Includes 63 Corvi DLC.
Take on the role of a Reactor Engineer working for SpaceChem, the leading chemical synthesizer for frontier colonies. Construct elaborate factories to transform raw materials into valuable chemical products! Streamline your designs to meet production quotas and survive encoun...
Take on the role of a Reactor Engineer working for SpaceChem, the leading chemical synthesizer for frontier colonies. Construct elaborate factories to transform raw materials into valuable chemical products! Streamline your designs to meet production quotas and survive encounters with the sinister threats that plague SpaceChem.
SpaceChem is an intriguing, "problem-solving centric" puzzle game by Zachtronics Industries that combines the logic of computer programming with the scientific domain of chemistry, set in an original science fiction universe. Players build machines using mechanics similar to visual programming that assemble and transform chemical compounds. Players later connect those machines together to form complex pipelines, and ultimately construct special pipelines to fight back against space-monsters that threaten humanity. In addition to being challenging and mentally stimulating, it's been described as "one of the year's best indie games" by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, a leading PC gaming website.
Solid entertainment that exercises your brain muscles.
An original soundtrack by Evan Le Ny, whose music was featured in The Codex of Alchemical Engineering!
Acclaimed by critics: 7/8 from Out of Eight, 89/100 at PCGamer, 9/10 from Eurogamer, and 9.5/10 at Igromania.
Goodies
soundtrack
avatars
concept arts
design sketches
System requirements
Minimum system requirements:
Recommended system requirements:
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Recommended system requirements:
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Why buy on GOG.COM?
DRM FREE. No activation or online connection required to play.
This game has had me coming back and replaying levels over and over. Not only does it challenge you to build a process for transforming molecules, it pits you against the entire playerbase by displaying your scores for three stats (very relevant in-game... space consuming to explain them here though) against graphs of the entire community's performance.
That, plus the ability to totally re-think your designs and eke out a little bit more speed or use a couple less instructions, makes for delightfully addicting gameplay! Out of all the games I've picked up in the Humble Indie Bundles, this is the one that I consistently keep firing back up. :D
I've put a lot of hours into this game, a LOT of them, and I still haven't come close to finishing. Best value I've gotten out for my gaming dollar in a long time.
The basic idea is that you're running 'factories' to assemble atoms. You're setting up a visual program using "waldoes", one red, and one blue. Each factory is divided into a workspace of something like 12x12 space, and you design paths for your waldoes to travel over to accomplish your goal.
Early on, you have to do very simple things, like simply take atoms from the input to the output, which teaches you how to route waldoes, how to pick up and drop atoms, and how to pass them out of the reactor when you're done with them. Later missions get gradually more and more complex, as you start to go to multi-factory layouts.
The difficulty ramp in this game is very steep. My experience was being handed, over and over, puzzles that looked flatly impossible to solve. But thinking your way through these things is just amazingly fun. I don't know what it is about Spacechem, but this game absolutely puts me in the zone, and keeps me there for hours at a time. I'm not usually a big puzzle-game fanatic, but something about this game grabbed me HARD. I've lost count of the number of times I've gotten completely stuck and temporarily given up, only to have a new idea, hours later, and then come back and solve a previously-impossible puzzle in short order.
There are multiple skill levels to this game, and after you've gotten through four or five sets of scenarios, you'll go back to your early ones, and be amazed at how much more efficient you've learned to be.
There's a demo available from the main site, and I suggest VERY STRONGLY that you check it out. I'm not normally a big puzzle fanatic, but Spacechecm is different, and awesome.
Imagine me reaching out of your monitor, grabbing you by the collar, and imploring you to go play the demo. I don't know if you'll like the game, but I'm utterly, deadly certain that you should try the free demo.
You can't just call this game a time killer, it will ruin your life, cause your pets to divorce you, and grow a sporty beard (you, not the game).
I love puzzle games, and although I had never heard of the game, wondered what on earth it was, I bought it anyway. Bang goes my life!
If you ever liked pipeline where you had to complete a pipe before the water flowed, you are going to adore this.
It does require a bit more thought (a lot more actually) and the instructions are a little fuzzy to start with, but you soon get the idea. Build a path for the Waldo to follow and give it instructions along the way to pick up, make, break and drop molecules. the trick is never letting two molecules crash, and never allowing timing of the Waldos to stray too much. This is one of those games you keep having "just one more go", and revisitng levels to see if you can do better.
I am really pleased I took the plunge on this one and seriously recommend it to anyone looking for something different.
Ok, so I love maths and machines, but this is pure beauty. You build a system which converts water and CO2 in methane and the molecules literally dance.
I'll say this: it's a puzzle. It's a very fine crafted puzzle without time constraints. That's the basics, so if you like this type of games, keep reading. If not, Spacechem is not for you.
The very gem of this game is his sandbox approach: except of the 'big boss' puzzle, you can do WHATEVER YOU WANT. You have some starting chemicals, and you have to manufacture some others, and for doing it you have some tools. Whatever you do with those tools is up to you. You could build a very fast process with a lot of symbols (instructions), or a very efficient one with a few symbols but quite slow. You can hack a solution inefficient and slow to advance and then revisit the old level to refine that solution with fewer symbols and less cycles. It's like the incredible machine but with the incentive of going back to rebuild your past levels in a better way. And the push to do it is presented to you after every level: a comparison with the other players in terms of reactors, symbols and cycles used.
Isn't it enough? You have an entire library of custom levels to hone your skills (once you prove yourself worthy... or hack your access). If you like it, you won't run out of puzzles, that's for sure.
The only thing that let me down is the cloud save. I lost all the progess after reinstalling windows. But the fulfillment after you solve the puzzle is so wonderful, just like you try so hard to debug your program and finally it works.
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