![]() ![]() In some ways this makes puzzle design easier, as it avoids the chicken-and-egg problems that arise when designing a puzzle and its solution simultaneously.Īn exciting side-effect of creating puzzles this way is that they end up being more open-ended and start to resemble the kind of problems that engineers and designers face in real life. Because of this, we were able to design almost all of the puzzles without knowing how they might be solved, focusing instead on making sure that each challenge was logically unique and could not be solved by repeating a previous solution.Īfter playtesting the levels, we reordered them, removed logical "duplicates", and filled "gaps" to create a fairly linear (albeit steep) difficulty curve. The standard gameplay "formula" for SpaceChem is to give the player a set of tools (instructions and reactors), a challenge with a clear end condition (create molecules X, Y, and Z), and an empty area in which to create a solution. Believe it or not, it's actually harder! What Went RightĪlthough we made a lot of questionable development decisions, the game's open-ended puzzles are unquestionably the biggest thing we did right without them, SpaceChem would not be SpaceChem! The Codex of Alchemical Engineering, the predecessor to SpaceChem. I started developing the game in my spare time with a coworker from my day job, eventually growing the team to seven people before shipping SpaceChem. ![]() ![]() The idea evolved over the next six months, picking up a cosmic horror story with boss battles in the process. Thinking back to the idea for a chemistry-inspired Codex sequel, it occurred to me to combine the low-level manipulations of the Codex with a high-level pipeline construction mechanic. Despite this, making immediate sequels is not in my nature, so I set the idea aside and moved on.Ībout a year later I visited Gas Works Park in Seattle and was inspired by its derelict chemical processing pipeline. Since Codex was already a simplified model of molecular bonding, expanding into chemistry proper would provide more mechanics (such as multiple bonds between atoms) and puzzles (different compounds, from simple ones like water to more complicated ones like benzene). Shortly after releasing The Codex of Alchemical Engineering, a Flash game about building machines that create and transform alchemical compounds, I started thinking about a chemistry-themed sequel. ![]()
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