Spacechem

[hpmons]

Spacechem is awesome.  I'm usually not one for puzzle games - they are a way to pass the time but I wouldn't pay for them...But Spacechem is wonderful.  There are basically endless solutions to each of the puzzles and you are left to figure it out yourself. 



At first I found it a little daunting, but once I got into the swing of it its really satisfying - firstly trying to do each puzzle initially, and then trying to improve on it - fewer cycles, reactors or symbols.  It shows a chart of other people's attempts (and well as anyone on your friends list) so you can see roughly how efficient you are (or whether you do it better than the walkthrough people presumably use where there's a big spike in the chart).  There's a demo of it too.  It seems to appear on discount on steam every so often.

Anyone else played it?

[Solid Jim]

I bought this on a whim last week and have been working my way through it, but I suspect once I have finished I had better go back and try to improve on my solutions, as going by the statistics they are decidedly average. That said, it's strange how one can become oddly proud of a reactor whose design is the result entirely of bad decisions made earlier in the production line. The last puzzle I solved ended in a design with so many iterative loops that I can't say I fully understand how it worked. But it did.

It's slightly demoralising that every time I finish a level I see one of my Steam friends has already solved it twice as efficiently. On the other hand, I have two other friends who don't have any results logged beyond the third planet, so I suppose at least I'm doing better than them.

As I go on I'm finding the important thing is to get a handle on what you're trying to achieve before you design yourself into a corner. I'm on the penultimate planet now and things are getting a bit insane. Every time I finish a boss battle I'm left wondering how on earth I'm ever going to manage anything more complex than what I've just had to do, whereupon I see the requirement for the next level and have to go for a bit of a lie down.

(Yes, there are boss battles.)

[hpmons]

A reply!

I find I can't play more than maybe 3hrs a day (which is little for me) otherwise its just too much, my brain is overloaded.  The thought of some people managing to do everything in one reactor is astonishing, I've tried on a couple but I just can't get my head around it.  The last few days I've actually found it a little hard to sleep because I've been thinking of SpaceChem solutions...

You can add me on Steam if you like (hpmons).  I'd like someone else to feel like I'm competing with...or else someone to bow down to my brilliance.  On reactor levels I'm rarely lower than average, but I'm prooty goot on research levels.