Reviews from

in the past


pretty awesome concept, i do wish the computer/bbs aspects came into play more often once you have all the games, my brain isnt smart enough for most of the games so i just played 20 hours of solitaire

It's essentially a solitaire pack but way cooler, gave this to all my friends it's awesome

A collection of interesting in unique puzzle games with an awesome presentation. Easy recommendation for any fan of puzzle games.

got this game from the humble bundle, the feel of the retro comupter matches and its great design - the minigames are definitely interesting and i realized that most zachtronic games are for people that love logic puzzles and i feel like this isnt 100% the game for me, but i can see the interest and i can tell they make great stuff for sure - the gundam maker and solitaire was cool

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for December 2023, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before January 2nd, 2023, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

The final new title from Zachtronics

Last Call BBS came out last year. It was a bit of a surprise, being announced as Zachtronics’ final release. While they did release a solitaire collection after this, this is more of a collection of the games that never got made. There are 7 unique titles here, and they range from a game where you lay out metal for a chip, a game where you automate a kitchen and a game where you build Gundam models, which is far more interesting than it should be.

But ultimately this is Zachtronics, it’s all the same negative. It’s a game built for a programmer or logic mindset, and while I love that, it’s not going to appeal to most players. There’s a good amount of content but a few games feel a little short, mostly the Gundam models or at least legally-distinct-giant-mecha models, I just want a hundred of them. Also, this feels like prototypes the studio made and never built for a full game. It’s not a huge negative but feels a bit like leftovers.

Pick this up if you enjoy Zachtronics games. I keep saying this and this is absolutely another for that pile. I adore this company, I said goodbye to them when this game came out, and looking at this once more gives me a lot of nostalgia. I would highly recommend checking this out if you ever enjoyed any of their games. And I know of their new company Coincidence, I can’t wait to see what happens with them.


If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/FzxvEceV60k


Affectionate in gesture and execution. A lot of people on this website (and like hey this is just how time works) didn't have enough exposure to Pre-Windows 2000 era computers to really, really understand how wild of a world computers felt back then. Before things had to be designed to death to make it in front of an audience, some machines worked Just Enough to let you do what they wanted. I remember coloring black & white still frames from Batman: The Animated Series on the old church's computer. I remember the one time I got to use the pastor's computer and discovered they had a PC port of Mortal Kombat 3 installed to it for some reason I am still not capable of figuring out (They Were Weird, It's A Long Story). Trying AOL and realizing it wasn't good enough. Downloading a demo overnight only to learn it didn't run on my computer the morning after. My father's... aggressive approach to hacking prevention. This game is a dream about gilded ages, re-created with ship-in-a-bottle precision.

I learned how to play solitaire

Eight games at once? Just release eight games! Better luck next time "Zach Tronics"!

i'm too dumb for some of the late game stuff but damn this game is great

I'm not even close to having played every puzzle in Last Call BBS, but man have I enjoyed this Zachtronic's last hurrah. It's the end of an era, but what an era it was.

All of the quintessential Zachtronics games have their shelf life for me. This is generally either through a bit too much repetition, or through the expanding scope growing too much to keep track of everything. But they are all so well-designed that they are fun while they last. This one certainly lasted the longest, and it did so while exuding a ton of heart. The variety of games and the trickle of notes made it a joy to bounce around when one set of mechanics started to bring out that perfectionist itch a bit too much.

It was a genius decision to have the downloads work in the background, as it definitely led me to tinker with games for longer than I normally would have (if at all). Those sections ended up being as well-crafted and enjoyable as any vignettes throughout gaming.

This game also balances humor and emotion as well as any text in games. We see the anthropological detail from Mr Chilly that 20th century soft-serve was clearly enjoyed at a temperature of absolute zero. We see the computer's original owner vulnerably offering up this hardware as a piece of himself, recounting the wistful what-ifs that we all experience throughout life, and celebrating the people who shape your life even as the decades pass since you've been in their presence.

This may be a game to play over the years, dipping in and out to complete more puzzles and find more notes. It may even eventually become its own wistful memory as we try to recount to the next generation who we were back before Zachmatics disappeared from the golden ages...

What an immensely sad game.

Zachtronics have done an outstanding job of capturing the melancholy of witnessing an age turning bygone, doubtlessly mirroring the shuttering of the studio with this final release. Last Call BBS is a world of dial-up, of warez, of cracks and hacks, of archaic hardware, and the inherent mystery that comes with exploring obscure corners of the internet. A descriptive blurb and a title are the only things you'll get to inform you about the games you'll be playing, all curated on a local server by the in-game barkeep. It's the kind of "search, experiment, and figure it out yourself" gameplay that's defined virtually every Zachtronics title up to this point, now extending into the meta act of finding and downloading the games to be played.

Of course, the extra layer of navigating a virtual desktop with limited hard drive space doesn't come at the cost of compromising the quality of these games; to the contrary, these are some incredibly impressive titles. Dungeons & Diagrams is a fun Picross-like, the included Solitaire variants are as entertaining as they always are, HACKMATCH is back and expanded, and you've got your completely incomprehensible puzzle games like X'BPGH: The Forbidden Path and "ChipWizard Professional" to help round things out. The last game I mentioned is jokingly referred to in-universe as being indistinguishable as one of either "a game or a CAD program", and they mean it.

You'll probably have noticed from the big, glowing red dot at the top of this review that I've got this marked as abandoned. I didn't finish Last Call, so I couldn't mark it as completed. I don't think I'll ever finish Last Call, so I can't mark it as shelved. This is a dense game. There's a lot here, and I'm not smart enough to see it all through. Okay, it's not that I'm dumb, it's that I don't have a natural acumen for solving the sorts of puzzles that Last Call presents, and I can't seem to learn the skills required to even begin the process. If there's some means of discovering a definitive end to this, I'm not going to see it.

So, I'm a little reticent to publish a review on this. I'm abandoning a game that I liked, a lot. Games which I've enjoyed have managed to sour massively for me as they went on — see Immortality and Asura's Wrath if you need examples — so who's to say that the same couldn't happen for Last Call? There might be later games or puzzles or twists that completely, utterly, retroactively spoil the whole thing. Now, I doubt that's going to happen, but it could.

Even in that theoretical worst outcome, though, I think I've enjoyed too much of Last Call to imagine my opinion lowering far from where it already is. The real joy is in picking and choosing what parts you want to work through, rather than forcing yourself to tackle every single piece of every last bit of content, squeezing out whatever juice you can get before discarding it and moving to the next thing. I'd dare to call Last Call "anti-completionist", provided I felt like justifying that opinion with another eight paragraphs of argumentation.

In a package that's this brimming with games, it's inevitable that you'll find at least something you enjoy. If you want some beginner-level puzzles, you play Dungeons & Diagrams. If you want to ramp up the difficulty and seriously challenge yourself, you play ChipWizard. If you're sick of all of the puzzles and you don't want to think anymore, you play STEED FORCE Hobby Studio and quietly assemble virtual gunpla kits. If you're one of those twisted bastards that actually thought TIS-100 was fun, you can read up on the included Axiom QuickServe dev guides and create your own JavaScript-based "servers" that other players can dial into and play custom games from.

Zach Barth seems to be leaving games behind in favor of teaching, per what I've seen strewn about the Internet. Apparently he got a taste for instructing high school programming classes, and it's became a passion that he wanted to pursue. There have been some pretty negative reactions to this, which surprised me; even as an outsider to the Zachtronics collection, it isn't hard to see that the act of education and the reciprocal act of learning is the through-line connecting their entire catalog.

Of course, Barth later said that he has "a hard time imagining anything other than games in [his] future", even though the team that made up Zachtronics will be disbanding. After being a part of the field for two decades, I suppose it's hard for anyone to imagine him being anywhere else.

Last Call BBS is a wonderful capstone to mourn and celebrate the way that the Internet used to be. I couldn't think of a better way for Zachtronics to close their doors than with this.

A puzzle collection with a great frame that makes it better than the sum of its parts.

Goofing around on an old, second hand computer gave me permission to play differently than I'd approach a mini game collection presented to me in a flat menu. Bouncing between games felt more like exploring than losing interest.

I really like how the rules of each game aren't immediately presented, and often times are intentionally incomplete. Figuring out how to play is the first puzzle of every game.

Meaty, well designed puzzles, which give complete freedom within the limitations it provides. All puzzles are tricky, so I couldn't complete any one of the seven games except for the model mech builder, which is GOOD.

Every Zach puzzle game is perfect, period. Thank you for awakening the engineer inside me and farewell.

I like how it's framed through a retro computer, and the presentation is generally pleasing. The actual games are a mixed bag, some are fun some aren't. My favourite was the gunpla builder.

Funny game. I only played Solitaire because it is the only game I understand . It would have probably been funnier if my IQ was higher than 5.

Cool collection of games with a very pleasant style reminiscent of an age I didn't experience. The games themselves were a bit of a mixed bag for me since half the games were too complex or difficult for my peanut brain but I got more than enough enjoyment out of the solitaires, dungeons and diagrams, and the model builder.

spent 8 hours straight playing solitaire like I'm some old man

Jogue só o minigame de montar gunplay 😆

I love the little gundam maker

20th Century Food Court: 4 ☆
STEED FORCE Hobby Studio: 1.5☆
X’BPGH: 3☆
Sawayama Solitaire: 2.5☆
Dungeons & Diagrams: 3.5☆
ChipWizard™ Professional: 3.5☆
HACK*MATCH: 4☆ (buen temardo)
Kabufuda Solitaire: 2.5☆

The grown-up "After Dark Games" I didn't know I needed. A loving homage to The Good Old Days. A last chance, swing for the fences, out with a bang, goodbye love letter from a developer that knew what it liked and what it was good at.

A nice, quiet place to play some games. A refuge.

Admiro tudo da zachtronics, pena que sou muito burro pros jogos deles.

Beautiful and vibrant set of puzzle games, with a theming to die for, and a solution to the problem that plagues the genre: what do you do when you get stuck? Just play one of the other eight games in the BBS, of course!

Unfortunately eventually you finish the games you can finish and you're still stuck, and the two games in this collection that are "classic zachtronics" – meaning, effectively coding puzzles in disguise – are each incredibly tricky. The one action game in the collection also failed to click for me, though it wasn't helped by being played on Steam Deck without an appropriate control scheme.


какой-то вообще сюровый экспириенс, типа ты на своем компе как будто запускаешь эмулятор какого-то ретро несуществующего компа с операционкой и несколькими программами и играми. Ты буквально качаешь там эти проги с сайта и тп (внутри игры). Среди игр есть например японские карты ханафуда - интересная интерпритация пасьянса и симулятор сборки пластиковых моделей роботов из гандама, в сборке роботов я хз сколько часов провёл, меня буквально затянуло, там настолько проработано всё, это буквально симулятор. С прохождением уровней в играх тебе открываются записки чела который эту всю операционку создал, в которых он рассказыает о жизни своей и это как-то ностальгично и приятно читать. Очень понравилось, очень странно, класс ваще.

Eu acho o conceito desse jogo muito interessante. Que é emular um sistema antigo e te dar acesso a um computador de outra pessoa e um canal do BBS. Eu nunca vivi a internet dessa época, mas mesmo assim o jogo é efetivo em evocar uma nostalgia.

Fuçar no computador de outra pessoa e ir descobrindo os minigames é bem intrigante. Porém ao mesmo tempo que a simulação é boa e realista, isso também deixa o jogo meio chato pra mim. Tipo ter limite de download e você precisar esperar quinze minutos de tempo REAL pra poder baixar outro jogo.

Os mini games em si são legais, mas nada que me fisgou por muito tempo. Como tudo tenta emular jogos daquela época, você meio que tem que ler manuais e descobrir por si só o que fazer. O que de novo, é MUITO interessante, mas ao mesmo tempo me deu uma preguiça enorme.

Gostei muito do joguinho de montar gunplas, mas fiquei frustrada com o quão ruim são os controles pra pintar os robozinhos.

Enfim, é um jogo muito curioso e eu fico feliz de ter testado, apesar de não ser muito pra mim.

Like many a Zachtronics game before, Last Call BBS has that secret ingredient to create a great puzzle format: arbitrary limitation.

Perhaps intentionally, the computer you are using only has enough disk space to download 7 programs, most of which have their own limitation. For ChipWizard and Food Court, the limit was simply workspace, a pretty common trope for Zachtronics, although for Food Court there are two ways space is restricted. For X'BPGH, interestingly, it was time (as displayed through stages of growth). There was also an instruction limit, but I don't think I ever ran out of space for instructions.

For the others, there might not be any clear limitation. Kabufuda cards existed before Last Call BBS, but I don't know if Kabufuda Solitaire existed. The free spaces certainly had increasing limits with higher difficulty. Dungeons & Diagrams had restrictions for block placement, but that's not really unusual for a logic puzzle (in fact a lot of the rules carry over from a logic puzzle known as Tapa). Steed Force could be considered to have a quite limited variety of tools for painting Gundam-like figures. HACKMATCH might not even qualify.

I'd be remiss not to mention some of these games had their first appearance in a previous Zachtronics game. A nearly identical version of Kabufuda Solitaire was present in Eliza. A fairly similar version of HACK
MATCH in EXAPUNKS. ChipWizard's first incarnation was KOHCTPYKTOP, released all the way back in 2009 as a flash game. There may be others that I don't know about.

And I think the narrative that played out through memos from the relative who had donated the Z5 Powerlance to the player hints towards a past where arbitrary restrictions were not an option, they were reality. Graphics were limited to smaller resolutions, smaller budgets, smaller memory allocation, and smaller, closer-knit (more closely knit?) communities who came together to play these games and just chat.

The world's a lot bigger than it was when Zachtronics began. Things move faster. LC makes you wait when downloading a game, although the files of the game were all loaded up upon booting up Last Call BBS on Steam. It might've taken you less time to download LC than it took to download any game within it.

I don't think Zach Barth was trying to communicate there is no place for Zachtronics anymore, or that he was out of ideas. I think he just had a good idea of where he wanted to stop.