46 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 23.3 hrs on record (23.2 hrs at review time)
Posted: 9 Dec, 2017 @ 3:01pm
Updated: 9 Dec, 2017 @ 3:04pm

Zachtronics is one of the few developers whose games I'll buy on release, knowing that I'll invariably get a quality "design-based puzzle game". Opus Magnum is no exception.

Compared to some of his other games, Opus Magnum definitely feels more accessible - there's no coding in assembly, no need to RTFM, and no space constraints to work around. It feels like a polished, more "casual" (if such a word can be used to described a Zachtronics game) version of SpaceChem. The only constraints you ever seem to have are a few specialized parts (e.g. "Glyph of Disposal") having limited numbers in a design. Otherwise, you are free to take as much space and time, and as many parts, as you need...at least for your initial solution. If you're like most players, you'll inevitably end up wanting to "tighten up" your solution and make it faster / smaller / cheaper.

As with most of the Zachtronics games, which could stand alone without any story, this game has a well-written little story to drive the narrative and puzzle-building along. It also has an unobtrusive ambient music track which is well-suited to the gameplay. As with Shenzhen I/O, Opus Magnum contains a mini-game, in this case one that seems inspired by go and mahjong. It's ok, but I preferred the Solitaire from Shenzhen I/O.

It took me a minute to get used to the synchronized timeline, but once you do it ends up contributing to this game feeling more "casual" as you don't have to manage synchronization. It may eliminate the ability to do some clever tricks, but once I got used to it I haven't felt impeded by it. The only thing that's really tripped me up so far is not being able to branch / jump as I've made a couple solutions that had some initial setup that only needed to be run the first time. In both cases, it was a simple fix to eliminate the initial setup ("run once") portion that was tripping me up.

I do wish there was a way to set breakpoints to run until reaching a specific point, an option to zoom out on the design area, and an option to zoom out on the instructions area to show a longer timeline (especially) and more mechanisms (to a lesser degree). I also found myself wishing that when my solution stopped (by error or manually) the cycle it stopped on would remain indicated in some fashion. One final little gripe: you can tell a mechanism to repeat everything it had done or reset itself, but for both of these the actual actions taken aren't visible unless you are actively running the machine (it just shows a line indicating how many cycles it will take to do). When trying to create an action for another mechanism to match a repeated block, it meant having to either start a run to see the actual actions or remembering which cycle within the repeated block the specific instruction was. For example, trying to time a "grab" action on one mechanism to match the "release" action in a repeat instruction on another mechanism could mean remembering that the "grab" is in the third cycle of the repeating block (as all you would see is the repeat instruction with a line extending out however many cycles the complete repeat takes).
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2 Comments
xul 14 Dec, 2017 @ 12:30pm 
I know I even read the controls page, but I must have tunneled on the copying keys as it's what I was looking for. The shortcut was Alt-Click for me, and it certainly helps a lot with my breakpoint complaint. Thanks for cluing me in!
Schmutz 13 Dec, 2017 @ 12:52pm 
Instead of setting actual breakpoints, you can CTRL-Click on an instruction to fast-forward there.