packbat | "Silicon Zeroes" review

(crossposting this from itch.io, with minor edits.)

(also: this didn't make it into that review, but content warning for description of workplace sexual harassment in Chapter 2 of the game.)

I think we came into Silicon Zeroes with the wrong expectations, and as a result came away from it deeply frustrated.

In an old Game Maker's Toolkit video, Mark Brown suggests a distinction in videogames between puzzle solving and problem solving - to roughly summarize: players find the solution to puzzles, but invent solutions to problems - and from my experience with other programming games, I assumed this would be a problem-solving game. The general framing of the plot reinforced this to us - the player is working for a company designing computers, and after the first few introductory steps, each level represents a new task that needs to be completed.

It's not a problem-solving game, though. It's a puzzle game. There is a solution, there is a specific solution, and the game already knows what it is and wants you to find it. And new mechanics are being introduced not to give the player a broader toolset with which to approach problems, but to give the developer more options with which to invent puzzles. And because of that, those mechanics will absolutely be taken away from you if that serves the developer's goals with the current level's puzzle.

Silicon Zeroes has a lot going for it as a programming game - frankly, this is the first programming game where we actually used the "save an old design for the future" feature - but I'd rather people know what they're in for before they sink too much time into it.