Opus Magnum Review 

2:25 That feels when you get called out by a RU-vidr for using his videos as a sleep aid...

Opus Magnum is my favourite Zachtronics right now. I'm not that good at puzzles, so actually being able to solve puzzles without being completely stuck is nice. It also really helped me going back to other Zachtronics games, going back to Infinifactory after Opus really trained my problem solving and I was able to solve the puzzle that made me quite that game last time. I'm really glad you made this video series, it exposed me to games that actually made me think after so much mindless work I had to do at work, I haven't felt like it since I learned programming at Highschool, which makes me happy.

And now for the 6th video in this 5 video series: EXAPUNKS

I've enjoyed seeing this series paint a picture of this 'genre' of games, despite not playing any of them myself. I can't say i have too much of an interest myself in purchasing them, but I'm glad you're putting out these videos and promoting these games. I've learned a lot by watching them about what makes games- puzzle games specifically- work.

For what it’s worth, Opus Magnum’s relaxing aesthetic and more beautiful, simplistic presentation make this the only Zacktronics game I’m interested in trying, besides maybe infinifactory. Art and visual design go a long way to selling the package.

*I AWAKEN*

Great series of videos. That ending got a sensible chuckle out of me. Whatever you decide to do next, I hope you'll enjoy making it as much as we enjoy watching it.

Opus did add a secret optimization goal in the form of style. Opus magnum, as the prettiest Zachtronics game, has the most appeal for making aesthetically pleasing solutions. This is hinted at in the trailer with the line "embrace symmetry." The Opus Magnum subreddit is full of beautiful, funny, or stylish solutions. For me, this made it one of the best, while being undoubtedly the easiest of the bunch. It would be pretty cool to hear your take on Exapunks, since it seemed to me like the first time the story really meshed with the gameplay.

It took me a second view to catch the "Thank you for looking" message at the end, but I really appreciated that. Thanks for this series, Matthew. I've gained a lot of appreciation for a set a games I wouldn't have otherwise given a second glance.

Loved the ending.

Hey Matt! I've watched nearly all your videos, thanks so much for putting them together. Smart, relaxed and always interesting. Keep it up : )

Matt when are you reviewing Call of Duty Black Ops 5?

I wanna thank you for showing me these games and giving such a passionate analysis. I don't think most of them are for me, but through the analysis I came to understand and appreciate a lot of things about games in general.

This pretty nicely covers why I use Opus as my "intro to Zachtronics" recommendation for people. If you enjoy it but want harder and deeper, the rest of Zachtronics is an utter joy. Plus then you know the core mechanic is enjoyable, and the lesser UI polish won't put you off. If you didn't particularly enjoy the occasional struggle / optimization / etc and just solved stuff in brute force ways because you wanted to check the box: it's probably best to stop here.

I've been waiting for this video for such a long time. Great job, Matthew :-).

Hated puzzle games before seeing this series. So far tried this and Infinifactory. Infinifactory just didn't hook me. I felt like I could be playing minecraft and learning redstone instead and certain things didn't make sense to me in a 3d space. Opus Magnum on the other hand is in my top ten most played games. I'm very close to platinuming it and I pop it on regularly. Such a great game to relax to, or to really puzzle my brain to. Better than that, I was stuck on a puzzle when I was still learning and emailed Zach for a bug report. He watched my solution, emailed me back and pointed out exactly where I'd missed a connection. Absolute legend

Just want to say, thanks for this series Matt. I love Spacechem, and I'm glad you used your skills on a series that's gone under-served by commentators and critics alike. Alchemical engineering is exactly what I needed today.

Both spacechem and opus magnum had three evaluation metrics. However I think most people would agree that in spacechem elapsed cycles was far and away the main thing to optimize for, unless you were going back to do other challenges. However in Opus Magnum there is a disconnect between the type of optimization the puzzle mechanics encourage, and the type of optimization encourage in the way players are evaluated. The puzzle mechanics and visual design encourages players to develop *elegant* solutions (similar to your thoughts on your favorite solutions in space chem at 9:40). An elegant solution balances four metrics: cycles, cost, area, and instructions. Balancing all these elements creates very aesthetic rhythmic solutions that are a joy to watch. Unfortunately, the way that you are evaluated by the game is by measuring the best you have performed in each of these metrics individually. As you've pointed out, squeezing out fewer cycles often involves cheesing with long instruction counts. Other metrics are similar, where marginal improvements often requires massive reductions in the other categories. This means that in order to be evaluated highly players must create multiple inelegant hyper-specialized solutions. A solution to this disconnect that I would have liked to see is inclusion of "Guilds" who would evaluate solutions as a composite of the various metrics, with each guild weighting the metrics differently. This would allow for more cohesion between the self-directed nature of the game and the gentle spur toward competition offered by the evaluation metrics.

Matthewmatosis video = detailed, quality content. One of the only RU-vidrs who can get me to watch reviews for games that I’m not interested in playing.

Literally love Zachtronics and your Videos. This whole series has been like a whole RU-vid series made especially for meeee...

Opus magnum sounds like a high end brand of condoms.

Awesome, now Matt gets to take a break until Exapunks comes out.

A nice final episode. I love that little personal message through all the games you threw in at the end. Opus Magnum sounds like that game to maybe keep me playing. In every other game I've hit a wall eventually and given up, while it seems that this one doesn't have as much of that "How the fuck am I going to accomplish this?" fear associated with it. The movement of the arms also seems quite soothing and hypnotic to watch. I look forward to your next video project.

The pretty visuals, hex grid and less complicating constraints made me try to make a pleasingly symmetric solution for most levels, which is something I don’t have the brainpower for in other zachtronics games at all.

really good review and channel, nice one

Just curious, but will there be an Exapunks review at some point in the future?

Thank you for making these videos, Zachtronics needs as much recognition as they can get. I think your Zelda/MGS/Mario videos can be watched and understood even if you never played those games, which is something you can't really say for the Zachtronics games, so I hope you don't get discouraged by many of these comments. As for me, I'm not into optimizing. I'm happy just being able to complete the levels even if the histogram wants to kill itself. So Opus Magnum was a bit disappointing. "Too easy" is something I really never wanted to say about a Zachtronics game.

Based Matt working the casual smarks in to a shoot

Hurray! Great work finishing the series!

14:33 G stands for Guilder In the dialogue for a warming tonic in chapter 3 when asked for more Anateus responds "What, are you trying to make a few extra guilder on the side?" to which Nils responds "Not everything I do is for money[...]" I know I'm years late but I just now got this game because of this review and wanted to point it out, if you ever read this I hope your game's going well, thank you for all of the top notch analysis over the years, even now it's still vastly appreciated.

another great one matthew

Been loving these Zachtronics reviews! Keep it up!

Solid review, you covered a lot of my thoughts. Opus Magnum is very polished, but is by far the easiest of all the Zachtronics games. Which has its strengths and weaknesses, as you laid out. It's fine for one game to go in that direction, but I hope it isn't part of a larger trend.

The atmosphere of Infinifactory gives me this feeling of calm, I can't really explain, but it's there.

Is there any chance that you will cover Exapunks?

If you think these games look boring then you should try them because you might be surprised.

Imagine complaining about high quality in depth free content dedicated to underrepresented products in a volatile industry that no one is forcing you to watch in 2018

Nice review!

IMO, Opus Magnum is actually a great place to start, if you are new to these kinds of puzzles, and the one that I'll recommend to new-comers!

A great review, as always. This was my first Zachtronics game, introduced to me by a friend, I chose it over Infinifactory due to its good looks. I was and am not disappointed, it is a great experience, but I stopped playing after 20 hours, fresh into stage 5, due to some of the things you mentioned. Basically, I realized that you can force your way through with enough patience somewhere around stage 2, building slow, inefficient megamachines, which seemed to me as cheating or scumming- not the methodical planning & solution-game it is supposed to be. So I started optimizing early, putting a lot more effort into each machine then was needed, without any real reward for it, which just made me lose interest over time and quit. I could finish the game if I wanted, but that would be more busywork then actual problemsolving. So I did not bother and regret it every time I stare at my steam library... A shame, as it is a fun game.

I'm surprised you didn't say anything about the lack of a zoom function, it seemed a strange omission when emphasis is put on being able to make your solution as large as you want to not have a way to see all of it at one time short of finishing it and exporting the gif.

You should really do a video on the new Zachtronics game EXAPUNKS

Opus magnum is the best introduction to the zachtronics library

Have you ever considered doing a full analysis on the first Deus Ex game from 2000? I would love to see you go into it.

*Excellent comparison on how Zactronics game's teach you the philosophies that were used to design them* "hEY LOOK ATTHE WAVEY ROBOT"

meaning "grand & final ultimate masterpiece"

That sendoff is fantastic. Taking a page outta the Mario games, are ya, Matthew?

More solid content i love it

cant wait for you to cover Molek Synth

I guess I can sort of see what you mean about Cost and Area being the same, but I don't think I really agree, at least past the first couple chapters. At the start yeah, most minimum area solutions are just replace the arm in your minimum cost solution with a piston, but later on Cost becomes by far the most boring and tedious thing to optimise, whereas I found Area probably the most interesting. I think part of it is that Cost and Cycles both have a fairly obvious 'rule' to getting the minimum: Cost: Only use 1 standard arm, and fill it with a stupid amount of instructions Cycles: Take from every reagent every 2 cycles If you're not doing those things, you're not going to get a low solution, and when you realise that it makes the optimisation feel a bit more formulaic, though Cycles is still certainly fun. Area on the other hand doesn't really have a hard rule to it. You're not bound to using 1 arm, since sometimes adding another can save more space than it adds. You should generally avoid rotating, but it's often doable without adding to the Area. I'm pretty sure I even have some solutions where I was able to save space by using a second bonder etc... instead of having to rotate. I also just enjoyed the art of finding a place to put intermediate steps of a product without them adding to the area, and that's something that has a huge amount of possibilities due to how you can arrange all the pieces. Also worth pointing out that you can usually get minimum cycle (or close) infinite product solutions that loop by being a bit creative with how you move things around, rather than just pasting the whole thing 6 times and adding an extra move on the end. I was always really happy with how this one came out (Though it is admittedly one off the minimum): i.imgur.com/Ae0bqJ2.gif

I've never played a Zachtronics game before, but they seem interesting. The only thing is.. which one should I buy (first)? I've been thinking about either Opus Magnum or Exapunks..

That "wake up" fucked me up

I'm sure we all love your voice ;)

Now that the last zachtronics game has been made, will you review the rest of them?

Great video!!! Loads of interesting observations but G stands for guilder, not gold (See dialogue after completing Warming Tonic)

I know this video is quite old but the "g" that cost is measured by is actually for guilder, not gold. As far as I can tell this is only ever brought up once in the main campaign and maybe never in the additional content, but it is there.

Listening to Matthew talk about puzzle games is my fetish.

make more leo and satan

I actually fell asleep, and just wake up to hear you saying wake up

Can't believe that people complain about the game types you review, I mean you only need a review type like this to see what games you don't know what they are about... are about. I have played these games now and have to say that it was damm good decision

Man, I feel compelled to buy this game just for the beautiful art design. I've only ever seen the screen where the game takes place.

I still have no idea how to play the garden

Will you get back to this series by reviewing later games by Zachtronics, like EXAPUNKS and MOLEK-SYNTEZ? Or maybe even Zach-likes by other developers, like human resource machine, 7 billion humans, while true: learn? Especially the last one I am interested in what you think. I really liked this series. You have put together excellent reviews, comparing the games, giving pro's and cons and giving people a good idea about what would be the best game(s) to play or to start with, if already interested in these types of games. Thank you. More info on me: I have played (and finished completely) Human Resource Machine a couple of years ago and always had an eye out for Zachtronics, but never took the step. Now I have started Shenzhen I/O and probably will try some others too, maybe Opus Magnum on the side as you kind of suggested. ;)

Are you going to review exapunks?

Any plans on reviewing exapunks?

Make a video on the last guardian

I was wondering if you played the game "pixle dungeon" it's a game for phone and PC. I was watching your pit fall review, and you mentioned randomly generated levels. Pixle dungeon has the same mechanic but uses it in a very interesting way. I think you'd like it. Maybe check it out. I'd love to hear a review on it from you.

Of course I'm looking

You joke, but I have actually fallen asleep to your relaxing voice.

Surprised there's no mention of the gif export function. I thought this was a stroke of genius, considering how much focus this game has on being visually rewarding. It's also basically free advertising, many people who aren't into Zachtronics games love seeing those gifs moving satisfyingly like clockwork and get interested.

*Finally finishes a series on a developers current game roster after 4 months* *Developer releases a new game* Will we see an Exapunks review next?

Ever going to do Exapunks?

Dammit, he knows I’ll sleep to this tonight 😂😂

I finished the campaign of this one last night. Four Zachtronics games down, 4 to go (or 5, if you count Ironclad Tactics)

Man, I really wish for a review of the other Zachtronic games: EXAPUNK, MOLEK-SYNTEZ and Last Call BBS

Thank you. I've been waiting for this review because all other reviews of a niche game like this are bound to be rather shallow. I will give this one a pass, or pick it up when it's on deep sale next year. My dream Zachtronics game would be a mix between the best parts of SpaceChem and the best parts of OM.

So, factorio next?

Nice

Very aesthetically pleasing game

I miss the codex of alchemical engineering so bad 😭 I wish there was still a way to play it post flashpocalypse

Will you review Ireland?

3:58 - 4:54 That's actually my biggest gripe with the game, it's all about the freedom of making your own solution and the matter of optimisation with no real benefit, only to compete with other players in the histogram. On long term that just unappealing to me, Spacechem was able to get a far better balance with its restrictions its much more exciting to think about solutions that will work AND then optimizing it for fun then just buliding and building... and evenually coming up with a solutions which is regardless unsatisfying, cause there is no real feedback from the game and feeling of proven worthy for later levels. So in the end there is no real difficulty or challenge besides of reaching achievment requirements

Have you tried Hacknet?

Thank *you*, Matthew.

i can't believe its finally over. now lets see what he does next.

You are alive

I think Matt will surely reward the folks tired of puzzle game reviews with a review of Ironclad Tactics.

it is a great game. less than 1MB and it has everything - nice visuals, great gameplay, open ended puzzles which you can spent hundreds of hours in. I only have one problem with this game, one thing that should be easy to implement but it was not: Scalable hex grid - zoom in /zoom out. It becomes a chore with larger puzzles to move this grid around. And yet I know someone might say buy 4K display, but I like to play this game on my old laptop with 1600x900 resolution, I tried on even older one and it works fine but lower res is terrible to handle in more complex puzzles.

Thank You For Looking? XD

What kind of spoilers does the video have? I just started playing this.

woah ur alive

[[[WAKE UP]]]

What a fantastic anime

There are some weird visual bugs in this video.

Visual ASMR The game

I'd love to play this if it was on mobiles.

"Only optimisation is challenging" I wish he'd back up what he means by this point if he's going to present it so objectively. I was the exact opposite, almost every challenge in infinifactory was theoretically easy, but I always wanted to make it more efficient. Meanwhile, rotations are so much more complex that basic movement tasks become difficult in tight spaces in Opus.

I started off hating Sigmar's Garden but now I've played it more than the actual game lol

Ey up lad!

I missed your beautiful, beautiful voice.