SHENZHEN I/O

I work for a TI company, and I'm on a vacation playing with this game.

Fun puzzles overall. One thing I noticed is that the test inputs are sometimes not comprehensive, as a result when you implement a general solution, it ranks quite poorly compared to online stats, because other solutions take advantages of the specific test cases.

I literally only play this for the solitaire, I've never done any of the puzzles

buy the game, i can't come up with anything funny, spent all my brainpower on ShenZhen I/O

It's fine. Very technically impressive, it just feels more like work than fun. Completing a challenge feels rewarding, but building circuits and programming them IRL feels better in my opinion. However, I can see how this would be addicting and fun for someone just discovering these topics!

I kinda enjoy the fantasy nature of the chips and asm language, but at the same time, it kinda ruins the experience for me too. I want to better my real-world-experience and use what I've learned to solve fun little puzzles, but I can't really do that without learning a new fictional asm language.

However, Shenzhen I/O teaches the bare-bones knowledge well and the puzzles are thoughtfully designed. Each one has many solutions, and it can be fun trying to lower your cost or the amount of code used. The leaderboard is a nice touch!

If you're considering picking this up, it's quite complex (in a good way). There's a manual that you will reference quite often like a data sheet or quick commands guide, and that's about it. You get thrown into the deep end, sink or swim, and learning the mechanics is half the fun! I'd easily recommend this to anyone interested in computer science or how circuits work.



Now for the personal super mega nerd rant...

Sleep requirements are frustrating and prohibit testing. I don't care if the chip isn't sleeping, I just want to step through functions maaaan.
It's clear that slp is just a dumbed down replacement for CPU cycles, and IMHO those would be much more interesting to work around and figure out.
For example, mul and div are slow functions, it's faster to perform bit shifts on registers instead, except this game doesn't have bit operations for some reason...?
We're writing 'low level' code and we don't have to worry about CPU cycles or binary at all? WHY?

Condition statements are confusingly implemented. I'm getting used to it, but it's been difficult unlearning what I've learned in my assembly course. I'd much prefer branch instructions like beq.
Similarly, the assembly is non-standard. Why not use MIPS, z80, 6502 or some other mainstream ASM?? It would help translate the skills learnt here to the real world much more seamlessly.

It's kinda minor since real world chips have size limits too, but the size limitations on your code feel extremely restrictive. It almost doesn't want you to use the weird condition statements since there may not be enough room to fit it all in one chip. I know, It's part of the puzzle aspect, use two chips, etc, I just feel like the size limit could've been a few lines larger.

Lastly, part of my enjoyment with circuitry is figuring out buses, considering multiplexers, and even organizing wires to be tidy (which is here to some extent but it is pretty bare bones). Maybe it's just my progress in the game, but I wish it was more hardware based than software. I thought I'd be building circuitry from scratch instead of using "black box"-like chips with predefined registers and multi-bit wires... guess I'll have to stick to factorio to scratch that itch.

(Review shared from my Backloggd page)

I played this instead of studying for my digital systems final. needless to say, it was easy as balls.

Don't buy if you're NOT looking for a challenge. This game takes some real brain power. The early game does toss you in the deep end but (as intended) you look in the manual for information; the game is easier to understand. It sucks a little that you have to use a manual but you quickly learn how different parts and code works. The game does not hold your hand but that allows you to attempt challenges in your own way (within size restrictions).

If you're interested in engineering and looking for a challenge, highly recommend. If you're looking for a more casual experience, I recommend looking at other games before this one.

Great Puzzle Game where you WANT to READ the manual

I am writing this review because I was almost encouraged not to buy this game due to a negative review I saw. Because really, that is what we are all looking for when buying a game, a reason not to.

The main reason I was reluctant to buy this game was because the review says this game has no tutorial that introduces you to the game, which is simply not true. The tutorial is not one that holds your hand and tells you step-by-step how to accomplish your first task. However, it does start you off with a task that is half finished, and after you read a few pages of the data sheet it makes perfect sense how to interpret that and implement the second half.

Which brings me to the second reason, which was the review showed distress about having to read the language manual to play the game, and that some functionality of the language is not included in the manual. I am a competitive person, and I don't like the idea of being put in a game and not being able to compete simply because I don't understand how things work. Not only that, but given that reading the language manual/data sheet is literally attributed as a feature of the game, I as assuming it was overly tedious and hard to understand. Turn out, it's not, and it's not. If you are the kind of person who feels drawn to a game like this, you should be perfectly fine understanding how this all works assuming you enjoy learning new things. It definitely did not take me an hour to get the hang of copying registers and processing binary logic.

So, why is this a negative review if everything I am saying is positive? Well, because as I said, it's a response to a negative review that I read which does not allow comments. I would 100% recommend this game! Just keep in mind that some of the language is not in the manual. As the manual states, it is basic information. The competitive aspect of the game is a way to gauge how you are progressing and to make you realise that better ways exist. Obviously you wont know them all right away. That's not how learning works.

So yea, buy this game. It's awesome.

All the fun of playing with microcontrollers, with none of the fuss of physical objects.

Enjoy the ball-busting experience of spending hours trying to cram your code as efficiently as possible into a small amount of controllers, only to get displayed on completion a histogram that shows how inefficient your solution is compared to others around the globe. 9/10 ruined my life.

It's also really nice that the puzzles have a story behind them.

My only gripe with the game is that you can't browse the various test cases arbitrarily: You have to pass a test case to see the next one, so you sometimes are unsure of the author's intentions regarding edge cases that might not appear on the first test when opening a puzzle.

I can't really recommend this as a game. It's more of a sandbox challenge yourself kind of deal.

You have to basically open the in-game manual with the game to read up on the different components and commands and utilize those to solve the puzzles. It also doesn't help that the manual is incomplete, which causes massive confusion as you're scratching your head as to how other people made a better/more optimized variant than you, but you're unable to see any way of doing it better. Only to realize after looking it up that they are using commands that literally aren't in the manual, but that you can obtain (presumably) later in the game.

There's no tutorial, no introductory stages teaching you how things actually work. They give you a literal pdf file with incomplete information, and expected outputs you need to produce, that's it. If you are looking for a sandbox ish game where you just challenge yourself similarly to a real working environment (except you can't ask your coworkers for help or intellectual sparring, lol), go for it! But as a game with a leaderboard comparing you to your friends etc. it's not great, especially if you're a competitive person. Since it simply does not give you the tools you need to compete with other people and does not teach you how to use them.

As a computer engineer myself it only took me an hour or so to be comfortable with how things work in the game, but I can only imagine what kind of black box of hell the game would be to a normal person without experience in the field. I'll probably just put the game down because I don't feel like playing through the game twice just to learn the tools provided to you later in the game, only to then actually be able to compete in the earlier stages.

Amazing hardware engineering simulator. Puzzles are top notch. Love love love zachtronics!

Shenzen IO stellt ein paar gute Herausforderungen, jedoch hat es irgendwie ein Problem. Ich hätte mir gewünscht das es irgendwann auch mal neue teile gibt mit ein paar mehr Funktionen. z.b. mehr Befehlszeilen, Befehlssätzen (vollständig Assembler abbilden z.B.) mehr Register usw. Ich finde es irgendwie nicht sehr befriedigend um die Limitationen von ein paar Bauteilen herum zu arbeiten, wenn es in der Realität viel bessere Lösungen für die Probleme gibt, die hier künstlich hervorgebracht werden. Die Limitation ist natürlich eine Herausforderung für sich, die auch Spaß machen kann.

It's a fun little programming game with some minor circuit construction elements. Don't go in expecting it to be realistic to actual hardware or microcontroller programming because it's very stylised and abstracted away from the real thing, but I do find it fun to programme in.

A game to learn assembler in a fun way.

super fun puzzle game

This review is for people who, like me, look at black textboxes with a lot of scary three letter words and angry punctuation and do no immediatly go "Ah he is developping a back-end stack loop-de-loop mysql assembler." It took me 10 tries to print "Hello World" and "arrays", "pointers" and "references" are as mysterious to me as the inner thoughts and preferences of women.

In other words people who are as good as clueless in programming. Song lyrics are more my forte.


Still, I can recommend it with some caveats.

1. You need to look at the manual which can be off-putting but I liked it. It's like f***ing up building Ikea furniture and having to look at the manual except in Shenzhen you are not ashamed to be proud when you fix it.

2. Pay attention to the graphics and screw around a lot. It isn't like how I experienced my attempt at learning python where it goes "syntax error hihi :3 here are 16 angry red lines."
In other words, it feels like the feedback is pretty good.

3. It can be a great introduction to logic, which is helpfull outside of nerd computer stuff.

4. I feel like I already improved in the pretty short time I played. 15 yen mess of microchips that do one task 24 times? Not anymore now it's only 6 yen worth of microchips being completly redundant. I know what an accumulator does (it accumulates).

+Story is decent
+Art is great
+Objectives are clear
+As intuitive as digital wizardy can be
+Takes up less space on ur pc than a highly rendered nipple in CoD Blackest Ops 8 (<0,5gb).
-Not a lot of space to work with when you feel like trying things out.
-game wants you to play Solitare, I don't want to play solitaire I am not a geriatric.


Let me understand the magic rocks filled with lightning, let me talk to them and I will conquer the universe.

Some to-do list games seem fun but end up feeling like work, while most great games never feel like work at all. SHENZHEN I/O gives you both.

I played this on Xbox game pass and had to get it on Steam. It is a great assembly language programming game. I really enjoy the fact that it feels like it's being tied to the real world. It feels rooted in reality and I enjoy the way new components are introduced. 10/10 character development as well the story is always something to look forward to. Another Zachtronics game I really recommend is EXAPUNKS.

I've wrote a review in Thai for a long time here: https://www.blognone.com/node/88779

Shenzhen I/O is a proper 2nd installation of the coding trilogy from Zachtronics (the 1st was TIS-100, and the 3rd was EXAPUNKS). This one is quite friendly than TIS-100 in term of interface, but the puzzle is still brutal (limited space everywhere). So, if you love to have more freedom, then EXAPUNKS might work better. But this game is good if you want to step up the challenge! (Zach's games starts with the hardest, then get easier by the time it releases lol)

scripting microchips. Also for beginners.

Great game

This game has educational vaule, and I will mark this as a positive review with the following disclaimer.

Get this game only if you know something about programming

The only thing the game really quickly educated me about is that I should'nt have tried without an education on this subject or having somewhat similar job.

For absolute beginners, there is no chance to even get started.
I'm very tempted to refund, because I was looking for a way to learn in a gaming format, hoping it would make the subject less daunting.

This game doesn't do that sadly.
Maybe if devs add a training job to establish the basics, it would be an entirely different experience.
(Throwing a .pdf file at the customer doesn't count.)

I'm not saying it as a complaint, just an observation as someone with architectural education.

Despite coming from the era of BASIC on C64, I don't have a single clue about the programming language in the game. As such I couldn't even get started with the first job.

I probably had too high expectations playing UpLink and some HackNet at some point and that is entirely my bad

As such I don't doubt the entertainment and educational value of the game, hence the positive review.

It's you, assembly, the datasheet and god.

Just how my professor went on electrical engineering classes.

Brings back PTSD, I recommend 👍

I highly recommend this game to anyone who wants to learn how to program at a very challenging level (think programming in a language very similar to assembly) and learn the basics on how to work with microcontrollers and basic electronic components. To all others reading this comment, please know that games from Zachtronics usually boast a steep learning curve but excellent coding challenges that end up being quite rewarding when you figure out how to top the leaderboards.

very good

It feels like you are fighting the game on a mechanical level

Game has no introduction and no tutorial/help, the ingame "Help" or the datasheet is more of a confusion than anything else.
You gotta be a programmer to even play this, THIS IS NOT A GAME, even the solitare in the game is not even solitare but a wierd knockoff from japan or some asia

Makes me feel retarded 👍

RTFM. Words this game lives by.
Fun if you are into nerd shit.

Amazing if you want to learn the hardware side of things. Programming recommended but if this is your starting place that's totally good too.

how do they keep making banger after banger. it's so good

This is definitely a game for people who are interested in micro-controllers and how to program them with microcode. Overall I REALLY liked my first few hours with the game. I completed the first project and really enjoyed the overall experience. The game literally drops you in head first into the pool... sink or swim, you decide if you can "RTFM" or not... heheh. After sorting out the manual, and the complete lack of explanation, you attempt to figure out how to connect inputs and outputs to the microcontroller. This is confusing because they are essentially the same port. Figuring out "how" to connect things and move things around is part of sink/swim of the game. You either get it or... not. The game itself provide zero tutorial aspects, other than the manual for the controllers, so don't expect to understand the UI for the game without testing it out yourself. (Or perhaps looking up a review on a video outside of the game).
Pros: Great little microcode simulator game. I really like the way you have to solve things just like a real world controller in many ways. Good Sound effects. Overall very enjoyable.
Cons: Repetitive music. Would be nice if the background music changed while working on a project...?

Feature Request: Allow Boards to be able to moved closer. Allow Controllers to be placed on 1 board and effect multiple boards thru connectors? (Not sure if this is in future projects or not).

really good vm. better than tmpOS 2.0

Brain hurt now

i looove making electronic knickknacks

Great game, very challenging and very informative.

Great product, it was something a friend recommended to learn how to understand basic electronic interfaces, which I believe this does.