Opus Magnum Reviews

One of the best puzzle games I've ever played

it was very good.

they should add a level where you synthesize tylenol for the headache this game gives you

This is a very cerebral game that feels like a really fun version of computer programming. A+ imho

Good puzzler with room for creativity in the solutions that gets the brain flowing. Have come back to this game after a few years and my solutions to the earlier levels are still saved, so it's fascinating to see how differently my brain is working compared to my solutions back then.

Great puzzles, satisfying to watch your creations. Great controls and UI allow you to focus on the task at hand. Highly recommended

this is a fun and beautiful game. The puzzles are well balanced and get more difficult as the game goes on, without frustrating the player to a level where they would want to give up. The challenge lies in making your engines more and more efficient. Hours of my life that I will never get back, but that were well spent.

A fun and excellent introduction to programming without the complexity of control structures. Focuses heavily on precision of thought, state management, and discovering necessity.

This game is a terrible showcase of a puzzle game built off of an excellent core engine. There are 6 chapters, and I would roughly describe the experience going through the chapters as follows: Chapter 1: literally a tutorial Chapter 2: not literally tutorial, but you finish learning how to play here Chapters 3-5: With one minor exception, no new ideas are introduced and the player is confronted with a homework assignment list of rote and simple programming exercises. They grow increasingly repulsive to manipulate as the complexity increases, but not more challenging or interesting. Chapter 6: An excellent new idea is introduced in the post game, but the second half of it again grows into rote, mechanical tedium with no new ideas added. A big theme for this game seems to be "the same process works on every level, it will just take longer to reach completion". Given that it really is one process that solves every single level, I hesitate to call it a "puzzle" game. It plays more like a unit from a math textbook where you learn the main technique of the unit and then apply it to a bunch of problems to prove mastery. The two ideas that make for some puzzles that require some innovating are [spoiler] infinite products [/spoiler] and [spoiler] limited space in chapter 6 [/spoiler], but even these two twists are ruined through increasingly tedious repetition. Now I know this all sounds very negative. Why do I recommend this game, you might ask? Despite its failings as a puzzle game, Opus Magnum is still worth playing: * as a programming game/ engineering game/ nerd sniping game * as long as you have self restraint and set reasonable goals; you can turn a lot of levels from rote work into worthwhile and fun puzzles if you try to optimize them (the game presents multiple metrics you can try to optimize including leaderboards of your friends list). Be wary as sometimes the effect of this is to make the level more tedious and no more fun, so pick and choose carefully. * to generate those very cool gifs of your solution to each level, and be able to compare them to gifs produced by others and shared online Although I feel that the immense potential this game had was squandered, it is still worth playing for a lot of people.

Fantastic game. Breaks your brain alright... but that's what it is all about. (Plus seeing all the cool machines do work is pretty.)