Better Than Wolves Forum

Looks like there's a new Zachtronics game on the radar:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/558990/Opus_Magnum/

Appears to have an alchemy focus with mechanics similar to SpaceChem. Every Zachtronics game has blown me away so far and I doubt this will be any exception.

Releases in about three days. Can't wait!

This looks absolutely amazing. I've been a fan of Zachtronic's games ever since I played The Codex of Alchemical Engineering on Kongregate. It looks like he took the base concept of that game and made it into something more. I can't wait to get my hands on it. Thanks for sharing this!

Ooooh, major hype

It looks a lot like "The Codex of Alchemical Engineering", a free flash game they released a while ago.

looks like spacechem to me, only alchemical symbols instead of elements, and 6 directions of freedom instead of 4 (hexagons instead of squares)

although to be fair, that additional two degrees of freedom probably changes things up a bit.

The main diference from spacechem is that instead of makin rails for two grabbers you put any number of mechanical arms and program them independently.

I stayed up late to wait for the launch because I'm a nerd and yeah, it's awesome.

It's $18US which I initially felt was a little steep (more than Shenzhen) but after playing it a bit I think it's a fair price.

There are sooooooo many ways to solve puzzles in this game. You are literally given a blank slate to work from and it's kinda daunting at first. But you start with a really dumb inefficient solution, then refine it into something really elegant, much like the other Zachtronics games.

It also has a gif recorder which is neat. Here's an example (spoiler as it's a solution to one of the first few problems): Really satisfying to watch after you spend a bit of time putting it all together. Highly recommend it.

Also this is probably the hardest Zachtronics game to get high efficiency in each category. Unlike the other games where building the most efficient machine will get good results in all categories, you have to engineer a design tailored to each one to be efficient.

I.e. You can build a cheap design that will be slow, or an expensive one that will be quick.

It actually gives you a cool insight into real world engineering and design where the same holds true.

Yeah, it's really good, I'm having fun. Maybe it gives you everything a little too soon at the start, but other than that, I'm having wicked fun.

I'm about halfway through, it's pretty good.

Spacechem did a much better job at introducing and teaching you how to use it's various tools compared to Opus, which makes me feel like I'm not using things as well as I could be - but then again, I'm getting decent scores compared to other people, so who knows.

I'm having a lot of fun with this game, despite Gil basically being twice as efficient as me in each category every time I see the end histograms :)

For comparison, here was my solution to that Hangover Cure solution puzzle in the gif Daisjun posted above:

BinoAl wrote:I'm having a lot of fun with this game, despite Gil basically being twice as efficient as me in each category

Haha, sorry, I got a little optimization crazy there in the beginning. At this point, I stopped playing Opus and am just playing the pebble minigame XD

Gilberreke wrote:

BinoAl wrote:I'm having a lot of fun with this game, despite Gil basically being twice as efficient as me in each category

Haha, sorry, I got a little optimization crazy there in the beginning. At this point, I stopped playing Opus and am just playing the pebble minigame XD

Heh, I've hit a couple of those so far and just skipped them. I gave it a few tries and wasn't into it. Luckily they seem to be 100% optional

BinoAl wrote:Heh, I've hit a couple of those so far and just skipped them. I gave it a few tries and wasn't into it. Luckily they seem to be 100% optional

Just reached the 100 game achievement, I feel like I'm playing the game wrong :D

Well, I just found out a thing. I've completed the game, and beaten all the currently available puzzles in the 'journal of alchemical engineering' bit. Done pretty well, optimisation-wise, too.

...and only now do I discover you can scroll the instruction bar left and right. It could have been so much easier :/

Stormweaver wrote:...and only now do I discover you can scroll the instruction bar left and right. It could have been so much easier :/

Oh wow, yeah, that'd make it substantially harder. Damn man, that's crazy.

Gilberreke wrote:

Stormweaver wrote:...and only now do I discover you can scroll the instruction bar left and right. It could have been so much easier :/

Oh wow, yeah, that'd make it substantially harder. Damn man, that's crazy.

Yeah I didn't work that one out for a while. Another one I only found out the other day was that you can rotate whole sections by selecting all the parts, holding down click and pushing A or D.

Daisjun wrote:

Gilberreke wrote:

Stormweaver wrote:...and only now do I discover you can scroll the instruction bar left and right. It could have been so much easier :/

Oh wow, yeah, that'd make it substantially harder. Damn man, that's crazy.

Yeah I didn't work that one out for a while. Another one I only found out the other day was that you can rotate whole sections by selecting all the parts, holding down click and pushing A or D.

What!? I knew about being able to scroll the instruction bar, but I had no idea you could rotate groups of components. That's going to make things a whole lot easier.

This just updated with an extra chapter at the end of the main campaign, made up of a bunch of space-limited puzzles.

Now I just wished they'd designed the puzzles like that from the get go. It's much more interesting with the extra constraints.

Stormweaver wrote:This just updated with an extra chapter at the end of the main campaign, made up of a bunch of space-limited puzzles.

Now I just wished they'd designed the puzzles like that from the get go. It's much more interesting with the extra constraints.

Was about to come here and mention that. They're significantly harder than any of the other puzzles. Really good challenge. I've only done one so far.

Actually I think giving you free reign for the first set of puzzles sets you up nicely to move on to these. I hope he produces a lot more of these puzzles as they're really interesting.

And I've just noticed in the options there's an option to show the most efficient scores possible in your leader boards once you've completed the game. (Not sure if this has been in other ZT games as I've only finished this one).

Also check out this interview with Zach. Such a cool dude.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/1 ... ore-495949

Late to the party as usual. This game is awesome, just started playing around. My ocd makes me create compact solutions with as few mechanisms as possible. Great fun.

For funs, this was my hangover cure solution