
Zachademics: Free games for schools - Reedx
http://www.zachtronics.com/zachademics/
======
Waterluvian
When I was 9 I played Robot Odyssey, a notoriously difficult game even for
electrical engineers, obsessively all summer.

I got to the last level on my own and learned a TON about logic gates. Maybe
it's why I'm in robotics today.

The point I want to make is to never underestimate the capacity for children
to learn and never assume something's too difficult. You don't have to get far
for it to be a worthwhile endeavor.

Spacechem gave me a strong feeling of nostalgia for Robot Odyssey. It was very
difficult. Didn't hold your hand. And was totally open ended on how you solve
problems. Which results in feeling incredibly fulfilled when you do solve a
puzzle. That feeling was what hooked me. I was so proud.

~~~
efm
It's available online
[https://www.robotodyssey.online/](https://www.robotodyssey.online/)

~~~
taneq
I just tried this and the 'Rewired Palette' doesn't work for me, just gives a
white screen. The other two palettes seem to work fine though.

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faitswulff
Aside, but I notice that none of the games here are marked as a 5/5 in
difficulty. Having played some of their games, I wonder what constitutes a 5/5
in the creator's mind?!

Well. If you want a 5/5 challenge, fire up Shenzhen.io and set the language to
Chinese. It seems to be beautifully translated to my limited ability to
discern, but boy is it hard to learn enough Chinese to play the game!
Difficulty: 5/5

~~~
segfaultbuserr
> _Well. If you want a 5 /5 challenge, fire up Shenzhen.io and set the
> language to Chinese._

Ironically, in China some gamers complained that the game is kind of
unrealistic as all the datasheets are available in Chinese, it shouldn't and
it has made the game less challenging... In real life, engineers in Shenzhen
rarely read or write formal datasheets in Chinese, even when the IC is
completely designed in China.

Doing it in English can be a bit difficult for a freshman who is unfamiliar
with the terminology, which can make the game a bit more interesting. I wonder
if the developers should add a "native language w/ English documentation"
option for those who want a more authentic experience.

~~~
taneq
> Ironically, in China some gamers complained that the game is kind of
> unrealistic as all the datasheets are available in Chinese

Heh, I'd count it unrealistic if all the datasheets were available in _any_
language. As much as I rag on Google sometimes, Google Translate has been very
useful from time to time.

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bangonkeyboard
In case you missed it, ZACH-LIKE (the book of Zachtronics's history, design
documents, and prototypes) was recently released for free on Steam:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098840/ZACHLIKE/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1098840/ZACHLIKE/)

~~~
kej
And it's more than just a book, it includes playable versions of the web
games, which was the last thing I still had Flash installed for.

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umvi
SpaceChem is currently $2.50 on steam. I picked it up because I've never
played a Zachtronics game before. Despite the trailer looking stupid, I have
been blown away so far.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
This is subjective, of course, but I think SpaceChem is actually ranks at best
middle-tier compared to other Zachtronics titles.

Opus Magnum > TIS-100 > Exapunks > SpaceChem > Infinifactory > Shenzen I/O

~~~
umvi
I watched the trailer for opus magnum, and it basically looks identical to
SpaceChem, just on a hex grid with better graphics?

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
It's quite different. In SpaceChem the space is limited, the number of
instructions is limited (because the instructions share the physical space),
and you can only have 2 parallel operations.

Opus magnum has an unlimited space, unlimited instructions, and unlimited
parallel operations.

The similarity is just that they're both about linking elements to form
shapes.

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maxharris
Why just public schools? At least in California (and I suspect elsewhere),
teachers at private schools are paid quite a bit _less_ than public school
teachers.

I know this because I used to work at a private school! I did that for two
years, then left all of it for a tech job so that I could climb out of student
loan debt and actually have a decent life. (The basic issue is that parents
can't afford to pay more because they pay _twice_ for education: first they
pay taxes to send other kids to school, and _then_ they pay private school
tuition on top of that for their own kids. The result is tens of thousands of
dollars in lower pay for private school teachers.)

Anyway, the point of this isn't to dump on anyone's school. I just want to
help correct the idea that private schools are somehow less worthy of care and
attention than public schools are. The truth is that private schools are often
in financially precarious circumstances!

~~~
elil17
Private schools can use the games, they just have to be not-for-profit (as
opposed to a for-profit school, like DeVry). The vast majority of private
schools are not-for-profit.

~~~
maxharris
What about the school I worked at? Students were aged ~4-13. We were
definitely for-profit, but we never managed to make a profit.

~~~
elil17
Those are just really rare - only a few states (Wisconsin, California,
Michigan, Massachusetts, and Arizona) even allow private companies to accept
charter money, and for-profit charters make up the vast majority of for-profit
schools in America (see [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-
profit_education](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_education) and
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_management_organiz...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_management_organization)).
Whether these corporations should even be allowed to exist is controversial
and it’s entirely possible Zach doesn’t support them. Sounds like the place
you worked was an edge case.

~~~
maxharris
> Charter schools

We didn't take _any_ charter money because it comes with strings. We were
doing our own curriculum development. (Everyone there had a healthy distaste
for the standard curriculum that gets taught in most places.)

And before you start, we were secular. Most of us, including myself, were/are
atheists!

Maybe I did work at an edge case, but I still think that this is an edge case
the world needs more of.

~~~
elil17
Nothing at all against your school! Sounds like you were doing great work

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Simulacra
I worked on a team that was giving away a video game to public schools, but we
had a really hard time convincing anyone to take the game. They wanted
technical support and other things we couldn't provide. We just had the game.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Someone could form a company or nonprofit to support such games/tools.

~~~
sitkack
I would give money to something like PBS but for smart, DLC-free, ad-free open
source games.

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nothis
Zachtronics is a beautiful developer. Such a niche genre, so perfectly
executed. I'm a bit behind but just started Shenzen I/O. It's a programming
puzzle game done _right_. This is perfect for schools, it's genuine
programming-thinking packed into a game-like challenge.

It's interesting that SpaceChem apparently isn't included? Maybe because the
kinda fake chemistry would drive science teachers mad?

~~~
jcl
SpaceChem's omission is probably just oversight. The SpaceChem page itself
makes a similar offer, with the same link to Zach's e-mail:
[http://www.zachtronics.com/spacechem/](http://www.zachtronics.com/spacechem/)

A fun anecdote from a GDC talk
([https://archive.org/details/GDC2013Barth](https://archive.org/details/GDC2013Barth)
at 21:57):

 _U.K. schools: We want to use SpaceChem to teach programming familiarity.

Eastern European schools: We want to use SpaceChem to teach problem solving.

U.S. schools: We want to use SpaceChem to teach chemistry._

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dyarosla
This is a very popular model for educational/education-adjacent titles. Not
surprising that zachtronics has also filed suit.

Schools generally don’t purchase solutions that don’t have content that fills
their entire curriculum’s needs (eg. think a product that covers all of a
subject from grades 1-8)

This way, schools act as a great marketing channel for these educational
products which are downloaded at the discretion of individual teachers for
their particular one-off introductions/lesson plans. Then parents purchase
paid versions for their kids at home.

This model can be seen (and has found success) with educational apps Prodigy,
Codespark Academy (Foos), and more.

This is not to say it’s purely a marketing ploy- there’s plenty of social good
too to being able to expand your content’s reach for educational purposes to
many many more players and students than you may have otherwise without a free
for schools model.

~~~
SolarNet
> This is not to say it’s purely a marketing ploy- there’s plenty of social
> good too to being able to expand your content’s reach for educational
> purposes to many many more players and students than you may have otherwise
> without a free for schools model.

Especially games that teach something as fundamental to the future, and
lacking in good course work, as programming. These are probably one of the
best collection of tools for such content.

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soup10
In addition to their engineering games Zachtronics made Infiniminer, the main
precursor to Minecraft.

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el_cujo
Zach's games are great, I'd heartily recommend TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O, and
Exapunks to anyone. Despite his ratings on the site, I actually found
Infinifactory the most difficult of the bunch for me, but maybe that just
means I'm not as good at spatially oriented puzzles.

~~~
Sahhaese
I'm the same, I find TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O reasonably comfortable in
comparison to the other titles. I haven't completed either, I've almost
completed TIS-100, but shenzhen I/O really pushes me way beyond my comfort
zone but is more fun. I struggled to even get into spacechem or infinifactory
at all. I found exapunks trickier to reason about but in a different way, I
got stuck on a tree search puzzle where I find it tricky to match what I
expect to happen with what actually executes because of I struggle to reason
about the lifetime of the workers. (I've just realised I think I also struggle
to program in Rust because of similar problems reasoning about lifetimes and
borrowing).

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gravypod
I love all of the TIS-like Zachtronics games. I remember ignoring a professor
and finishing the hidden puzzle during a 6-9 humanities class a few semesters
ago.

It's the perfect mesh between "fake" and a real skillset.

I could also definitely see having a school leaderboard (to optimize for the
best solutions against class mates) being very fun.

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sandGorgon
have a lot of respect for companies who do this. Just want to chime in from a
developing nation perspective.

we have no computers - no laptops, no desktops. All of India is on mobile
phones (usually Android). It would be awesome if future educational content is
developed mobile only.

Toolkits like Flutter, AWS Lumberyard and React Native allow for ios+android
games being built.

The only reason that mobile based education games for children are not as
popular as they could be in the US ..is because of the fundamental concern
around "smartphones==bad". I think Steam can do a lot here by allowing
parental+time based locks around games.

A problem worth solving.

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tianshuo
`SHENZHEN I/O contains minor references to drugs and alcohol and a little bit
of swearing. It takes place in China and includes Chinese characters and
situations. Students may acquire an increased sense of the ridiculousness of
modern capitalist society.`

LOL. Shenzhen I/O is the only Zachademics game I bought on Steam and is
actually an addictive card game, with a programming game as an Easter egg.

~~~
chongli
By the way, you can get Shenzhen Solitaire on iOS [1]. I play it on my phone
all the time!

[1] [https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/shenzhen-
solitaire/id120603777...](https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/shenzhen-
solitaire/id1206037778)

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azhenley
I would love to use these games as activities in my undergraduate software
engineering course, but it says they must be installed on school computers :(

All of our students are required to purchase their own laptops so we aren’t
eligible.

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flying_sheep
Damn I need to revisit my solutions to compete with millions of new
submissions :-)

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syockit
I thought KOHCTPYKTOP would be featured :( It got me into pondering how actual
logic circuits work (as opposed to theoretical circuits with instant output).

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moxidize
I wish there had been an exa-punks club when I was in school. I'd have spent
less time NOOPing around.

