Seems like a cool game, I'll probably try the demo soon. By the way, I noticed that the demo didn't show up in my library on Galaxy, and using the "download now" button from the website did allow me to download the demo through Galaxy, but it appears as "unknown game". Is this related to the problem GOG had with downloads a while ago, or is it something different?

Are we talking about the same game? On steam it's listed as MMO with in-app puchases, while here on GOG it's tagged as storyrich...

I guess it's possible to make a game about programming bots, that also has a story rich singleplayer component, and a multiplayer pvp component, and a co-op multiplayer component... developed by an indie studio... as their first project...

I'll keep an eye out for this.

Honestly, try the demo first. I feel like it's missing in clarity and documentation, for what it's supposedly trying to do, and the demo mission almost doesn't count as a mission (it's terribly basic, so much so it's hard to get a good feel for the game).

As for the MMO part, maybe you can pit the bots you program against those of other users, I can't imagine this having any traditional MMO gameplay... Also, there is NO way this is going to be "story rich", unless we call flavour text "story rich" now.

I tried the demo as well.

First off, the installation required to be run as administrator for me.
It installs a full Python environment in the background. Not sure if this interferes with existing Python installations.

Also, not sure if it is possible to break out of the game environment and run other code than the game intended with the game's privileges. I expect this to be possible. After all, it is running a Python script on a full Python instance, where I can load additional libraries. At the very least, I should be able to side load the standard Python libraries.

It does look an awful lot like a MMO with the login screen and chat box, but it doesn't do any registration in the demo. Need to wait for reviews after release to see what is what in the GOG version - maybe they stripped it?

I'm okay with not having a tutorial. I know my way around Python and don't need them to run me through a full Python-101 again. But it is obvious that noobs coming in with zero programming skills might benefit from being eased into writing Python code through a much longer tutorial that starts with the basics.

However, what the game desperately requires, even for veteran programmers, is a better IDE. What it comes with offers zero features beyond rudimentary syntax highlighting. There is no autocomplete, no in-game function documentation, parameter hints, no debugging.

How am I supposed to work with a library I have never seen before, if there is no API documentation and no auto-complete either? Hell, the game doesn't even bother to list the global variables it throws at you. You are supposed to navigate by giving the bot coordinates to move towards, but doesn't show you a map and offers no points of reference. I'm basically guessing where the hell (0,0) is, and I have no clue where (700,520) will move the robot. You won't know unless you save the script, click "load", move to the deployment screen, deploy, wait several seconds for the game to fire up Python and run the script, then review the results. This is an awful lot of work just to figure out whether I have a typo somewhere. And even then, you get ZERO error messages and no information of what went wrong.

Sorry, but even for a hardcore programmer of 30 years like me, unless they improve by leaps and bounds, this is no fun!

Update: I went to the website.

Turns out, this is a (very) niche title for hardcore nerds, a competitive multiplayer "game" for programmers with at least some year(s) of prior experience writing Python.

The idea is competitive Python coding. You write Python scripts for a specific scenario, the game runs them for you in a real Python environment, and then takes the generated log file to visualize what has happened.

There is a chance you will want to do the actual programming not in the game but in a proper IDE.

You then send your Python script either to a friend, or their (or any other) online server. Other coders download your script, run and review it for weaknesses, and write their own code to compete against yours. Once they counter your coding, you have the option to improve your script to defeat their code, and so on.

Supported modes are COOP and PvP. They say there will be a single player campaign, but they don't say if that will be more than a glorified tutorial.

Whether this sounds appealing will be up to players to decide. I would wait for reviews.

There is ZERO documentation as of now. There is also no tutorial to ease players into Python and there won't be any at release. Some sort of in-game documentation is promised for the future, but they hint that you might be required to read up on details on their website. However, even that documentation doesn't exist yet.

They hint that they might support other languages than Python in the future, but this will not be upon release or any time soon.

What's more: The game will most certainly have Multiplayer-DRM. Meaning, even though you don't need other players to be online to "play" against them (there is ZERO player interaction at runtime) you still need a centralized server to download the code from. You will also have to have some sort of login to upload the scripts you create.

I would expect you can play with offline multiplayer, BUT: I don't think there is a point to it.

Limiting multiplayer to offline means you are turning an already slow experience into a programmer's version of pigeon chess. Each player is writing their own code, then send each other the script via e-mail. Your friend then manually integrates the file into the game. I suppose, you could set up a GIT repository and work on it together, but ... would you really?

Not that online multiplayer wouldn't be just as cumbersome. But at least, online, you don't have to wait a few days (or weeks) for your friend to come around to change the script for their bot, after you sent them your new, cool PvP bot script.

I can, however, see this title to be a nice niche game to be played as a team-building exercise on a programmer's retreat, or perhaps on a hackatron.

Yeah, when I asked the devs if there was any documentation, I was sent a link to their wiki with some basics.

https://typhon.game/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

The way this is setup is probably too niche, even for me. The stuff you can do out of the box seems fairly limited, which means almost everything will have to be coded from the ground up if you hope to create something worthwhile, and once you do, you can probably recycle it, the challenge seems to be heavily front loaded.

I guess what I am trying to say is that this is too close to work for comfort for most, I assume (including me).