Shadowcat on 9/10/2011 at 00:44
Quote Posted by Papy
Considering Manufactoria was once kind of popular here, I find it strange that SpaceChem never had its own thread. Is it because the game is too challenging and everyone gave up?
Well, it's certainly worth making a thread about it!
In my case, I've not really gotten started with SpaceChem, but I did see enough to make me think of Manufactoria too.
I also found myself wondering whether it would be as accessible as Manufactoria. I'm not sure if the latter was more constrained, or if it's something else to do with the different interfaces, or even the goals, but I didn't find myself so immediately drawn to SpaceChem.
I'm not in a position to draw any conclusions until I have a proper run at it, though, and I'm playing so many other things at the moment that I doubt I'll be doing that any time soon.
(But if anyone else
is playing it, then here's a thread :)
Phatose on 9/10/2011 at 02:29
It gets really, really hard at the end. By the 6th level or so, I decided it was much more fun optimizing solutions to earlier levels then working through the later ones.
Al_B on 9/10/2011 at 08:00
This was Sulphur's choice for me when we had the mystery steam sale gift exchange a few months ago. I played to around the same point as Phatose (assuming you mean sixth world) and mean to get back into it at some point.
It does get tough and unlike Manufactoria I found it took longer to arrive at a solution that would work. Most of my time when playing Manufactoria was optimising a solution that would work - but was longer than it should have been. With SpaceChem due to limited reaction sites I found it harder to arrive at a suitable solution in the first place. It would also be nice to be able to skip levels that were causing problems and return to them later.
It's still very enjoyable when you get into it and it's the sort of game where you can turn over possible solutions in your mind leading to "aha!" moments.
Aerothorn on 10/10/2011 at 02:14
The thing with Spacechem is that it's pure puzzle. It's absolutely brilliant, and really well made as a puzzle game, but there's no flavor or filler. This is not a criticism, but as someone who is (frankly) too intellectually lazy to be a "pure puzzler," it didn't do as much for me as I would have liked. There's no half-doing SpaceChem; you've got to give it your full time and attention or just give up.
Vernon on 10/10/2011 at 03:18
Great game. Wish I had more time to devote to it
Al_B on 10/10/2011 at 16:25
Quote Posted by Aerothorn
It's absolutely brilliant, and really well made as a puzzle game, but there's no flavor or filler.
Well, there is a storyline of sorts but why it's present is a bit of a mystery as it only occasionally seems relevant to the puzzle being solved.
Papy on 11/10/2011 at 10:28
Up to now (I just finished the sixth world), I don't feel the game is becoming harder toward the end (relatively to the learning curve). I spent less time with world 4, 5 and 6 than with the first three worlds. I guess part of the reason is because I'm now more or less satisfied simply solving a puzzle, so I don't need to spend time optimizing it.
I agree the learning curve at the beginning is somewhat steeper than with Manufactoria (although not as steep as Kohctpyktop), but I don't think this is really a flaw. The time I spent trying different ways to solve the same problems (because I was not satisfied my solutions) were equivalent to having several puzzles and so made the next steps somewhat smaller.
About the story, I think it does more harm than good. If it was related to the gameplay and either included some commentaries on the previous level (e.g. "solving the problem with only two reactors was great" or "700 cycles was catastrophically slow") or if it included tips about the next, then I could have fun reading it, but it's not the case.
Personally, I just skip it. The problem is I still consider it to be a part of the game, even if I know it's not related to the gameplay. So I either end up annoyed for reading an unrelated story while what I really want is to play a game, or I end up feeling some kind of remorse for skipping it and wondering if it could be useful.
As for the gameplay, there are two minor flaws for me. First, I find the defense levels not as good. I like the idea of making the system and then watching it. When I have to synchronize the system manually, I feel I just made a bad implementation. It is not as rewarding as regular levels.
The second minor thing which is bothering me is the fact that I can't save multiple solutions and that the game automatically saves what I am doing. Sometimes I just want to try out something, but if I realize it's a dead end, I then have to redo the everything. I wish a save function, like the one with Kohctpyktop would be implemented.
BTW, is anyone proud enough of their solutions to post them?
Vernon on 11/10/2011 at 12:03
Well Al is fucking owning on the TTLG leaderboards. His solutions mustn't be too bad. Only thing is, I'd quite like to be able to beat him without seeing them. Maybe if people post good solutions, they could keep them
behind a link rather than embedded. (
http://i677.photobucket.com/albums/vv137/theeggonlegs/slightlydifferent.png) Here is mine for Slightly Different, the only one I am beating Al on (although that probably just means he hasn't bothered optimising). I am pretty proud of it even though it is only the third map (I haven't had the time to get very far, just been working on it during compile times lol)
Anyone know how to turn off the durpy hint boxes? I mean the kind that you can see in my link
DDL on 11/10/2011 at 13:38
Loving this. It really is the manufactoria vibe all over again.
Fuck me, it's hard tho. Some of the fusion ones (which is as far as I've got) really really need you to think things through beforehand, since you only ever get two ins and two outs for each reactor. Plus random delivery (which is actually a predetermined list, as far as I can tell, so you COULD tailor to the list rather than be prepared for anything, but fuck that). A lot of my solutions involve a 'primary' reactor with the sole function of dispensing randomly delivered things in a more ordered fashion, so that the downstream shit doesn't have to guess anymore.
I am loving that buzz you get when you plan a reactor to do a simple task and then realise you can actually make it do 90% of the whole job: on the level where you need to make (I think) nitric acid and sodium nitrate, I ended up with a hilariously lossy reactor that dumped half of everything it received straight into recycling, and indeed spent 50% of its time breaking apart water and making it into..water, but it nevertheless outputted hydroxyls and sodium hydroxide in an exact alternating 50:50 ratio, making the rest a piece of piss.
And the sulphuric acid challenge level was a blast. There's something really really pleasing about watching everything churn through at high speed and thinking "Hey, I did that. Go me."
Having said that, just looking at vernon's shows me I haven't even explored the possibilities of bouncing behaviour. I've been using loops. HUNDREDS of fucking loops. :eww:
So yeah, please post more solutions!
