The minds behind Opus Magnum and Infinifactory are dropping another clever game for ya. Möbius Front ’83 is a new strategy game by Zachtronics set in a past where the United States is being invaded by its dark realm self. Möbius Front ’83 will launch its turn-based tactical battles in November. (more…)

Opus Magnum

is the most tactile game I’ve ever played. Playing it makes me remember last Christmas, when I was given one of those wooden assembly kits where you have to snap together the various wood pieces like a jigsaw to create a three-dimensional sculpture. In my case, it was a little steampunk clock, all interconnected gears and ornate swirls. Turning a gear at the bottom would turn other gears, and the minute and hour hands on the clock face would turn in tandem with the gears.

It was very fulfilling to piece together something so beautiful and functional. But what I remember most about it wasn’t the end result. It was the feeling of those wooden pieces snapping perfectly together. Like most people, I’m drawn to tactile things, and the right combination of texture, sound, and resistance can invoke a surprising emotional reaction in me.

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If you plumb the depths of human ingenuity you will resurface with a wet box of penicillin and 100 million bits of different-coloured plastic. We people are very good at making useful things, and then killing ourselves with them. But videogames, my friends. Videogames hold the solution to our self-destructive ways. That tech utopia your pal Start-up Stan is always talking about is in reach, we just need to find a way to make these 12 practical devices from videogames appear in real life.

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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”.

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We re living in a Zachlike world. It’s a world where games can be about the internal rhythm of things, and where you can create works of art from rulesets. It s why Zachtronic’s game Opus Magnum let people share gifs of what they ve made, explained here by game developer and ex-desk sharer of mine, Tom Francis. And yet this post isn t about a Zach Barth game. This is about Neon Noodles, a game about optimising the work of robot chefs as they prepare meals. It’s the perfect format because food is both a science and art. The open beta is free on Steam right now.

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Cor, kids have it easy nowadays. Sure, they’re inheriting a polluted hellhole teetering on the brink of ecological and economic ruin, but look at all the neat games they get to grow up with. Thanks to Zachtronics announcing they’re giving away (nearly) all their games to schools, some of them even get to muck about with fabulously inventive puzzle boxes during their pretend workday. Imagine that! Privileged tykes.

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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.

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Continuing to copy the tastes of RPS, the Independent Games Festival Awards last night awarded Return Of The Obra Dinn the Seumas McNally Grand Prize during the Game Developers Conference last night, with a cheeky Excellent In Narrative award on the side too. We declared it our favourite game of 2018 so, y’know, good on ya Ian GF. Correct decision. The other prizes were won by Mirror Drop, Paratopic, Opus Magnum, Black Room, and After Hours, and ooh there’s two I don’t recognise and will have to check out.

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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.

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The finalists for the 2019 Independent Games Festival award ceremony on March 20th have been announced, and they remind me just how joyful a challenge it is to keep up with indie development. Every category is packed with exciting, creative endeavours both complete or still in development – a reminder that 2018 was a great year for games, and 2019 stands to be even better. Now I’ve just got to keep track of all of them.

Among the headliners for the Seumas McNally Grand Prize are RPS favourites like low-fi groundhog day adventure Minit, the excellent maritime mystery Return Of The Obra Dinn (which Andreas Inderwildi picked apart earlier today) and the bizarre Hypnospace Outlaw, a deep dive into a fictional 90s internet dream-world. Also in the running is virtual voyeur sim Do Not Feed The Monkeys, and the upcoming physics-driven platform roguelike Noita. Every category is full of exciting games, though – check out the full list on the IGF page here, or below.

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