This game certainly isn't for everyone, but I love everything about it. This is a programming game where you control tiny robots and move them around different areas to complete tasks, usually of the sort like "hack a radio station", "rob a bank", and "send neural signals from your brain to your arm so you can have motor control". Now when I say this is a programming game, I mean this is a programming game. You control the robots by programming them in a custom assembly language, complete with manuals (included PDFs) that teach you how it all works. The whole world is set with 1980s sensibilities but with futuristic capabilities, it's really neat. Unlike the other Zachtronics games I've played, this one actually has a plot, and it's not half bad. The music is also phenomenal, I've been listening to it regularly on my own. I will say the technical specifications of the EXAs are pretty limited, as (warning: nerd stuff) you only have one general purpose register, a shared general purpose/test register, an intra-machine global register which you can't guarantee the receiver, and a file pointer. It's pretty limited, but yet some people have managed to make entire video games in it.

Reviewed on Jan 10, 2023


Comments