TIS-100

Seairth

For those of you looking for a diversion over the holidays, take a look at the game called TIS-100 (also, see additional note at the end). The game's story is that you are working on a mysterious hardware architecture that consists of several interconnected processing nodes. Each node is very simple, and the node's instruction set is equally simple. The difficulty comes in using the nodes in a cohesive and efficient manner to write simple programs (the game's puzzles). You can find more details on the Steam store.

Now the great part. This game is included in a current Humble Bundle! Pay as little as you want for the game!

NOTE: if you are not familiar with the Humble Bundle, you might also want to check out their latest Book Bundle. It's a large collection of O'reilly Linux/Unix books! A little light reading for those cold winter nights!

Electrodude

Also look at Shenzen I/O, which is similar to TIS-100 and is made by the same people (Zachtronics Industries). It's very similar, in that solutions to puzzles in both games involve programming multiple parallel processing nodes in assembly. It seems to me like it's just a more polished version of TIS-100. I don't own either game, though, so I can't recommend one over the other.

Seairth

Electrodude wrote: »

Also look at Shenzen I/O, which is similar to TIS-100 and is made by the same people (Zachtronics Industries). It's very similar, in that solutions to puzzles in both games involve programming multiple parallel processing nodes in assembly. It seems to me like it's just a more polished version of TIS-100. I don't own either game, though, so I can't recommend one over the other.

Ooh! Thanks for pointing that out! It looks like fun! I will definitely have to get it once I finish TIS-100. In the meantime, for the bargain-hunters among us, the Humble Bundle is the way to go!

Electrodude

If you like nerdy engineering games, you should definitely keep an eye on Zachtronics Industries. They made these two games, as well as Infinifactory and Spacechem. If I played videogames, I would mostly play their games. They also happen to be the people who made Infiniminer, which is the game that inspired Minecraft.

Francis Bauer

I just purchased TIS-100 from Steam for less than $4. You do have to download the Steam infrastructure to play the game, but that isn't too much of an issue.

I've solved some of the steps/projects so far, it is a pretty cool way to essentially solve puzzle like problems using pseudo macro-assembler programming.

Each step/project gets more difficult but it is a good learning experience that gets your mind thinking about how to solve data flow problems using parallel code modules/nodes.

I've attached a couple of screenshots.

It is a perfect gift for the programming geek in your life (or yourself)...