SpaceChem is an obscenely addictive, design-based puzzle game about building machines and fighting monsters in the name of science!
Take on the role of a Reactor Engineer working for SpaceChem, the leading chemical synthesizer for frontier colonies. Construct elaborate factories to transform raw materials into valuable chemical products! Streamline your designs to meet production quotas and survive encounters with the sinister threats that plague SpaceChem.
Interested in using SpaceChem for educational purposes? Find out more by reading SpaceChem – A Guide for Educators.
SpaceChem is free for schools. Contact Zach at zach@zachtronics.com to find out more.
We held a SpaceChem tournament at PAX that was a huge success. Unfortunately, many of you could not make it, so we’re bringing the challenge to you! There were three challenges, each with their own rules. If you want to play along at home, post your scores in the comments. Challenge 1: Speed Challenge Complete…
I’m going to be doing a live podcast RIGHT NOW (1:00PM PST), so if you’re quick you might catch it! http://deadworkers.com/live/ If you’re reading this after the fact, it should be available this Thursday. I’ll provide a link! Update: Here’s the link!
In my previous statistics post I covered what the “average” SpaceChem solution looks like for each research assignment in the game. Today we will look at completion statistics! I recently mentioned the fact that not many people finish SpaceChem, something we know through the power of statistics collection. Some commenters were interested in seeing these…
When we launched the v1012 update for SpaceChem two months ago we announced a challenge to create crazy designs using the new sandbox mode. It is now time to announce the winners! Recycler, by GuavaMoment Ever wondered how SpaceChem’s recyclers work? So did GuavaMoment, who submitted this design for a recycler that accepts any kind…
By looking at our score collection metrics for SpaceChem, we’re able to tell how far people get through the game on an aggregate level. Unsurprisingly, not many people finish the game. One of the biggest problems with this is that many people start reading the story but then are unable to finish it, as progress…
Yesterday I had the pleasure of joining in for an episode of the Just Press Start podcast, along with Jeff Vogel of Spiderweb Software. In it, we talk about SpaceChem, Spiderweb Software’s new game Avadon: The Black Fortress, the game industry, Zachtronics Industries’ hilariously tiny office, and lots of other small topics. I even announce…
Explore the past with SpaceChem’s first DLC pack, “SpaceChem: 63 Corvi”. Follow a young Bruce Novak, the future CEO of SpaceChem, and his team of engineers on a mission to collapse the star 63 Corvi into a collapsar gateway and expand the human empire. Gameplay features a new mechanic, the “quantum junction”, which takes ResearchNet’s…
Have you ever wondered how those marvelous score graphs in SpaceChem are produced, where the data comes from, and how valid it is? Prepare to be enlightened! Overview As you might expect, the splendid data seen in the in-game score graphs comes from all of our SpaceChem players. As each player completes an assignment, SpaceChem…
In addition to the previous post about score reporting and validation, this post is of a technical nature, describing an issue we ran into while implementing the upload-to-YouTube feature in SpaceChem. I expect that many cross-platform C# developers have encountered this problem, and it is not easy to find good information about this issue on…
This is the first of hopefully many posts about technical topics relating to SpaceChem. Is there anything in particular you’d like to know more about? Let me know in the comments! Although the puzzles in SpaceChem are extremely open-ended with ridiculous numbers of possible solutions, there are a surprising number of similarities between solutions for…
The SpaceChem that you all know and love is actually quite a bit different from the SpaceChem that I originally envisioned. Curious what changed? Check out these high-fidelity concept sketches and feel free to speculate in the comments about what you’re looking at!
If so, you’ll love our new SpaceChem shirts!
The intent of the “design a reaction mechanic” contest was to collect ideas for new mechanics to use in SpaceChem. But why, you may be asking, did we need new mechanics? Introducing ResearchNet, the official intergalactic-intranet used by SpaceChem for sharing reaction engineering research! Arriving in the form of a free, not-yet-dated update for SpaceChem,…
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD (PDF) Contains a printable SpaceChem periodic table, a printable copy of the infamous SC104 “Pipeline Planning Worksheet”, and a printable SpaceChem papercraft set!