retro games, rather than any and all video games. Lemon64 and LemonAmiga exhaustively document who worked on what in the c64 and Amiga games scenes, for instance. MobyGames does cover modern games but a few checks of modern games sure don't have any credits beyond company. IMDB does cover games but also doesn't delve into any more detail than company.

nindalf 4y ago

Noooo! I’m glad they’re doing it because they want to, but I’m still sad as hell about this. Goodbye Zachtronics! Time to replay shenzhen.io

convexfunction 4y ago

I've found it difficult after starting to work full-time to fully enjoy Zachtronics games, since they use much of the same parts of my brain as my day job, but the sheer joy I got out of Zach's earlier games (SpaceChem, KOHCTPYKTOP, Codex of Alchemical Engineering) contributed a lot to my decision to work in software. I've experienced little else that scratches the "design itch" in such a pure and thoughtful way, whether games from other developers or actual software development.

blueblimp 4y ago
I liked Infinifactory the most because being in 3D space maximizes the difference from normal programming.
jszymborski 4y ago
I've started to feel this way about Factorio... I only can play it if I've felt I've been productive or that I've e.g.: a model training or code compiling in the background. The reason being that I stop and think: "This is scratching an itch that something _actually_ productive would as well". So whenever I feel like playing Factorio, I pick up a side-project instead if one's been neglected.
- dageshi 4y ago
  Yes, I felt very much the same after my first playthrough. I came back and was suddenly thinking through all these possible solutions to factory management only to realise it felt exactly like programming work and I should probably go and do that instead.
- ineedasername 4y ago
  I mostly enjoy my work, and it's nice to feel productive, but the two things are not the same for me. I can be very productive knocking out task after task I don't enjoy, while I can spend a days enjoying the process of chasing down a solutions to a a very minor task with very minor impact. I like the Zachtronics games not because I feel productive but because I enjoy the nature of the problems they present, and the fact that I can pursue them without any of the headaches or stress that may come with normal work.

pmoriarty 4y ago

I didn't like Zachtronics games, because from reviews I read, I expected them to be like programming, but instead they were merely puzzle games with programming window dressing on them.

TrickardRixx 4y ago
This is a funny thing for me to read. The reason I enjoy programming is because the act of programming feels to me much like playing a puzzle game.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  I guess it depends on the puzzle game. I enjoy programming (when I'm programming something I'm interested in, anyway), but don't like almost any puzzle games. There are a handful of exceptions: I loved Factorio (which could be considered a puzzle game), Gorogoa, Inside, and The Swapper. But Zachtronics games and most other puzzle games leave me cold.
  - db48x 4y ago
    Out of curiosity, have you tried TIS-100? It’s less of a game and more of an emulator for a machine that never existed.
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      "have you tried TIS-100?" Yes. That's the first Zachtronics game I tried, and was sorely disappointed. In my view it's just a puzzle game.
      - db48x 4y ago
        Hmm. You might still think that it’s “just” a puzzle game, but did you ever try Ruckingenur II? That one actually got my heart racing the first time I played it. https://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/ https://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/

moritonal 4y ago

SpaceChem is still my primary tool in testing kid's (and adults) general aptitude for coding before trying to teach them.

ByThyGrace 4y ago
That's insightful, having played the game. Do you believe there's perhaps a kind of student that would be proficient in coding while not showing particular skill (or engagement) in solving those kinds of puzzles?
- moritonal 4y ago
  It's always possible, but the game calmly asks the user to focus, structure a problem in their head and then form a solution. I wouldn't ask them to finish the game, but watching how they absorb what they're shown and whether they can expand this to new solutions is a fairly easy tell most the time.

theptip 4y ago

Massive kudos to Zachtronics for defining a micro-genre, and crafting such unique, fun, and interesting games with a small team. I have particularly fond memories of SpaceChem, and subsequent releases always switched things up enough to be fresh and interesting, while also riffing on the same fundamentally satisfying abstract game loop of “solve an algorithm with limited resources, then optimize”.

kryptn 4y ago

I loved all of the puzzle Zachtronics games! They're great puzzle games on their own but some also have leaderboards which give you the feeling that you can do better or solve them in different ways. I'd revisit older games to see which steam friends beat my scores, and then I'd go back through and rediscover, optimize, and get back on top. I'll definitely miss their games.

knolan 4y ago

Spacechem on the iPad was a thing of beauty. It’s a shame they abandoned iOS but they had valid reasons.

haunter 4y ago

>We felt it was time for a change. This might sound weird, but while we got very good at making ‘Zachtronics games’ over the last twelve years, it was hard for us to make anything else. We were fortunate enough to carve out a special niche, and I’m thankful that we’ve been able to occupy it and survive in it, but it also kept us locked into doing something we didn’t feel like doing forever. Sums up a lot of indie game developers perfectly. Find a niche, can't escape the niche.

iterati 4y ago

I still have TIS-100 under the Languages skill section of my resume as an Easter Egg. I haven't played many of Zach's recent games, but SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, and TIS-100 were some of the best puzzle games ever made to me.

krallja 4y ago
Oh that's a hilarious great idea.
sumtechguy 4y ago
TIS-100 and Shenzen had that fun little bit of hacking using the docs. Or just fiddling with it and finding that one instruction that had enough of a side effect where it could let you shave off two other instructions. Where you could get that really fun rush of removing 1 cycle from something. It is a skill I do not get to use much anymore as most things are fairly cookie cutter.
lufte 4y ago
Oh I'm definitely copying this idea!
anta40 4y ago
As as assembly language enthusiast, TIS-100 is easily my #1 Zachtronics game. The closet contender would be... CoreWar. Seems like their implementations are rarely updated these days. Robocode is also cool, but you code in Java instead of assembly, anyway.
blakebreeder 4y ago
if you all like TIS-1000, play Exa Punks.

bstar77 4y ago

I'm still in shock since the initial announcement. These guys are so good at game design, I thought they would be doing it forever. I guess you can't confine very special devs to one thing for most of their career. I hope the teaching thing goes well, but I equally hope Zachtronics makes a return at some point in the future.

ehsankia 4y ago
Looks like he's already considering it > I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form. They will likely be doing it forever, they just want to try something else than a small 5-member indie team maybe?
- bstar77 4y ago
  Wow, that was unexpected. They should take a break if they need to, but please don't close up shop.
  - wccrawford 4y ago
    That's easy to say for a 1-person shop, but when other people are depending on the job, too, it's a lot harder.

Night_Thastus 4y ago

I loved TIS-100 and Shenzhen-IO. I'm wishing all of them the best on whatever they endeavor to do next. :)

Delfino 4y ago
He said he's going to teach high school computer science. As someone who made the same leap, it's cool to hear! He was really awesome about giving his games to teachers to use in their classrooms for free.
- pvitz 4y ago
  Actually, he is going to quit teaching high-school computer science to continue working on games.
- OnionBlender 4y ago
  He tried teaching for a year but sounds like he isn't going to stick with it. “I just finished my first year of teaching and Last Call BBS hasn’t even been released yet! I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form.”

noduerme 4y ago

For anyone who hasn't read Matthew Burns's short fiction, it's as much of a treat as his writing for Eliza. I think he used to have more work online, but he's still got some short stories and interactive stuff here... https://matthewseiji.com https://matthewseiji.com Full disclosure, I'm an old friend and glad to see him mentioned. I'm lucky enough to be reading an early draft of a novel he's been working on as we speak.

eswat 4y ago
Although it was never promised, I enjoyed Eliza and was hopeful of another visual novel through Zachtronics + Burns. Hopefully something in a similar spirit comes out in the future.
modeless 4y ago
Wow, I just downloaded Eliza and man, it's like it was written specifically for me. So many parallels to my own life and interests, it's actually weird. I'd like to have a beer with that guy. I'll have to check out his other stuff.
- noduerme 4y ago
  That's awesome. Eliza touched me on a lot of levels as well. In fact, Matt and I used to play with the original Eliza (the therapist) together in second grade on a Mac SE, between rounds of "The Manhole" and "Glider" and trying to write our own game in Hypercard. So I'm, uh, more than slightly biased hahah. But even just explaining the premise of Eliza in a sentence or two seems to make people do a double take and a Keanu style "Whoa." It didn't even dawn on me until later how much the voice acting and production also really pays off. The game immerses you in spite of the minimalism / simplicity, the way staring at a good painting does. I think it's truly a work of art, or an attempt to break through the noise and say something about the human condition. At first blush the concept is just vicious, and pitch perfect at exploiting the zone between getting you to play along and making you feel deeply uncomfortable. And then you get drawn into the deep disillusionment with corporate culture and it's a free ride on your neurons for the game designers. It's a hell of a statement, presented immaculately. I passed your comment along.

loufe 4y ago

I seriously loved Shenzhen I/O, thank you for your service, Zachtronics.

Bjorkbat 4y ago

Incidentally my first "true indie" game was SpaceChem. I'm tempted to play it again, maybe try and beat it this time. It's a very fun game, and cheap too, if you want to play along. Glad they got to go out on their own terms. They're such a niche game studio that I was really worried that they closing their doors because of market apathy or dissatisfaction with the status quo. This is a good ending.

frob 4y ago

Spacechem singlehandedly got me back into gaming 10 years ago. It was such a wonderful example of how a simple concept worked to its extreme could be more delightful and entertaining than shiny AAA games. RIP. I'm glad you went out on your own terms.

laserbeam 4y ago

So long! And thanks for all the fish.

throwawayhnacc 4y ago

I don't want to be tinfoil about this, but I suspect there is maybe some more corporate politic stuff happening here than Zach lets on (and rightfully so). Zachtronics is wholly owned by Alliance Media Holdings. Alliance is run primarily by two people Jay Gelman (CEO) and Nathan Gelman (Director of Publishing + Stuido Operations). Last year, Nathan Gelman expressed some real crazy zionist opinions on Twitter during the most recent wave of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I didn't screenshot it, but you can sort of see some of the wake of it by searching his account name on twitter and seeing the replies to the now deleted tweet: https://twitter.com/search?q=nathangelman&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=nathangelman&src=typed_query Nathan also pretty consistently likes orthodox jewish content on Twitter, which, to be clear, isn't bad on its own, but with that plus the deleted tweet during the latest I-P conflict, thing I think it's maybe safe to say that Nathan, likely Zach's direct report as he is the "Director of Publishing and Studio Operations", has got some STRONG political beliefs. What I SUSPECT is that Zach probably just got tired of dealing with that and, given the ownership structure, has to "end" Zachtronics to step away from them. It's tenuous evidence and maybe doesn't mean anything, but the only other point that makes me think Alliance is a not-great-company to be under, is that on the episode of Eggplant show where they interview Bravery Network Online creators (other studio/game Alliance published), The BNO people said that "the legal issues that came up on the game were some of the worst things our lawyer said they ever encountered". (Don't have the exact timestamp but here's the episode) https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bravely-replacing-randomness-with-gloam-collective/id1435365252?i=1000518383836 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bravely-replacing-rand... Again, maybe nothing, but maybe something. idk.

leoc 4y ago
It seems like one possibility. Reading between the lines of the comments about different risk tolerances and so on, another possibility is that the team reached an impasse in trying to agree what their next game project or projects should be.
puffoflogic 4y ago

OnionBlender 4y ago

"I was hoping that I’d really like teaching and stay with that for a few years, but I learned that’s definitely not the case and I’m having a hard time imagining anything other than games in my future, in some shape or form." He sold Zachtronics a few years ago so I wonder if he is free to start a new game company.

samiam_iam 4y ago

so long “I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”

wly_cdgr 4y ago

Zachtronics may be shutting down, but there is no way Zach Barth will stop making games no matter what he says, so this is kind of a non-story

helloplanets 4y ago

“We felt it was time for a change. This might sound weird, but while we got very good at making ‘Zachtronics games’ over the last twelve years, it was hard for us to make anything else. We were fortunate enough to carve out a special niche, and I’m thankful that we’ve been able to occupy it and survive in it, but it also kept us locked into doing something we didn’t feel like doing forever.” So they basically got tired of making more Zachlikes, which is more than understandable at this point. Amazing games, but I think they can safely say their job is done after they've basically kickstarted a genre. Rather than being sad seeing Zachtronics go, I'm sort of anticipating to hear more about some of those smaller "weird" projects Zach alludes to in the article. Would be much more tragic to see a designer of that caliber left feeling stuck making games in a similar vein for longer than they feel is necessary.

eterm 4y ago

Ten years is long enough to inspire the next generation to make zach-like games. Games like Signal State or Turing Complete. But it's a sad goodbye to Zachtronics. They have a certain style of layering story to take you out of the raw mechanics which most their rivals don't. I think Shenzhen I/O was their peak but TIS100 is also a must-play and I certainly enjoyed most their other games.

xbar 4y ago
Well said. I wish I could have convinced more people to play TIS100. I will have to try some more.
- l8nite 4y ago
  I’m proud of myself for getting all the way through TIS-100, and I think I still hold the records amongst my few peers who tried it.
systemvoltage 4y ago
I think Zach has a certain level of finesse and polish that is hard to find elsewhere. The further you look into the details, the more impressed you get. For instance, just browse through some of the datasheets of Shenzhen I/O. It mimics reality all too well (mistakes in datasheets, chinese-only text, various fonts and layouts, handwritten notes, etc.).
- smrq 4y ago
  I've yet to find a Zachlike outside of Zachtronics proper that didn't feel like a knockoff rather than a true peer. Signal State was probably the closest aesthetically, but didn't capture at all the optimization puzzle that makes a Zachlike so addictive. Not to mention that it was simply far too easy. The rest that I've seen weren't even in the same ballpark of polish. Maybe in a world where we only got the Codex of Alchemical Engineering, they would seem more up to scratch. But we've had Opus Magnum and Exapunks.
  - 4y ago

crazy211 4y ago

Tepix 4y ago

I love their games (i think TIS-100 and Infinifactory are my favorites) and i hope someone will do the minimal amount of maintenance so they will keep working.

forty 4y ago

Spacechem is one of my favorite game ever, and I have purchased nearly every Zachtronics game since. Thanks Zach & team, looking forward to wherever you have next for us!

bspammer 4y ago

Zachtronics' games have given me so much joy over the years, very sad to hear this. My favourite of the bunch is probably EXAPUNKS, but Shenzhen I/O is also wonderful. I was also surprisingly taken by Eliza, given how different it is from the rest. Thank you Zach!

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

Sad to see them go and a virtual BBS game makes me want to see even more from them.

robertheadley 4y ago

I own most of their games. I am not sure I have played any. I have a big backlog, but I supported the idea and presentation so I picked them up.

Aeolun 4y ago
I play most of them about halfway through because I spend too much time optimizing the initial levels, then get bored of it after a little bit.

ddingus 4y ago

Thank you all for the cool games. And thank you in advance for what you choose to do in the future. You're very interesting developers.

TheDesolate0 4y ago

nirav72 4y ago

I'm unfortunate enough to only discover something when it's about to end. I did not know about zachtronics games ,until I saw this post.