SpaceChem - a game for all the programmers out there (as well as chemists)

[Humodour]

I heartily recommend you play SpaceChem. It's worth the cost and is available on every major OS (Linux, Android, iOS, OSX, Windows).

 

 

Don't quite know how to describe the game. The premise is "fake chemistry" (and to be fair it actually does teach some basic chemistry concepts). But the game seems more like a computing machine running concurrent threads. I've just taken a subject on concurrent programming, and all the concepts important in that such as race conditions and mutual exclusion can be (or must be) considered when solving each map. Which, frankly, is amazing. These guys have managed to package a concurrency simulator as a game, add in some beautiful music and neat sci-fi setting and then make millions (AFAIK) selling it to willing consumers!

 

I'm impressed. And if you enjoy programming, I think you will be too.

 

Someone has even claimed to have proven that SpaceChem is turing complete (which seems reasonable) by constructing a Brain**** interpreter within it (which does not): http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/24/smashing-atoms-in-spacechems-sandbox/

[Humodour]

A great collection of info about SpaceChem can be found here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=422393

 

The game also has a free demo which should get you hooked.

[sorophx]

I have some version of it from some bundle, will try it out, thanks for the post