There was this ancient Flash game called "Engineer of the People" that was all about designing IC circuits (NPN and PNP junctions) in the Soviet Union for some secretive reason. I never beat the game and got to the reveal. IIRC it was by Zachtronics, the same guy that did Shenzhen I/O and infiniminer (the inspiration for Minecraft).
Human Resource Machine and 7 Billion Humans are also pretty good computer programming puzzle games that are pretty funny and fun to play. HRM is basically solving problems using single threaded assembly. 7BH is solving problems using more multi threaded primitives (CSP-like). Both have a couple optimizations points for every problem, and you can copy/paste code to a notepad to save too I believe, though only one solution is saved in game.
Last time I tried a Zachtronics game I thought it was awesome and that it was far too much like my actual job so I refunded it. Would have played so much of it if I was still in school.
The main issues I've found in his games (at least for Shenzen I/O and TIS-100) is that the difficulty ramps up a lot in the later levels, and there are artificial limitations that are make the game way harder and less fun. For example, the lack of a "swap dat acc" instruction, having just 2 registers at most, among others. You can work around that but the game's idea shouldn't require you to exploit weaknesses of its simulation engine.
I feel like that's the point of the game, is it not? I always thought of Shenzhen I/O as a hacking game, not an engineering game. The best solutions are elegant, but in a kind of fucked up and convoluted way. This, to me, is the appeal, but I can see why it turns some people off.
Have to agree with this. I kept thinking "Instead of playing this, I'd be way better of buying an Arduino and building something real instead. I'd learn a real skill and it would be less unnecessarily difficult on top of that."
Of the various Zachtronics games I've tried, Opus Magnum has been the only one where I haven't felt that the interface and the limitations get in the way of letting me execute the solution.
I remember that game like it was yesterday --- and then checked to see that it was created over a decade ago! I was hoping someone would make a more realistic sequel with something like CMOS, but haven't seen any since then.
Oh man, I was hooked the moment I played SpaceChem. I think that game and Kerbal Space Program are responsible for reigniting my interest in math and computers.
