The age of machines has begun. I’m not speaking about world conquering, human enslaving robots from the Matrix or what have you ever, nor the warped logic of paperclip-producing AIs. I’m speaking about clunky manufacturing unit strains producing wizard-viagra (‘stamina’ potions), and cobbled collectively contraptions that ultimately churn out stain-removers. Now that I give it some thought, these had been two unlucky examples to make use of subsequent to one another.
What I’m attempting to say is that ace puzzler Opus Magnum left early entry on Thursday, so that you’ve acquired no excuse to not leap in and begin constructing machines of your individual.
As with earlier Zachtronics video games, Opus Magnum was kind of finished when it launched into early entry in October. Updates since then have largely been bug fixes and high quality of life enhancements, although an entire new component and an additional mini-campaign had been added final month.
There are extra bug fixes on the way in which, together with “at least one or two” new points to the Journal of Alechemical Engineering, that are super-hard puzzles that aren’t a part of the primary marketing campaign. My expertise with them is proscribed to opening certainly one of them, watching it for five seconds then saying ‘NOPE’ out loud and hitting alt-f4, although perhaps you’ll fare higher than me. I’ve primarily made it so far as I’ve within the marketing campaign by adopting a brute power strategy to the puzzles, as demonstrated with this mess of a stain-remover:
See how the ‘main’ arm has to awkwardly rotate half a dozen instances to suit by way of that hole and accumulate the opposite atoms? There’s in all probability a near-infinite variety of elegant options that keep away from that faff, however they’re all past me. The pleasure of Opus Magnum is that regardless that I’m conscious of that, I’m nonetheless (maybe misguidedly) happy with my very own wonky options.
It’s one thing that lead dev Zach Barth touched on when he sat down for a chat with Brendy:
“The funny thing is that a lot of the GIFs are people playing the game in a very conventional way. And this is the thing that I think is so funny, is that there’s a lot of people – like the subreddit is almost entirely just GIFs – and there’s lots of people posting GIFs and, like, their solutions aren’t that special but they’re unique and they’re theirs, right? And so I think that speaks to the power of these open-ended puzzles. Even people who aren’t, like, fucking breaking the rules or pushing the limits are actually still immensely proud because they really have made something that is their solution to the puzzle. And they’re showing it off. I think in the past people only tended to show off when they did crazy things, but we’ve made it so easy and so accessible that it becomes this thing that everybody can show what they’re working on. So, from my perspective, most of what they’re doing is actually kinda boring but they’re just playing the game as intended, you know? But I think that’s great … and I love that people feel attached to their solutions, even when they’re just kind of playing the game normally.”
Opus Magnum is 10% off till December 14th on Steam and DRM-free on Humble for £13.94/$17.99/€17.99.
Unfortunately you’ll be able to’t get the sport on GOG, for Questionable Reasons:
I’ve a fast query for our GOG lovers: if GOG declined to promote Opus Magnum on their retailer, maybe as a result of it seems to be an excessive amount of like a cellular recreation (?!), the place would you quite buy it as an alternative? Humble Store? Itch? Steam?
— Zachtronics (@zachtronics) December 8, 2017
