After having folks design molecules in SpaceChem and automated plants in Infinifactory, Zachtronics are back with another puzzle game of complex systems. What comes after atoms and factories, the whole dang universe? The multiverse? Nah, you write assembly code.
Today Zachtronics both announced and (sort of) released TIS-100 [official site], a game about rewriting corrupted code to fix a fictional ’80s computer. It’s on on Steam Early Access now for £4.49. My prediction: their next game after this will be to literally program SpaceChem.
Armed with a trusty TIS-100 user manual, teach will learn to repair the system and maybe uncover a few of its secrets: who made it, and why? Along with puzzles, where you can compete with your chums to write the most efficient code, the game has a sandbox mode where you can code whatever you want – including your own games. Oh gosh, maybe writing SpaceChem is the final level of TIS-100?
Zachtronics think it’s a month or two away from finished, so why release on Early Access rather than wait? Because it worked out well last time. Zach Barth explains:
“I was extremely pleased with our Early Access release of Infinifactory; although the game was largely ‘finished’ when we released, we were able to make a huge number of improvements and additions to the game based on player feedback and turn a great game into an amazing game. We’re choosing to release TIS-100 as an Early Access title for the same reason: to turn a great game into an amazing game.”
Like with Infinifactory, he says it’s polished and “would be perfectly acceptable to release in a traditional fashion.” What he adds over Early Access will largely depend on what people want to see in it. Here, have a trailer showing what’s in there now:
01/06/2015 at 20:39 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
Weirdly, the thing I dislike most about it so far is that there doesn’t seem to be a way to move around the registers by keyboard alone. Using a mouse seems… odd, given the theme.
01/06/2015 at 20:55 gjghost says:
Found it! Use Ctrl + arrows to move between the registers.
F1 shows a quick reference for instructions which is nice too.
01/06/2015 at 20:56 Lord Custard Smingleigh says:
You are today’s hero. Stand still, I’ve got my silver spray paint around me somewhere… *pats pockets*
01/06/2015 at 20:40 Banks says:
This is so awesome. They’ve even made a manual on pdf with the programming language so you have to figure out how to do anything by yourself.
Zachtronics has balls.
01/06/2015 at 21:17 nebnebben says:
This is amazing! I don’t know why I am so weirdly excited to program in assembly. Hopefully there’s a sequel which is entirely in machine code, the only inputs being 1 and 0
01/06/2015 at 23:20 Harlander says:
Easy mode is flipping the front-panel switches on an Altair 8800. Hard mode is weaving core rope memory.
01/06/2015 at 21:18 iucounu says:
Have you seen Foxcatcher? Utterly shit, isn’t it. Anyway, one of the shit things about Foxcatcher is that it wastes Vanessa Redgrave as Steve Carell’s disappointed, disapproving mum, in a thankless role which could have been filled by a frowny oil painting in the background. Every time Steve Carell’s character is really, disappointingly shit, his big rubber nose sloshing around hypnotically while he gives a depressingly bad motivational speech, you just cut to the oil painting.
Anyhoo, Spacechem sits in my Steam Library, the tutorial levels unfinished, glowering at me, saying “you can’t program a compiler. You only have the vaguest notion of what a compiler is, you arts-ed git.” And I’m saying, no, no, I have A-level maths! And it’s saying “Yeah, but that’s only because you lucked out and bought the graphing calculator from Sharp, because WH Smiths were out of Texas ones, and it had an algebra built in. You are weak and pathetic and could never code or beat the tutorial levels, which, let’s face it, would be way easier than coding this game or making up the puzzles.” And it’s true, it’s all true.
02/06/2015 at 01:28 Sir Buildbot Winslave says:
I’m sure you can arrange the waldos and some molecules for a frowny screenshot. (Or, more realistically, get someone to arrange them). Anyhow, tack up an enlarged print and let it loom.
Wonder how Vanessa Redgrave would fare as “The Waldos”?
01/06/2015 at 21:21 mrwonko says:
Weird… as a programmer I’d think I’m in the target audience, but I have no desire to do any more debugging; I already spend enough time finding errors in my own programs, where the reward is a working program.
I can see the appeal though, fixing errors is quite satisfying.
01/06/2015 at 21:40 Xerophyte says:
Same. I’m sure I’d enjoy this if I didn’t spend 8 hours a day neck deep in C++. It’s not the lowest level language on the great totem pole of lambda but it’s near enough to assembly wrangling that I’d rather do something else in my leisure.
It’s hard to find a programming-ish game that manages to be fun without also being work nowadays: Space Chem is great but it’s Turing completeness is more unfortunate than anything else…
01/06/2015 at 21:52 Banks says:
Infinifactory is a lot more playful and pleasing to the eye.
01/06/2015 at 21:59 LionsPhil says:
Ditto. We built tools above this for a reason.
01/06/2015 at 22:38 User100 says:
I feel the same way, but I don’t think professional programmers are necessarily the target audience.
It’s probably more aimed at “wannabe” programmers, i.e. CS students, or those considering studying CS.
01/06/2015 at 21:29 jgf1123 says:
Assembly language and microprocessors were a require course for my undergrad degree. I learned a lot, including why we program in high-level language instead of assembly.
01/06/2015 at 21:31 Matt_W says:
Zach Barth is my lord and master, hallowed be his name.
01/06/2015 at 21:47 Tiax says:
Zach, you’re probably the only game designer who could turn SUCH a screenshot into an instabuy for me…
01/06/2015 at 23:54 Robstafarian says:
This is at least as likely to be hellish for me as heavenly, but I have decided to delay the discovery until a Linux version is released. I cannot get into programming/hacking/cracking games when I have just been looking an Windows. As I just wrote in a related Steam thread, I likely would feel more engaged with the game’s “environment” had just been looking at Enlightenment or Fluxbox.