This might be the most polished Zachtronics game. I'd rank the logic challenges as similar to Spacechem, but the look, feel, and sound of the mechanical arms moving the elements around is somehow more satisflying and addictive. The cycles, cost, and area histograms are well done and (jinx alert) don't seem to have been hacked. The dev could have done one thing to make the game less frustrating. One [i]could[/i] ask for multiple actions per cycle (why can't an arm rotate while sliding along a track) I'll shrug that off. Here is the biggie: Almost all automation tasks consist of an initialization stage followed by a main loop. Initialize the pipeline before you run it. Opus Magnum provides no way to exclude the initialization actions from your loop. Due to this, I waffled over whether to award 5 stars. Satisfying, but it could have been more satisfying.
I missed out on Descent, but this is the real deal. Looks great by 2024 standards. Native Linux version is buttery smooth. The single player campaign is good. I doubt I'll reach a skill level where I want to try multiplayer, but that isn't the game's fault. The multiplayer matches I watched on streaming services looked intense!
