![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() At the most basic level SpaceChem reactors have inputs of atoms/molecules from two possible windows on the left-hand of the screen, which can be manipulated and bonded together using the bonder pads on the floor and the “waldos”. If nothing else that should tell you that this game isn’t really about chemistry, it’s about engineering, it just happens to use chemistry’s iconography as a setting for its engineering puzzles. The bulk of SpaceChem takes place inside of these magical chemical reactors that can directly manipulate individual atoms and molecules. The later tutorials are in the first few levels, but they’re too fixed and noninteractive while also throwing way too much at the player at once, as a result, this particular part will not go level by level through the first world and instead attempt to explain SpaceChem in text form. SpaceChem’s intro tutorial is literally a link to an external YouTube video that doesn’t work that well as a tutorial first and foremost because games are fundamentally interactive, and making a tutorial that the viewer can’t interact with is questionable to say the least. The biggest problem with SpaceChem is that it’s terrible at explaining itself, and this first world, Sernimir II is naturally the tutorial, so I must tackle the worst part head-on. Starting with Zachtronics’ first commercial title: 2011’s SpaceChem. As such, this is the start at an attempted project that will try (and almost certainly fail but I might as well take a shot) to do a retrospective look at every single one of the Zach-Likes in detail level-by-level. Zachary Barth is the creator of a series of engineering puzzle games he refers to as Zach-Likes, he and his studio Zachtronics have been making these amazingly creative and tough-as-nails puzzle games since 2011, and they are a combination of both obscure and me liking them enough (you could talk me into putting one of them on the 10/10 games list I did in the summer, but I decided against it) that they deserve some real in-depth written coverage that I haven’t seen for them. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |