- UPDATE: Windowing improvements - 19 July 2026
Today's update makes a few improvements to the game's windowing behavior, allowing it to be arbitrarily resized and toggled in and out of fullscreen by pressing Alt-Enter. It also fixes a typo (!) in the final puzzle.
- Last Call BBS - The last game by Zachtronics! - 5 July 2022
Boot up your Z5 Powerlance and dial into Last Call BBS, the last game from Zachtronics! The Barkeep’s loaded up his retro computer with a full set of puzzle games for you to download and play. No need to worry about copy protection, they’re all fully cracked and ready to enjoy! Includes eight full games: 20th Century Food Court: Design factories to produce food just like they did over 700 years ago in the 20th century. Keep your costs low and your machines running fast! STEED FORCE Hobby Studio: Assemble robot models based on the anime smash hit Steed Force right on your computer. No sandpaper required! X’BPGH: The Forbidden Path: Enter a cursed world and create bizarre flesh sculptures in exchange for eternal life. The master is pleased… but can you trust him? Sawayama Solitaire: It wouldn’t be a Zachtronics release without a brand-new solitaire game. This time it’s a fresh take on Klo…
- UPDATE: Minor bug fixes - 31 August 2020
Today's update fixes a minor bug where typing a forward slash into a text field would paste the contents of your clipboard instead, in addition to some tweaks to make the "mirror vertically" feature more intelligent.
- You can now get the enhanced SpaceChem Community Edition on Steam - 27 July 2020
SpaceChem, the classic Zachtronics design-based puzzle game not only got a sweet update recently to improve the tech behind the game, it's also now super easy to grab the updated community version.
- UPDATE: 64-bit Mac Support (v1016) - 15 July 2020
Today's update brings SpaceChem into the future with an upgrade from SDL 1.2 to SDL 2.0 and 64-bit builds for macOS so that the game now runs on macOS Catalina. It looks like it also contains a few fixes for obscure crashes and scroll wheel support for some of the game's UI.
- Satisfactory review (early access) - 8 June 2020
Satisfactory review A first-person industrialism sim that sees you wrestling with machinery on an alien planet to create the perfect factory. * Developer: Coffee Stain Studios; * Publisher: Coffee Stain Publishing; * Release: Out now; * On: Windows; * From: Steam , Epic ; * Price: £27/€30/$30; There it is, the trans-planetary pipeline. One long tube of metal scarring a rural alien planet. It brings coal and water to my power stations, and electricity to my factories. It has taken a day of planning, construction and pumping. Now, the pipeline stands before me, a snaking behemoth of energy consumption. Suddenly, a thought comes. Why didn’t I just build coal stations next to the vein? I could have stretched a cheap wire across the planet, instead of a kilometre-long death pipe. This is Satisfactory , a cracking first-person factory-builder that’s been in early access on Epic fo…
- UPDATE: More bug fixes (v1015) - 28 February 2020
Today's update is all bug fixes, brought over from the game's unofficial "community edition": Fixed a Windows-only display bug when using a high-DPI monitor. Fixed an exploit where you could disconnect a pipe from its reactor. Fixed a crash when loading invalid ResearchNet puzzles with negative counts. Fixed a crash when displaying text with an ellipsis but not enough space to fit it. Fixed a bug in undo/redo with cloned reactors. Fixed a crash when pressing Ctrl-Z while dragging a pipe. Fixed a bug where input distributions were reset when opening windows in ResearchNet.
- MOLEK-SYNTEZ is a new Zachtronics game about making drugs in a cold Romanian apartment - 5 November 2019
It is so likeZach to release a Zachlike (just a Zach to his friends) about creating drugs in a small Romanian apartment. Molek-Syntez is now squatting on early access, trying to hook you in with the good stuff as you program your molecular synthesiser. Your goal is to turn chemicals into medicines and other substances with “various pharmacological effects”. (more…)
- Zach-Like comes to Steam free with loads of game-like extras - 18 June 2019
Zach-like , the book about Zachlikes by Zach Barth , creator of the genre, is now free albeit notably less papery now. Zachtronics’s previously Kickstarter-exclusive book was a collection of design documents from the creator of Spacechem , Opus Magnum , Infinifactory and many more, showing just how he engineers his puzzles. Now anyone can read a digital version for free, and it comes bundled with a pile of his early browser games, unreleased prototypes, and even a card game if you’ve got printer ink to burn. Grab it free on Steam . I feel smarter just having it on my PC. (more…)
- UPDATE: Bug fixes (v1014) - 17 May 2019
Today's update includes the following: Fixed a crash when starting a pipeline with too many reactors. Removed impossible scores from the histograms for the "Swapite" journal puzzle. Bumped the version number from 1013 to 1014. When things settle down with these changes I'll upload a build to non-Steam stores as well.
- UPDATE: Miscellaneous bug fixes - 28 February 2019
Today's update includes the following changes: Fixed a bug in production inputs with variations of the same molecule. Fixed a bug with reactors being slightly too roomy at the right and bottom. Fixed a bug with the Reset option and "ancient" reactors. Fixed a bug that would spawn an empty level completion screen.
- UPDATE: SpaceChem community update (v1013) - 10 February 2019
Can you believe it's been over eight years since SpaceChem first launched? Today we're releasing a community-driven update featuring a host of bug fixes, improvements, and new journal puzzles. Special thanks to 12345ieee and Csaboka, who did most of the actual work for this update. Added a bunch of new user-created puzzles to ResearchNet. Added a right-click menu to the inside of reactors with options to swap colors, mirror the program, and reset the contents of the reactor. Added an option to the options menu to show bonder priority in reactors. Improved the performance of the fastest playback speed in non-defense puzzles so that it now runs as fast as your computer can handle. Enabled all of the "Greek symbol elements" in ResearchNet puzzles. Added the ability to add bonds to the "unknown element" symbol in molecule annotations. Changed reactors to be processed in topological order so…
- Zachtronics book Zach-Like shows how the puzzle sausage gets made - 7 February 2019
I reckon most of the RPS Treehouse gang love us some Zachlikes, since well before Alice Prime coined the term in 2016 in reference to Shenzhen I/O . Puzzlemeister Zach Barth likes the term too, as he’s borrowed it for the title of his book. Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter (500% funded in one day), Zach-Like shows the workings and the processes behind his practical puzzlers. There’s design docs for his major games, sketches and documents for some that never got made and some early design exercises. There’s even some pen-and-paper brainteasers in there, because we’re gluttons for punishment. (more…)
- UPDATE: Fixing a crash on Mac when importing custom puzzles - 7 November 2018
Today's update fixes a crash on Mac when importing custom puzzles. No other platforms should be affected.
- UPDATE: SpaceChem is back on Mac! - 23 October 2018
After a few years of SpaceChem not being officially supported on Mac, we've finally gotten around to getting it working again! It ought to work out of the box for everyone now, and not require Mono to be installed separately or anything like that. If you experience anything weird please send me an email ([email protected]).
- How Exapunks represents hacking without limits - 12 September 2018
This is The Mechanic , where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the difficult journeys they ve taken to make their games. This time, Exapunks . It s pretty obvious that the excellent Exapunks is a game about hacking. Specifically, it s a game about programming viruses and sending them into networked systems to monkey around with data, set in a great alternative 90s Wired cyberworld of PC cases flashed with black and red decals and zines set in Apple Garamond. For its makers, though, Exapunks is a game about limitations. Its format is the result of hard decisions about how much space you get to write your code in, how much freedom you get to solve its puzzles, and how it s presented on your screen. And even now, creative director Zach Barth isn t totally sure he and his team got it right. (more…)
- SpaceChem & TIS-100 Creator Announces SHENZEN I/O - 13 September 2016
A proposal: puzzles games focused on assembling or programming – or both – should be called Zachlikes. Following the atom-assembling SpecChem , production line ’em up Infinifactory , and the computer-programming TIS-100 , Zach Barth and his Zachtronics have announced a new Zachlike. SHENZHEN I/O will combine assembling and programming to build circuits from components and then write code for them. It’s due to hit Steam Early Access in October and, for now, you can check it out in this wee announcement trailer: …
- What are the hardest PC games? - 21 August 2015
survey fridays Every week we ask you to rank a series or just reminisce about PC games in a not-very-scientific survey. Look for the survey link in our Twitter and Facebook feeds each week, and the results every Friday. Previously, we ranked the Mass Effect and Call of Duty series. You guys really love hard games, or at least, you love whichever game you remember as the hardest. In my latest survey, I asked respondents to rank the hardest game they've played on a scale of 1-10. Over 40% scored their most challenging experience a 10, and 70% scored it an 8 or higher. You also love a lot of different hard games, and have different ideas about what makes a game 'hard.' Among 2,660 respondents, the top game cited as the hardest they've ever played was only mentioned 385 times—around 14% of the total. (Actually, one person wrote in SEGA Bass Fishing 1,006 times, but I've cut that from…
- New Zachtronics Puzzler TIS-100 Out Of Early Access - 21 July 2015
SpaceChem and Infinifactory creator Zach Barth has released his latest thing-making puzzle game, which sits somewhere between fiddling with chemistry and building automated factories. TIS-100 is an assembly programming puzzler, having you literally learn and write code to fix up corrupted code in the mysterious eponymous ’80s computer. Yes, you do need to learn and write the TIS-100’s assembly code. Computers are puzzles! After a seven-week stretch in Steam Early Access, TIS-100 properly launched yesterday. …
- Infinifactory has left Early Access! - 30 June 2015
If you liked SpaceChem there's a good chance you'll love Infinifactory, the latest design-based puzzle game from Zachtronics! LIKE SPACECHEM… IN 3D! Design and run factories in a first-person, fully 3D environment. HISTOGRAMS ARE BACK! Optimize your solutions, and then optimize them more when you see how much better your friends did. VISIT EXOTIC ALIEN LOCALES! Explore a story-driven campaign with 50+ puzzles, audio logs, and more. BLOCKS THAT MOVE! Go beyond the campaign and push the limits of Infinifactory’s next-generation block engine in the sandbox. STEAM WORKSHOP INTEGRATION! Create, share, and play custom puzzles on Steam Workshop. http://store.steampowered.com/app/300570/
