Human Resource Machine

[DerAlex]

I'd like to present a fun little logic game to this forum, where I don't think it was mentioned before, because I think many people here are the right audience for this somewhat niche game.



The game, on first sight, appears to be about programming, but on closer look, it's more about solving logic puzzles and math problems with a set of tools and functions provided by the game (like programming :D). The difference, in my opinion, is, that you can play HRM as a logical thinking person without programming experience, and, you can play HRM as an experienced programmer and still be challenged by it, mostly because of it's very small toolset. I've been told code in HRM somewhat resembles assembler code, but you by no means learn how to code assembler here. What you do learn, however, is think like a programmer, and, more specifically, more or less unconciously learn about stuff like memory management, ++1, loops, if-statements, and most of all the importance of commenting your own damn code so that you can know 5 minutes from now what this piece of shit code that breaks the whole program was meant to do in the first place.

And have a lot of fun in the process, if you like to be challenged mentally. The joy of writing incredibly messy code, and then, suprising to even yourself, seeing it work, is quite something. It's been entertaining me the last few nights, and I think it's well worth the asking price of about $10, at least if if any of this sounds appealing to you, or if this looks appealing to you. (This is a program I wrote yesterday, which copies consonants and discards vowels. It got me both "stars" on this level, 1 for less than x lines of code and 1 for code that completes in less than x number of commands. This is about lvl 30 of 37)

Edit: Steam Link

[jorgebonafe]

This REALLY reminds me of World of Goo. Is it by the same developers, do you know?

[DerAlex]

Yes it is, Tomorrow Corporation. They also made "Little Inferno". They have a very specific artstyle

[FlowerChild]

I think I picked this one up during the Christmas sale, and quite enjoyed it. The puzzles never really ramped up to a decent challenge for me, and thus I found it ended rather quickly, but I did quite a lot of assembly programming in the past, so I'm not exactly the ideal audience for this thing. There's a certain mindset to programming in assembly that isn't really the same as other forms of programming, and it's one that I clicked back into very quickly even though I hadn't done it in years. It did however remind me of my love of assembly and encouraged me to pick up TIS-100 right after, which gave me a bit more of a run for my money :)

Regardless, I love all the games from this company as yes, there is nothing quite like the art/sound/thematic style of them. I don't feel they've ever reach World of Goo levels again with their newer games, but I've enjoyed each of them just the same. I'd still recommend holding off on a sale for this one though, as I think it dropped really low when I picked it up.

[Gilberreke]

Oooh, I want both of those (HRM and TIS-100). I'll put them on my wishlist for a sale probably.