Hands down the single worst game I've ever played. Unrealistic and stupidly difficult for NO reason. They arbitrarily remove the shit you need from every level just to make it pointlessly difficult. This isn't a game, it's an anxiety attack. I have never once raged at any game I've ever played, I just quit, but I broke shit playing this horrid pile of shit. I simply cannot overstate how BAD this game is.
Really sorry to hear you didn't like the game! The restricted set of components in some levels are intended to explore the possibility space of the mechanics and to provide more variety in the puzzles, and even simplify things in some cases. I hope you feel less stressed soon!
I said this in a review I left, but I had the same kind of frustration as Mollyarty and I think it was a matter of expectations. Like, when I encounter a programming game, I expect a problem-solving game - a series of tasks to be tackled with whatever resources are available - and Silicon Zeroes simply is not a problem-solving game. You don't want us to invent solutions, you want us to find whatever solutions you already came up with.
In a problem-solving game, mechanics exist to give the players more tools with which to achieve their goals. In a puzzle game, mechanics exist to give you more tools with which to design obstacles. Approaching this as a problem solving game, then, I feel jerked around, because (to reference the puzzle I quit the game over) the company already has subtract-chips and input-select chips and there's no reason for me not to use those. I can do what this egregious asshole of a fictional character is asking me to do, but you just won't let me - and that makes me feel jerked around by you, not just the character you want me to hate.
In a puzzle game, these design choices are fine. And if I knew this was a puzzle game, I wouldn't have minded because I wouldn't have played it. But I didn't know it was a puzzle game, so when it created meaningless challenges with no in-universe justification, I hated it.
I don't know if this is a helpful comment to you, but reading your reply to Mollyarty, I felt like you were missing a point, so I wanted to highlight it.
Oh, I definitely know it made a lot of people unhappy! It's the #1 complaint people made about the game, and if I'd known that coming in, I would have done things differently - put more work into the plot to justify it, rearranged the levels to keep parts being introduced more consistently, just had more superfluous parts included in levels...
It's something I've taken into account in my next game (Manufactoria 2022), for sure. I do want people to enjoy my games! This frustration just wasn't something I ever anticipated or saw in playtesters.
Absolutely love this game! Almost done with the pre-built puzzles; there is a LOT of content. I'm not sure how the custom levels work, however; the in-game community page is empty, and I don't see where to put puzzle files in the game folders. I am on Mac if that helps.
As someone currently taking a Computer Organization course, this game has been called both something that would 'make my brain melt out of my ears' and a 'homework simulator' by my friends.
Great idea, terrible difficulty curve from first to second board. Stop making games like this that give me hope I could actually beat one for once and then make me sad when there's an impenetrable wall that just exists to tell normal human beings to screw off.
Really sorry to hear you had a bad time! I certainly wasn't trying to create an impenetrable wall. Do you remember what puzzles gave you particular trouble?
Wow, this game crushed it. If you like Zachtronics games, especially the programming ones like Exapunks and Shenzhen I/O, then give this game a chance. Programming and CPU knowledge helps get into it, but if not then see it as an experience to learn some! Awesome game!
Unsurprisingly I love this game as its a genre thats been near and dear to me for almost 10 years now. The puzzles are very challenging and while other games in the programming genre tend to ease people soft into it, Silicon Zeroes is a lot less forgiving. Most Zachtronics style games treat these solutions as more of a sandbox, which you can solve in a variety of ways, while the limitations many levels give you require you to search for one particular solution. Its a great game though, just not as breezy as other comparable ones, which makes it a very enticing puzzle nut to crack. 4/5
Very nicely done. Excellent all around, and I can see why Zach Barth likes it :) UI polish especially is top notch, and it does a LOT to help you understand why things are working / not-working.
Zachtronics fans: this is very much in your wheelhouse. It's a no-brainer purchase, pick it up.
I'm generally not a big fan of puzzle games, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this game! I love the whole presentation of the whole game, very clear and understandable for someone like me! Thanks for adding it to the bundle!
I tried copying that from Celeste and now I'm getting an error about libSDL2_ttf-2.0.so.0 Is there a different game you'd recommend I copy from instead?
Sorry about the trouble! I don't have a Linux machine set up to test with, so it's hard to get all the issues like this sorted out. Thanks for giving the tip for others!
I actually failed my MSc Computer Science because I couldn't get my head around CPU architecture but this is a great puzzle game. The learning curve is steep but you can get there. Can I retake my exam based on this game, please?
I tried twice to purchase this but got this error from Paypal "Your payment can't be completed. Please return to the participating website and try again." TBH I kindof hate using PayPal and I'm not sure why there isn't just a plain credit card option as well (another game I just bought here had it). Hope you get this fixed!
Any idea why my payment is repeatedly refusing to go through for this? I'd have figured the PayPal handling was pretty much the same across itch, but I've successfully bought other games before and after my attempts to buy this and it's still not going through. The error isn't at all helpful, just "The payment could not be completed."
That's extremely strange. itch.io claims that I haven't had any purchases in months, and I definitely haven't gotten any money from them, so something seems very very broken. I'm going to contact the site admins.
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Seriously, this fucking piece of shit ruined my whole fucking night. FUCKING WHY DID YOU MAKE THIS?!
Hands down the single worst game I've ever played. Unrealistic and stupidly difficult for NO reason. They arbitrarily remove the shit you need from every level just to make it pointlessly difficult. This isn't a game, it's an anxiety attack. I have never once raged at any game I've ever played, I just quit, but I broke shit playing this horrid pile of shit. I simply cannot overstate how BAD this game is.
Really sorry to hear you didn't like the game! The restricted set of components in some levels are intended to explore the possibility space of the mechanics and to provide more variety in the puzzles, and even simplify things in some cases. I hope you feel less stressed soon!
I said this in a review I left, but I had the same kind of frustration as Mollyarty and I think it was a matter of expectations. Like, when I encounter a programming game, I expect a problem-solving game - a series of tasks to be tackled with whatever resources are available - and Silicon Zeroes simply is not a problem-solving game. You don't want us to invent solutions, you want us to find whatever solutions you already came up with.
In a problem-solving game, mechanics exist to give the players more tools with which to achieve their goals. In a puzzle game, mechanics exist to give you more tools with which to design obstacles. Approaching this as a problem solving game, then, I feel jerked around, because (to reference the puzzle I quit the game over) the company already has subtract-chips and input-select chips and there's no reason for me not to use those. I can do what this egregious asshole of a fictional character is asking me to do, but you just won't let me - and that makes me feel jerked around by you, not just the character you want me to hate.
In a puzzle game, these design choices are fine. And if I knew this was a puzzle game, I wouldn't have minded because I wouldn't have played it. But I didn't know it was a puzzle game, so when it created meaningless challenges with no in-universe justification, I hated it.
I don't know if this is a helpful comment to you, but reading your reply to Mollyarty, I felt like you were missing a point, so I wanted to highlight it.
Oh, I definitely know it made a lot of people unhappy! It's the #1 complaint people made about the game, and if I'd known that coming in, I would have done things differently - put more work into the plot to justify it, rearranged the levels to keep parts being introduced more consistently, just had more superfluous parts included in levels...
It's something I've taken into account in my next game (Manufactoria 2022), for sure. I do want people to enjoy my games! This frustration just wasn't something I ever anticipated or saw in playtesters.
Absolutely love this game! Almost done with the pre-built puzzles; there is a LOT of content. I'm not sure how the custom levels work, however; the in-game community page is empty, and I don't see where to put puzzle files in the game folders. I am on Mac if that helps.
Thanks for coming into the Discord the other day! Hope you had fun.
For future reference, if anyone else sees this, the answer was "~/Library/Application Support/Silicon Zeroes/community/".
This game convinced me that I hate electrical engineering 10/10 Recommended
:)
This game convinced me that I love electrical engineering, and now it's going to be my major in college lol. 10/10
Super cool. I love the aesthetic and the visual simplicity. I look forward to getting frustrated repeatedly.
It. would be great if I could refer to my solutions to previous problems in the current problem. A+ game by the way. Thanks for making this.
Copy-pasting and the 'palette' system are designed to let you re-use solutions between levels.
I really wanted an entire solution to be visible within a level, not hidden inside a link or a composite module or something like that.
Very happy to hear you enjoyed the game! :)
As someone currently taking a Computer Organization course, this game has been called both something that would 'make my brain melt out of my ears' and a 'homework simulator' by my friends.
Sounds right :)
Still fun though!
Great idea, terrible difficulty curve from first to second board. Stop making games like this that give me hope I could actually beat one for once and then make me sad when there's an impenetrable wall that just exists to tell normal human beings to screw off.
Really sorry to hear you had a bad time! I certainly wasn't trying to create an impenetrable wall. Do you remember what puzzles gave you particular trouble?
Wow, this game crushed it. If you like Zachtronics games, especially the programming ones like Exapunks and Shenzhen I/O, then give this game a chance. Programming and CPU knowledge helps get into it, but if not then see it as an experience to learn some! Awesome game!
Thanks, that's really nice of you to say!
Wow this game is amazing! I see there's support for custom levels, so I was just wondering if there's a database or forum that hosts them?
There are a few in the official discord: https://discord.gg/9nWhhDK . I'm not sure if there are any elsewhere, but I'd love to know!
really enjoing the game, played for 4 hours straight, really like how aesthetically pleasing everything is
Thanks!
I was enjoying myself until I got to Cows, where I realized I was too retarded for this game.
Ah, Cows is supposed to be quite a bit harder than everything else up to that point. It's totally optional!
(Also, please don't call things 'retarded' as an insult. I'd appreciate it.)
Unsurprisingly I love this game as its a genre thats been near and dear to me for almost 10 years now. The puzzles are very challenging and while other games in the programming genre tend to ease people soft into it, Silicon Zeroes is a lot less forgiving. Most Zachtronics style games treat these solutions as more of a sandbox, which you can solve in a variety of ways, while the limitations many levels give you require you to search for one particular solution. Its a great game though, just not as breezy as other comparable ones, which makes it a very enticing puzzle nut to crack. 4/5
More Racial Justice bundle impressions and ranking: https://itch.io/c/915453/quick-impressions-bundle-for-racial-justice
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the review - I think that's very fair.
Very nicely done. Excellent all around, and I can see why Zach Barth likes it :) UI polish especially is top notch, and it does a LOT to help you understand why things are working / not-working.
Zachtronics fans: this is very much in your wheelhouse. It's a no-brainer purchase, pick it up.
Thanks! I appreciate it.
I'm generally not a big fan of puzzle games, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this game! I love the whole presentation of the whole game, very clear and understandable for someone like me! Thanks for adding it to the bundle!
I'm really glad you had a good time! :)
Linux build misses libraries/libSDL2_image-2.0.so.0
You can copy that from your architecture from any other game in the bundle :)
I tried copying that from Celeste and now I'm getting an error about libSDL2_ttf-2.0.so.0
Is there a different game you'd recommend I copy from instead?
I copied mine from Dungeons and Lesbians if I remember correctly. https://noeybodys.itch.io/dungeonsandlesbians
Make sure you are copying the library for your distro: 32 or 64 bits
I was also asked for libjpeg.so.62, but Dungeons and Lesbians has that too (Ubuntu 20.04)
thanks
Sorry about the trouble! I don't have a Linux machine set up to test with, so it's hard to get all the issues like this sorted out. Thanks for giving the tip for others!
Mojave not supported, any new version update?
Works for me on Mojave, I just played through the first set of stages with no problems.
Oh the release file comments need update. thanks for your inform.
I actually failed my MSc Computer Science because I couldn't get my head around CPU architecture but this is a great puzzle game. The learning curve is steep but you can get there. Can I retake my exam based on this game, please?
Haha, I can try to ask your professor nicely :)
I tried twice to purchase this but got this error from Paypal "Your payment can't be completed. Please return to the participating website and try again." TBH I kindof hate using PayPal and I'm not sure why there isn't just a plain credit card option as well (another game I just bought here had it). Hope you get this fixed!
Thanks! So far I've gotten no response from itch support, but hopefully they'll get back to me soon.
Any idea why my payment is repeatedly refusing to go through for this? I'd have figured the PayPal handling was pretty much the same across itch, but I've successfully bought other games before and after my attempts to buy this and it's still not going through. The error isn't at all helpful, just "The payment could not be completed."
Yeah I'm having the same problem. Weird.
This still seems to be a problem, even though money got transfered.
That's extremely strange. itch.io claims that I haven't had any purchases in months, and I definitely haven't gotten any money from them, so something seems very very broken. I'm going to contact the site admins.
I'm enormously sorry for the inconvenience!
I've been informed that the problem was https://itch.io/t/643204/an-update-for-paypal-direct-to-you-payments#post-110376... . I've implemented the suggested fix, so people should be able to buy the game again. Please comment here if not and I'll talk to itch.io support again.
Once again, many apologies for the inconvenience!