For those who don't know -- while Zachtronics is no longer making games, Zach Barth is still active now under the company Coincidence Games. They just game out with a spacecraft engineering puzzle game:
Without specifically looking into it but just going off of Steam releases and headline, I'd assumed Zachtronics closing was Zach Barth leaving the scene, and the company that made Kaizen etc were some of his former colleagues continuing on without him.
But apparently the Kaizen-making company is still Zach Barth?
So what was Zachtronics closing then? Him changing his mind and coming back a year later? Why throw away the brand? As cringingly shallow as that sentence was to type, a new "Zachtronics" game was a reflexive auto-buy for many people.
Here is something I (Zach) wrote up a while ago in an attempt to explain it:
> Back in 2016, we sold Zachtronics to a company called Alliance, who we worked for as employees and made all the Zachtronics games from SHENZHEN I/O onward. In 2022 we stopped working for them and started a new studio called Coincidence, which we own and run as a sort of co-op that allows us to work on projects together, or not together, or anything in-between. (By "we" I mean the five of us who made all the Zachtronics games from SHENZHEN I/O onward; the team was much more dynamic before that, as described in the first few pages of ZACH-LIKE.)
> I still work for Alliance and maintain the Zachtronics games, but we don't own any of that IP, so anything new we make is going to be attached to the new studio and the new name.
(I did spend a year teaching computer science at a public high school, but that overlapped the last year of Zachtronics, rather than being between Zachtronics and Coincidence like it's often reported.)
At Coincidence, we have released two puzzle games so far, Kaizen: A Factory Story and U.V.S. Nirmana, and have more (four?) in the works. I'm hoping that I'll get to work on some less-obviously-in-the-genre games soon, but I haven't git initted anything yet so I guess it's too early to say.
Having played it: yep! It's a solitaire Mankala/Awele game. You use the sowing mechanics to try to clear the board, with chains scoring exponential points.
My favorite is 20th Century Food Court in Last Call BBS. Some of the other games remind me too much of work (I’ve bought all of them including the coincidence card games but I have only beaten this one), whereas this one reminds me of fun times I had making synths in Logic and VCV Rack for fun. Highly recommend!
I always wished they would make a management or simulation game, I think 90% of all programmers play Paradox games or Tycoon games etc. and I know their take on it would be amazing.
As others already have I just wanted to thank you. Spacechem is not only what made me start playing games again but playing with computers altogether after a rough couple of years, and will forever be one of my favourite gaming experiences. So happy to hear you’re still making so -and-aptly-called Zachlikes!
Can you extrapolate a bit? Why is GOG an undesirable platform to be on, especially as you seem to be fine with DRM-free releases elsewhere (which is awesome, btw)
Finally, thank you for SpaceChem! Still great, even after all these years
My understanding is that GOG is not necessarily undesirable, but they are very selective: Unlike Steam or Itch, you have to convince them that it's worth their while to sell your game. And their choices of what (not) to sell are not infrequently baffling. Lots of developers have gotten burned by that, including Zachtronics
I have a hard time believing that GOG rejected a Zachtronics game. They're popular, high quality, and a good match for the GOG audience. An GOG already sells several of them (I own SHENZHEN I/O and Spacechem on GOG).
The rejection of Opus Magnum got a lot of attention at the time, which probably caused GOG to reconsider. But most developers don't get that kind of attention, if a game of theirs is rejected. I've seen multiple developers of games that I like, saying that they've given up on GOG because of the curation
I'm not quite sure what the expectations of semi-privacy are here, but he's talked about it on the TC Discord, in the #development-branch-feedback channel (a search for 'unprofessional' should find it).
I adore your games. Would be curious to know your thoughts about using AI for game development. Personally I find it gross, but I am trying to be open to different views.
It's good at some things (research and programming) and terrible at others (art and game design). In general, I try to look past the tools being used and focus on what is being made.
Surprising to see you endorsing seeing past the tools as a maker of games whose audience simply cares more about the problem being solved than what gets actually made.
Of course I cannot vouch that there aren't people who played games like Shenzhen I/O because they cared about building signs for a fictional corporation.
Zachtronics wrapped up because they all got a bit burned out by the yearly release pace, and Zach tried to become a teacher. He didn’t like it, and when the rest of the team continued making games, he joined up with them and thus Coincidence. Further down the discussion I shared a podcast where he tells the story.
I understand why he might not want to and hope I would have the character to do similarly in his place, but they should really lead with "by Zach Barth" rather than "from the original Zachtronics team", which still sounds great, but tbh at least for me bumped it from "buy and play immediately" to "wishlist".
From other comments in this thread, it seems I am not the only one who misinterpreted that as not including Zach himself
> So what was Zachtronics closing then? Him changing his mind and coming back a year later? Why throw away the brand? As cringingly shallow as that sentence was to type, a new "Zachtronics" game was a reflexive auto-buy for many people.
It's not clear that this happened here, but I could imagine that someone successful enough not to need the money might literally prefer to have their work evaluated on its own merits and not have the outsized level of attention that being well-known brings. I remember reading in Eric Clapton's autobiography (which might or might not be an accurate retelling of course) that the original plan for Derek and the Dominoes was to name them "Del and the Dominoes" and basically hide the fact that he was the guitarist since he was tired of all of the attention. According to him, "Derek" was a slip of the tongue from someone on stage one night, and the record label eventually decided to try to capitalize on his hype by marketing the fact that he was behind it.
Listening to the podcast linked elsewhere in this thread, it sounds like he’s not at all reached the level of financial independence to indefinitely fund future projects. In fact the only game that went moderately viral (Opus Magnum) is not owned by him at all.
This is really disappointing to me as many of his games are some of my favourite games of all time and I assumed he’d be set for life off them. I guess the target audience is just too small.
I wouldn't be surprised if they rejected it (if it were to happen), Notch is a horrible human being, only coming out as such after he sold his company. Microsoft mostly scrubbed his name from Minecraft besides one mention in the credits, and seem to have distanced themselves from him entirely, including not even inviting him for the game's 10 year anniversary celebration.
Yes, as I recall, he sold Zachtronics to investors sometime after TIS-100 so that he could focus on making the games and have someone else worry about the business.
In case anyone's curious I recommend the podcast episode with Zach Barth on the Draknek and Friends podcast to hear where he's at now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLrh8wcBy8I
Happy to hear that he's continuing developing games and we can expect more to come!
Infiniminer is the "parent" of Minecraft, because Notch made the latter after he was inspired by the source-leak of the former to port the code from C# to Java.
Infinifactory is the "cousin" of Minecraft, because it was built using Infiniminer's engine directly by Zach.
If jawarner isn't being paid to make the post, then it's not an advertisement, unless you're using a broader definition for advertisement than is commonly accepted.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2536720/UVS_Nirmana/?cura....