Opus Magnum (from Zachtronics of SpaceChem/Infinifactory fame)

The product output has a draggable circle that rotates it.

Yeah, you can rotate, but not mirror image. Like…

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is not the same thing as

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I really love that this game generates animated GIFs:

Damn it, that’s really lovely and I have too much to play already! I loved SpaceChem but I took a break from it and couldn’t really get back into it, which was a shame. This definitely looks more appealing though. Looks very polished and satisfying mechanically (and I mean ‘mechanically’ in a visual/tactile sense).

There are better solutions, but I love the way this looks.

output_iPPgUl

First Zachtronics game I’ve ever played and I’m having a blast! As much as I want to complete each level, I just have to start from scratch when things are getting overcomplicated. Gotta watch for those bottlenecks!

I’m binging on this like crazy. Got to chapter 4.

If anything I’m afraid it might be too short like infinifactory, which could have used twice the length. Infinifactory’s story was more expensive to produce, but this is mostly text. I could use another 5 chapters… (unless they are there and will be unlocked later, but that’s unlikely).

I love this.

This is the over-complicated machine I’m currently most proud of. Such a satisfying game!

I fucking love this game.

Soooo,

I got to Episode 5 puzzle 5. Something something lipstick.

Upo until now some hard-ish puzzles, but nothing too devious, but this one seemed to stretch difficulty quite a little.

Really hard to do with the limitations of only 6 mechanism, limited instruction length and such little space. Really hard. You know, almost impossible, since the wheel-like device takes one mechanism slot…

Because you can’t add more devices over six, scroll the instruction lines right or scroll the playing field. I mean, I’m sure that’s not how the game is designed. I mean, I DIDN’T F*****G GET TO ALMOST THE END OF THE GAME WITHOUT REALIZING IT, DID I???

Anyway, so that you guys know. Yes, you can have more than six machines, you can have more instructions to the right and you can scroll the playing field. Scroll is right mouse button, btw…

You are all welcome…

PS: In all honestly this makes some solutions that were quite clever trivial. I had fun devising retarding mechanism so I would get a product only after every sixth cycle…

Edit: finished the campaign, with all challenge gone. I feel giving the pseudo Turing machines infinite memory was a mistake. Implementation of any solution is trivial once you realize the only restriction is the interface, and optimizing for less cost becomes a really boring but not really difficult task. I liked the game more when I wouldn’t scroll right on the memory tracks. Ah well. I figured it late enough that I was playing the better game for the most part :P

Ah, very interesting Juan. That makes sense. I’ve always felt that limitations and restrictions in certain situations lead to much more creative problem solving. Does it feature a SpaceChem style efficiency leaderboard? That was a key driver in optimising and rethinking your solutions.

Yes, if you are into leaderboards it provides three different histograms (with comparisons against other players).

The problem is that one of them is cost (number of part used) which for most puzzles is trivial to optimize close to maximum given an unlimited space of memory (some nudging will be required to keep tracks sort enough). I made a suggestion in the Steam forums to change that one for memory efficiency (which is a much more interesting problem), but I think it’s too late for such a change.

I’m enjoying maximizing for cycles a lot. It encourages filling the board with tons of levers that are all competing for space simultaneously. It also produces extremely satisfying resulting machines. I’ve been ignoring cost and area and rejiggering for cycles for about double the time it takes to come to a solution. I think it’s definitely the easiest Zachtronics puzzler I can remember playing, but I still find it very satisfying, especially with the tug of the leaderboard.

Yeah I wish there was some kind of global score for the leaderboards. Some average of all 3. Often you can improve on one leaderboard but at the expanse of the other two.

Discovered recently that you can create your own levels and share them. Already 100+ available.

And yes, that right click to move around on the field and UI is not intuitive. Developper actually added that information in the tutorial with today’s patch. Guess it was a common issue.

I haven’t been able to play this as much as I’d like, but I’ve made it to act III so far. I’m having a blast, and right now this is right up there with my favorite purchases of the year. I’m really looking forward to diving into the countless community creations once I’ve finished the main game. I do tend to skip all the puzzle challenges though, since it’s the main game that holds the most interest for me.

For the most part all of my solutions have been right on the nose when compared with the rest of the community, but one in particular ended up lagging far behind in all 3 categories when compared to the rest of the world, because it turns out I can change the properties of an atom without breaking (all but one of) its molecular bonds first. Whoops, didn’t realize that. So in my effort to change the properties of the middle component, I set up this overkill contraption, which did solve the puzzle just fine, except at many times the cost, area, and efficiency of the average for each. I didn’t realize my mistake until I googled a solution to compare to my own when trying to figure out what was done to cut so much from all three areas. Whoopsie.

I love that machine!

Here was my original attempt at that one. Not as fun as yours.

I was quite proud of it until the community leaderboards showed up at completion, then I realized something was way off. (Still like it though).

I honestly thought a preceding infinity chain puzzle was supposed to serve as a big hint for this one.

I love seeing how different people’s minds work when solving these open ended puzzles.

I was trying to find a use for the six armed manipulators. If not this puzzle, then which one!

I won’t spoil too much by posting optimised solutions, but this one really made me happy for some reason:

Wow.5