This is a logic puzzler with a theme of electronics and assembly language. It is not an educational game, not realistic, not teaching assembly, electronics etc. If you have fun, exploring how things work (even looking into the manual), and not just finding a solution, but optimizing it, if you can focus for long time, if you have a programming background and dont mind some lack of realism (like no binary operations but operations on decimal digits), this is the game for you. The puzzle design is excellent, but if you like clean elegant designs, it will sometimes be frustrating, because you have very limited means and do deal with that, you need to use some ugly tricks, like connecting different things to the same pin, reading from address pointer, write wrong output and then just overwrite it, etc.. The puzzles are built in a way that it is challenging to find a good solution and there are often some extras that prevent a nice and straight forward design. Despite you have logic gates and even a pga, this is less useful for the puzzles, most often it is about connecting small controllers and using tricks in their assembly code, the game leaves some potential unused here. It is quite polished but I still miss some QOL features. Font in the user interface is unneccessarily too small. Sandbox and being able to create own puzzles is nice, modding support would be even better. Compared to Human Resource Machine which I also did play, for me Shenzhen IO is more difficult and less educational.
This is rather classical point and click adventure, but with the modern touch of nice graphics, hotspot system and in game help. The setting is quite unique, the story is ok (idealist communist from western country gets confronted with actually existing socialism). Game is not very long but still offers some hours of gameplay. Artwork comes with a lot of love for details, but story and characters are a bit flat. The game is meant to be funny, but the humor works only in some moments. Puzzles are well done, not too easy, but also not too difficult nor too hilarious. Genre veterans won't have any trouble. Minigames are decent, too, personally, I don't like minigames in adventure games, in particular not if they are based on speed/reaction. Lots of references to other adventure games. For a genre fan and in particular when on discount I'd recommend this game. Play it in english. And yes, this game is a satirical comment on real socialism. If you're such a huge fan of Stalin style government that you can't enjoy someone making fun of some of its flaws, this might not be the game for you.
The number of rogue lite deck builders is large, but only few are really good - this is one of the weaker ones. The concept is nice: Fighting phobias, having story/psychological context feels fresh. But there is no depth in it, its rather stereotypical. The game mechanics are rather common: You attack the phobias, which have HP and block, you have action points and energy, the deck evolves throughout a run, there is meta-progress unlocking new cards and monsters (phobias) and there is a lot of randomness. The game combines some nice ideas (nothing really new though) but really lacks some polishing. In particular the balancing is way off. There are some combinations that are really overpowered and some cards that are rather weak. As most deckbuilders we have here a combination of your choices and the random number generator, so success in the game comes from a mix of strategy and luck. For my personal taste, it is too much based on luck. User interface has some flaws, too. It looks a bit chaotic and what is the worst: If you get a new trait, you have to click equip before hitting the big continue button, else it is just lost. What is nice: There are different emotions with slightly different bonus and starting deck and a second character with an additional stacking mechanic and different cards. It does not take too long until you have seen almost everything, but I think that this is good. Forcing players to grind for meta-progression wouln't have been good for that game. More different characters and play styles could have been nice, but certainly not at the cost of even worse balancing. If you are really into exploring all the different deckbuilders that exist, it can be an intersting experience, but besides from the scenario, don't expect anything new or special from this one, that had not been done better already by another game.
It works well on Linux through wine/PlayOnLinux. Gameplay is similar to the predecessor, some weekness eliminated (less clicky micromanagement), new things added, some thibgs changed: a new world to explore, cobquer or colonize. Old world minor nations no longer become colonies but your territory. Improved transportation system, more technology. Trade seems a bit less important, you cannot sell to minor nations once they joined your empire. For money supply diamonds, gems and gold from the new world work best. Gameplay is a bit long. Difficulty is challenging, you have to use your brain: E.g. building army reduces your workforce and you need to feed them. It can be better to wait. I don't like the tactical combat much, ut it's neccessary because the AI does not fight so well.
Spielmechanik ist 100% klassisches Point&Click, sehr solide umgesetzt. Was besonders gut ist: Story und Charaktere. Und das Prequel am Schluss ist außergewöhnlich!
