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