Exapunks (2018)

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• Hacker News
• embedded youtube video on an advertisement site

  how do I unsubscribe from your blog's ads?

  by bobbytheblkbear
• Hey.

  Stop stalking me. It's creepy as fuck. Be better.

  by qarl2
• Its discounted on steam summer sale, I bought it and played all evening yesterday.

  Printed the zine.

  It took me to my happy place.

  Thank you.

  by jackdoe
• My favourite Zach game so far is Infinifactory. TIS-100 was also fun, until it started feeling like work.
  by Tepix
• Why is this relevant to HN? (especially since it's nothing new?)
  by zimmund
• I spent so so much time playing SpaceChem. My favorite game of all time.
  by hosel
• All games by Zachtronics can be highly recommended to this crowd here, obviously why his games have come up here https://hn.algolia.com/?q=Zachtronics

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

  The one thing his games suffer from though, for me, is that a few hours into one, I question myself whether I should not just be programming to begin with...

  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

  by b-kf
• Every zachtronics game is a gem.
  by sleepybrett
• 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.

  by Eji1700
• The thing is, you can play it in any way you like. You don't have to optimize for speed at all if you don't enjoy it
  by matusp
• Older, but I love me some Zachtronics.
  by twentyfiveoh1
• 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