Opus Magnum is a collection of brilliant puzzles that I want to endlessly replay and re-solve, subtly encouraging my creativity as I hunt for better solutions. It’s also managed to create a community around itself, one that encourages both competition and collaboration while ensuring Opus Magnum has no shortage of new challenges even after I had my fill of its campaign. It feels one-of-a-kind, and is without a doubt one of the best puzzle games I’ve ever played.
Often suggested to me by Steam, I did not realize Opus Magnum is a programming game.
The goal is to build some kind of molecules using all sorts of programmable mechanical arms as well as rails and various some state-changing devices.
Every problem can be done trying to minimize price, time (speed) or used space. You can literally go nuts with how you want to approach the task at hand.
Once submitted, your solutions are compared to the ones of your friends and you also see how you fare compared to all the other players.
The game has also an hypnotic quality : I could spend minutes watching the solution move and assemble piece after piece after piece.
As a sort of bonus the game also contains a kind of puzzle game but I've not tried it.
Warmly recommended.
This is one of those games that is very mind-intensive and requires you to think about and practice what you are going to weight your production line to.
Repeating the process of trial and error is similar to programming, and requires a logical mindset to actually build the product in your head.
The mini-games in between the games are rather relaxing.
In the Steam community, you will see production lines that are much better than yours, and you will even be intimidated by their content!
A brilliantly engaging puzzle game with a very neat mechanism for preventing frustration. Because the puzzles in of themselves were very simple and easy to solve, I never found myself getting stuck. However, because solutions were "scored" by a variety of metrics, I always felt very motivated and rewarded to try to solve them in ways which minimized time, cost, and space. The game pretty fairly explores the general style of problem solving, which is pushed in different, unique ways by some of the developer's other titles.
The story was forgettable and the aesthetic bored me. There was a certain satisfying element to watching solutions, but the game certainly could have borne a prettier, more ergonomic, and more useful user interface.
I don't feel compelled to come back to this game to improve my scores or explore user generated content; I enjoyed the journey but the whole game seems pretty monotonous to me now.
Although I see where the appeal is, due to poor editing interface puzzles feel more like work, doesn't bring much satisfaction or enjoyment. It's uncomfortable to play on smaller screens, forces you to go back to your desktop with your big monitor and I have plenty of that during my day job.
SummaryOpus Magnum is the latest open-ended puzzle game from Zachtronics, the creators of SpaceChem, Infinifactory, and SHENZHEN I/O. Design and build machines that assemble potions, poisons, and more using the alchemical engineer’s most advanced tool: the transmutation engine!