I really like SpaceChem.. I’ve already put quite the number of hours into the game. Almost 30 hours so far (though admittedly some of that is AFK time). I don’t put this much time into a game often, especially nowadays.
Anyway I think this game is great. The game isn’t much too look at, doesn’t have much action, and I wouldn’t really recommend it to anybody (except perhaps those with a penchant for programming or chemistry).
I mean, think about it. The game is like programming with fake chemistry. Most people would probably look at it and think it was boring, and understandably so. That was my first impression as well. But I really enjoyed it. Much more than Dead Rising 2, a popular big-budget 3D game, which I am also playing at the moment.
I definitely wasn’t expecting to enjoy it this much. Out of all the recent indie games I’ve played, I had the highest expectations for TRAUMA, and probably the lowest for SpaceChem. I was glad to be pleasantly surprised.
I love the music, too. It’s so dramatic, and is of relatively high quality, especially compared to the visuals and such. There aren’t that many tracks though, so if you play the game for so many hours you end up listening to the same tracks over and over.
While there isn’t much to the story, it is very well written. You can tell that the guy who made the game (Zach?) put a lot of effort into it.
The game gets pretty tough. Admittedly, I’ve had to look up some help on the more difficult levels. However, I didn’t just copy-and-paste the answers and use them verbatim. I just looked at design ideas and such. Then I would come up with my own design and create it from scratch. These latest levels I’ve been playing would take hours to build, even if I look up design ideas. (Edit: some of these levels take me DAYS to build.) But seeing it all work is very rewarding.
Overall, SpaceChem is a very good game that I’m glad to have picked up a tried. To think, I could’ve very easily missed out on it. That would’ve been sad.
