spacechem
spacechem is very much my kind of game. it encourages you to find efficient solutions and even has a built-in periodic table of the elements as a reference. the gameplay works sort of like programming with chemistry and building mixed in.
it starts off slow with a few tutorial levels. they walk you through the basics but don’t give too much away (it is a puzzle game after all). in fact it took me a while to figure out a concept that wasn’t covered in the tutorial but was necessary not long after. while the tutorial lasts for a few levels it’s not boring. as the basics are introduced on their own, it’s not difficult to see how things would get more interesting by combining them. Then later in the game, new actions are introduced that you can use in your solutions.
while i found some of the levels very easy (i knew what to do and just needed to lay down the instructions), plenty of them took considerably more effort. the more complicated production levels sometimes made me start over because my first approach simply wasn’t going to work. of course if you find a level too challenging there are plenty of solutions on youtube that you could just copy, though it’s so much more satisfying to actually come up with a solution on your own.
i had so much fun watching my machines work that i rarely cranked the speed up all the way. with four speed options you can see specific synchronization with the slowest or essentially skip ahead to the end with the fastest. the second fastest speed is just barely slow enough to see what’s happening, assuming nothing goes wrong. one of the interesting factors is that producing one ingredient too quickly can cause a backup in the pipes. multiple times i got just past halfway done and the hydrogen pipe got clogged, so i had to tweak my solution.
after coming up with a working solution, spacechem shows how it stacks up against histograms of how much time, instructions, and reactors other people’s solutions used. this is a much more fun alternative to more traditional leaderboard features where the best few scores are shown but are out of reach for a majority of players. it’s a lot more obtainable (and interesting) to try to beat the average than to beat the best. also with three aspects being tracked separately, if your solution is slow it might have been efficient in terms of instructions. there’s also a good variety of steam achievements. some show up as you progress through the game while others require hitting certain efficiency targets or completing optional assignments. there are even a few team fortress 2 themed assignments with achievements that give you tf2 items.
most planets end with a boss battle assignment, where instead of depositing chemicals in holding tanks or freighters you send them to machines capable of fighting a boss. the major difference with these levels is the toggle instructions you can actually control while your solution is running. for example, being sure to fire the right color of laser.
spacechem is worth picking up even at its full price of $10. if you don’t normally play slow-paced thinking games i’d still recommend checking it out — you can wait for a sale if you’re not so sure. there’s one dlc mission available which i don’t have yet but intend to buy relatively soon.