I've never posted a real review on here, but in case anyone randomly hears about this game and is curious what a duder thinks, it's super-fun. I'm not spoiling anything by saying that it's pretty much exactly an assembly coding competition. You compete with (I assume) anonymous Internet peers to come up with the best solution by three metrics to programming problems. In the course of solving those problems, you'll discover malfunctioning "cores" which when inspected reveal nuggets of information about the computer's history and the world around it. There's a good diversity (in at least the first dozen problems I've unlocked) of problems, and as an experienced assembly programmer I ran into many fun head-scratchers. If you enjoyed the developer's previous work SpaceChem,and have an interest in programming, this is a really easy-to-recommend early-access buy.

This sounds kind of cool, as some one who's not a programmer but interested in learning would you recommend it? Or is it something to dense for me to get any real use out of?

Nice, assembly coding seems intimidating but this sounds fun. It's weird that he finally made a programming game themed with actual programming. Thanks for the recommendation!

@makayu: I would give it a try. The assembly language it uses is really simple. The complexity of the problems comes from the interesting architecture of the nodes and how they are connected. Also if any of you guys want to add me on Steam in order to compete with each other on the challenge my steam community link is: steamcommunity.com/id/stilblad

I would agree that it's totally accessible to non-programmers. The really cool thing that this game does is creating puzzles that are (so far, at least) straightforward to solve in your head, but difficult to reason about with limited storage per node and interesting node layouts. The game perfectly explores the challenges of parallel execution in a pretty friendly way. I'm excited to get to the problems that use additional components like stack storage, referenced in the manual.

@thatdudeguy: @stilblad: Alright cool! I'll defiantly give it a try then, problem solving is one of my favorite things to do so this should be right up my alley

Adding this to my wishlist. Looks confusing, but I feel like it's one of those games that once I figure out, I'll be entranced by it.

It has a lot of replay value due to the solution optimizing. I only have got to the third row.

It's also very similar to Jahooma's LogicBox (both on Kongregate and online), but I would say that that game is better for non-programmers. Great indie title.

I would also like to point out that TIS starts off with a manual, but if you want quicker information, you can press F1 for a brief explanation on things.

Zachtronics Industries: The master(s?) of making you feel like a complete moron for an hour and then feel like the smartest person alive for five minutes.