TIS-100

Elegant and devious. Pure logic.

Don't let the simple graphics & assembly language themeing put you off, this is a Zachtronics game first and foremost and it's really a lot of fun. maybe not the best one to start with, but if you like their other games (Spacechem, Opus Magnum, Shenzhen I/O, etc.) then this one's worth checking out for sure.

Some of the puzzles are hard. Beating the others in optimization is much harder. Great product, great price.

... for one good reason : it's not a game. At least not a video game. So add 2 stars if you're a developper and you enjoy it, remove 2 stars oteherwise. So basically, if you are not a developper, if the terms JNE or Accumulator doesn't mean anything to you, just not buy it. You'll never understand anything, would be even more puzzled after finishing the game manual... you might eventually grasps some basis notions with some walkthrough but it's definitivly not worth the headaches.... if you want to leaarr programming just grab some tutos and be done ! If you're a developper you may find it enjoyable. It's a sort of simplified ASM environnement in which you have to solve logical problems. A sort of sudoku for dev... but much more enjoyable imho

The game is awesome, but... There's a problem with it on Linux - it always, as soon as the game is started, before any emulation begins, uses at least one CPU thread to the max. Thus one less star.