MOLEK-SYNTEZ

This is a really great game with a superbly implemented central mechanic. Relaxing to play with an intriguing setting element. The soundtrack is really cool and eerie, adding to the overall feel of the piece. The reason it's four and not five stars? The chemistry is a just a bit wrong. Chemical diagrams are about connectivity, not orientation - some bonds can freely rotate, others (like those in benzene rings) are equivalent regardless of the orientation of the ring. This stuff is really hard to model, especially for what is a relatively simple game, but for anyone who knows anything about chem, even from senior school, this is going to be an irksome lesson in "unlearn the stuff you know, do what the game wants, not what you know is right".

Zachtronics Games are an instant buy for me. For me, SpaceChem set a new standard in Puzzle Games. TIS-100 showed, how to tell a deep, engaging and even mysterious story can be told on, well, basically a command line-ish interface. Infinifactory mixed in some weirdness in a lovely way. Shenzhen I/O and Opus Magnum set a new level in visual programming games. I didn't even expect Opus Magnum's alchemy theme to work, and it so does! Exa Punks adds Object Oriented Puzzling to the puzzle landscape and suddenly Molek-Syntez falls out of the sky, looking at first glance like Opus Magnum in greyscale and is, again, a little gem. Every single game is simple to learn and hellishly hard to really master. The global solution metering is absolutely spot on - engaging, frustrating and motivation in one go. Why all other global ladders only have a single-value-scale and don't copy this is beyond me. The only thing I don't have yet is Eliza. I guess it is good and I will try it out next. Zachtronics is simply brilliant. Get it.

I´ve played TIS-100 and SHENZEN-IO. I should admit I was a little worried about this one but I was wrong. It´s a little pleasure! Easy to learn, hard to manage! The aim is to combine molecules to make drugs. No need to know any chemical`s reactions. If you ever played other Zachtronics`game you´d love it!

I've never played games like this before. I'm not a programmer or anything. I thought perhaps the puzzles would be overly complicated as I'm not use to these kinds of problems. Actually, it turns out that most of them are kind of easy and that the difficult part is in optimizing. A lot of people seem to compete and try to come up with the optimal solution. The puzzles has little to do with chemistry. You don't need to know anything about chemistry beforehand, even though being accustomed to bonding rules would be useful. The puzzles are entirely logical but with a few small small pinches of chemistry (simplified bonding rules) added. Really fun and enjoyable with plenty of possible approaches to any problem. Only thing I would comment on is that sometimes the interface is not really clear. I mix up some of the input symbols, depicting movement of modules in various directions (left or right). Depending on on which part of the screen the modules are they can move either left or right with any of those input buttons. A few small details like that.