LogFAQs > #932317711

#94





Years released: 2015 (PC)
Beaten?: Unbelievably, I got pretty far

(Oh shit, everyone's leaving.)

WAIT. WAIT COME BACK PLEASE. I SWEAR THIS ISN'T AS BORING AS IT SOUNDS.

This is a game about coding. NO GET BACK HERE.

Okay, so, Zachtronics games are almost universally beyond my ken. I wouldn't be able to figure out SpaceChem if my life depended on it, and taking even one glance at Opus Magnum makes my head spin. But TIS-100 I can actually kinda jive with. It's hard as hell, but I can do it.

I haven't played this one in a while so I kind of forget the premise a little bit, but basically this game presents you with a made-up and inefficient programming language, and you need to utilize it to figure out how to solve a bunch of basic programming challenges in as few steps as possible.

I've always kind of liked coding, even though I'm not good at it - figuring out how to make something work, how to take a variable and carry it through multiple processing steps and have it spit out the number you want at the end, how to store it somewhere while a bunch of other processes all run and call that variable, it's always felt like a puzzle game to me. A puzzle game that I suck at. TIS-100 really captures that essence for me without cursing me with the proposition of actually having to something productive. Video games are awesome.

I've done enough coding in my life to know that this really is like coding. It's probably the closest I'll ever get in my life to like, actually trying to write something in assembly language. I think if you've never coded before, this game would be a pretty good primer to the sorts of thought processes you need to have to code something efficiently - or at least it's the closest approximation that exists, but really, you should probably just learn C++ instead of picking up TIS-100, learning C++ is easier. This shit is hell, and it is probably the driest video game I've ever played or even ever heard of, like Desert Bus levels of dry, but wow it's really satisfying to play it and actually figure out how to put together something that works.

It's been a while since I've played it and I have no idea if I could go back. Somehow, at one point, I knew how to play this game, and I've ejected all memory of how to play it straight out of my brain. Attempting to play it again feels like such a herculean task that I might as well just learn how to actual-code. I can't believe me from 5 years ago was this smart. I feel like putting this game on this list will make me seem a lot more interesting and cool than I actually am. Wow look at this hipster who plays a fucking game about programming a shitty computer. The games on this list are going to get a lot more normie from here on out sorry.