Last Call BBS Reviews

so retro

Yes, I definitely recommend this game.

Excellent games in it, easy to understand, hard to master

20th Century Food Court, included in this collection, may be my favorite of Zachtronics's programming games. It blends the spatial and programming puzzles perfectly, it's funny, and it canonically makes no sense.* Beating its final level was a feeling of exuberance unmatched by much else I've ever felt. X'BPGH then comes up short IMO, but it's shored up by ChipWizard and Dungeons and Diagrams. Two new solitaire games and a new version of HACK*MATCH (from EXAPUNKS) round out the set. No, I won't talk about Steed Force Hobby Studio. Anyway, you should get this game! Seriously, if you are going to buy anything from Zachtronics, this might be my highest recommendation, with the caveat that you might want to get it as your second rather than first game. *Like, okay, let's think about it. The game says it's "cracked by Ghast," who we know from EXAPUNKS as a resident of that cyberpunk dystopia. But EXAPUNKS is set... in an alternate version of the late 20th century. So even in-game it's a fictional game about the 20th century from the 20th century being played in the 21st century. In other words, cyberpunk alt-history Ghast pirated a game about an alt-alt-far-future-history that is now presented to you as a game by Zachmatics, the in-game version of Zachtronics. I guess that doesn't *not* make sense (why should the real world have a monopoly on fiction?) but it's still kind of crazy.

11/10, reminds me of the good old days when there was only the games that came with windows 7 on the family computer.

It's good bang for buck. The food game seems basically just be a full Zachtronics style programming game and then on top of that you get 7 other games. Can't complain.

Very cool little thing. Lots of stuff for nerds but that's okay.

I have a single complaint; Dungeons & Diagrams maxes out at 9999 solved puzzles. Everything else about this is great.

Last Call BBS is an incredibly polished collection of puzzles from the Zachtronics team. There's 8 distinct applications presented through the fictional Powerlance OS. I can't overstate how much fun I had just using the fictional computer. The sound and visual design are very well done, and I've already found myself late at night booting up the game just to play the built-in solitaire on more than one occasion. The 8 games contained on the OS are all very polished and cleverly designed. There's 2 solitaire implementations (both with a slight twist to traditional rules), a model builder, a nonogram-inspired logic puzzle, an arcade game (though one that presents you will all the tools to approach it as a puzzle), and 3 programming puzzles similar to the other Zachtronics titles (with all bells, whistles, and histograms you'd expect). While each puzzle doesn't have quite as much content as a standalone Zachtronics game, they still have a shocking amount of content and what's there is very cleverly designed. It took me ~40 hours to complete everything, with a majority of that spent between the 3 programming puzzles. I found myself enjoying the variety a lot as I could always jump to a different puzzle if I were stuck on a particular game. And while I've already said it multiple times, I really must reiterate just how incredibly polished the entire experience is. X'BPGH is intentionally bizarre, HACK*MATCH is intentionally presented with instructions in a different language, 20th Century Food Court has several great music tracks and a lot of humor in the pre- and post- level screens. They have an intentionally nostaligic presentation that looks great. The entire experience is tied together with memos you progressively unlock from the former owner of the computer, and while brief they provide just enough narrative to be interesting and engaging, pushing you to find out what the next note will say. All in all this is my favorite of the Zachtronics games I've played. The puzzles may not be for everyone as they are definitely the programming and optimization style that the Zachtronics team excels at. If you're unsure if it is a style you'll enjoy this is a great place to start as there's a lot to enjoy here, even if you don't end up enjoying the meatiest puzzles.