Birbla

Discussion summary

Exapunks is a puzzle game by Zachtronics, available on Steam, with positive feedback from players who enjoy its coding challenges. Some users compare it to other Zachtronics games like SpaceChem and Infinifactory.

What the discussion says

  • Players appreciate Zachtronics' puzzle design.
  • Some mention the game's scalability and difficulty.
  • Users share personal experiences and preferences.
“All games by Zachtronics can be highly recommended.”
— sleepybrett
“My favourite Zach game so far is Infinifactory.”
— Tepix

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  • Hacker News
  • 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.

    by CWuestefeld
  • Trash World News has a way less annoying editor than 2600
    by Schlagbohrer
  • TWN is totally 2600 fanfic. Except for the part where it's got a bit too much in the way of gorgeous art. Same size, same rhythms, same vibe. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=25151...
    by egypturnash
  • I wish Zach would start making games again. :-(
    by deelowe
  • https://coincidence.games/uvs-nirmana/
    by vabsbenz
  • 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...

    by jna_sh
  • 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".
    by ACCount37
  • Reminds me of one of my favorite games: Hacknet (https://hacknet-os.com - https://store.steampowered.com/app/365450/Hacknet/). Likely contributed in a meaningful way to me becoming a programmer. I think I have Zachtronic's SHENZHEN I/O on my wishlist—will have to check out his whole catalog.
    by figbert
  • 85% off and $1.49 USD right now for the summer sale
    by sejje
  • 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
    by minraws
  • 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.

    by Terr_
  • 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.

    by ack_complete
  • 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!

    by Groxx
  • I unlocked the Redshift handheld video game system; became obsessed and made a video player ( https://www.reddit.com/r/exapunks/comments/tzv1m5/redshift_v... ) among other things. So fun! I should progress past Redshift.
    by jtxt
  • 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.
    by flockonus
  • 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.

    by omgbear
  • Print ondemand can be ordered for less than $5 per zine in Lulu, since 2022 or so. I guess Zach doesn’t make a cut from it since this $5 probably barely covers the cost of print and Lulu fee :(
    by yu3zhou4
  • Same, I played SpaceChem in high school and it captivated me. A lot of my solutions were unoptimized sync monstrosities and the boss battles filtered me pretty hard, but man it was satisfying to figure out a solution and just watch it create the molecules. The music was amazing too, it was on my study playlist all through university.
    by hakkoru
  • 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)

    by StableAlkyne
  • 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.

    by joshu
  • I'd play it.
    by dtj1123
  • The no-UI part will probably deter a big portion of players. Allowing own tooling on the other hand sounds cool. Adding an optional UI, or getting someone to do it for you would certainly help. But then again, if it is interesting enough, someone might just do so after you launched it without a UI
    by ortichic
  • Their catalogue is well worth buying.

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

    by markx2
  • 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
    by __sy__
  • "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!
    by nbaksalyar
  • 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.

    by jf
  • I had a great evening with a friend playing through TIS-100 together. We plugged in two keyboards and mice so we didn't have to pass them back and forth.
    by enneff
  • I enjoyed both TIS-100 and Exapunks though I didn't have the patience to finish either of them. For me they get too hard (due to constraints) too fast (if not straight up obscure).
    by mhitza
  • > 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.

    by fragmede
  • 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....

    by jawarner