Josh Reviews: SpaceChem

Seeing as I am often bereft of ideas for what to write about for my blog posts I've decided to write a little mini-series of blogs consisting of reviews or impressions of games that I've recently played. I'm also going to challenge myself to write one review a week, with it being posted by Saturday evening. Considering how much work I have at the moment that's a pretty big deal!

The game that actually inspired me to write this series is the one that I'll be posting about today. The game is called SpaceChem and if you like puzzles and not sleeping much, this is definitely the game for you.

SpaceChem is a puzzle game made by Zachtronics Industries, which is a small indie dev that you probably wont of heard of and I hadn't heard of until I found this game, but I'll definitely be looking closely at their future titles from now on. The premise of the game is that you are a Reactor Engineer for the SpaceChem corporation, a company that specialises in producing valuable chemical products from raw materials such as water and air. The idea behind the game is that you take those raw materials and through a series of processes turn them into a useful product.

This is what I'd call a programming game, as what you end up making is a sequence that will execute and produce the desired molecule from the given raw materials. In the game is design the paths for two 'Waldos,' which are machines that can grab and drop atoms as well as execute other functions such as synchronising with the other, executing the bond command or outputting the current content of an area. These simple base functions have to be used in increasingly complex ways as the difficultly of the games ramps up and ramp up it does! Every new set of levels has a new mechanic introduced with it, so just as you think you have some semblance of understanding everything that's going on, the game introduces a new element to the game which makes things complicated all over again. 

The game sets you to task on either Research or Production assignments, which is just it's way of saying that you either have one reactor to produce a chemical or you use multiple reactors to achieve a more complex goal. The game achieves the very fine balance of being very complex and frustrating whilst still being enjoyable. Some production assignments have as few as 2 reactors available to use whereas some have as many as 6 available to achieve your goal! I can say from personal experience that one level of the game kept me up until 3 in the morning one night, only to get me up again because I had thought of the solution after trying to get to sleep! That's the kind of creature that the game is, it's the kind of game that occupies your every thought until you find that elusive solution that makes everything work. It's a lot easier to enjoy the more complicated production assignments because the amount of craft that goes into them evokes a very rewarding feeling in the same way that completing a hard piece of work might do.


There's really not that much to the game mechanically, but the complexity of the puzzles that the game throws at you really stretch your thinking until the puzzle is finished. If you're looking for a puzzle game that will give your brain a good exercise, look no further than SpaceChem.


You can find out more about the game at it's website - http://www.spacechemthegame.com/
The game is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS for whatever $20 is in pounds these days.


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Well that's my first review in this new series! Please leave comments to tell me what you thought of it, what you think I could improve about my writing and recommend any games that you think I should review!


TTFN       

I made a video! Well I say me, I mean I helped ^_^

Another blog?! So soon?!

Really I'm just posting a link to a video that I just uploaded to my YouTube channel, so this isn't really a blog if you think about it, more a complicated hyperlink. The video is part of a project module that I am doing as part of my third year at university. We had to make 3 videos associated to a game we were making in another module, an Advert, a Crossover, and an Ident. It fell to me to make most of the Advert but In the end it was a team effort, as is everything really.

Seems like I cant make it widescreen like the video actually is though, click through to YouTube to see it in the widest of widescreen formats!


Tell me what you thought of it in the doobly-do/down below/describey/comment section!

I'm Back!

Surprise! I am indeed alive! I'm back after a lengthly 4 month absence. My laptop imploding caused the absence in the first place, then after that got replaced I just wasn't in the swing of it to keep up blogging, what with all the work I'm trying to get done, as well as all the new games are getting played instead of the work that I'm trying to do. However, seeing as my brain is in overdrive tonight and I cant bring myself to start another level on SpaceChem(a new awesome game I've discovered, I might review it at a later date) I decided to complete a challenge that Hannah set me quite a while back now, which was to write and upload my testimony. Here goes nothing....

I started life as a baby, much like everyone else. Like a lot of English children, I was Christened at an early age at my parent's and grandparent's church. As soon as I was old enough, my grandparents started taking me to church and to Sunday school, where I learnt all the things you learn at Sunday school. This continued up to around the age of 15 for me, as the church had a more discussion oriented group for people 14-16 or so. As my GCSEs loomed on the horizon, I stopped going to church under the premise of working during the time, but really I think I had just decided that church was too young for me anymore. Instead of seeking out the next level of church, that is going to the main service and listening to the sermons, I continued to not attend. All through this time I still considered myself a Christian, although now looking back I would not say that I was. During that time my understanding of God, Jesus, and the natures of sin and salvation were only skin deep, they had no greater impact on my life than any other piece of knowledge. Time passed, until I met Theresa, a Christian, and we started 'dating' when I was 17. Seeing as I still thought I was a Christian, everything was okay, until one day Theresa confronted me and told me that she didn't think that I was a Christian. She took the time to explain to me the difference between just knowing the facts and actually having salvation from my sins. It was after this that I started searching for my own personal salvation. It took a very long time for my search to come to an end, almost 1 and a half years. In the summer of 2009, me and Theresa went on a study trip to Israel. During the week, I mentioned to the leader of the trip, Paul, that I wasn't yet saved, information that he passed on the the man doing the speaking that week, Micheal Ots. On the last night of the holiday, Theresa convinced me to go and talk to Micheal about everything. We sat on the edge of the Lake Galilee and really discussed all the 'issues' that I had with becoming a Christian, and he explained each one away to the point where I really had no choice but to pray for the forgiveness of my sins. After that he prayed with me and I felt really positive about the whole experience, as you might expect! Since then I have been trying to learn more about my God and have been trying to become more like Jesus. Its not always been plain sailing. Me and Theresa broke up a year after my conversion, which was a pretty tough time. I was helped through it by prayer and the support of my Christian friends. More recently, my aunt has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I cant comprehend any kind of good coming out of that situation for anyone involved and it's really testing the limit of my faith to try and keep hold of the fact that God works all things for good. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that once you become a Christian everything becomes easy. If anything, life gets more complex and a lot lot harder. All we can do is rely on God to pull us through, and that's what I'm trying to do now.