Recent reviews by Suboptimal

Each time you play, you have less than a one in a tredecillion chance of the maximum possible score.

Summary: Turing Complete implements its core concept well. If you like the idea, you should buy the game.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this game since being invited to try it before even Early Access. The game is stable enough to play and even fairly polished already.

Progress Disclosure: I finished a pre-EA version of the game, but it's since changed and significantly lengthened. At the time of writing, I've finished 68/80 levels and 9/13 achievements.

Observations: The game slots into its genre well. It's a series of challenges to be implemented in traditional NAND-based digital logic; there are slight tweaks and simplifications, which neatly avoids having all the optimal solutions for the simple stuff readily available from a search engine. Turing Complete is notably more directly applicable to the actual world than most similar games, although it's not going to get you credit toward a computer engineering degree, either.

The early parts of the game are heavily focused on implementing some standard components, which are the fundamental building blocks of both real-world and in-game computers.

The middle and late game freely mix programming with designing the hardware on which the program runs; this includes designing and implementing an instruction set, choosing how many registers and how they can be used, and implementing a way to access RAM. This was a delightful novelty for me. The ability to define and use custom components keeps things manageable as the complexity escalates. The game carefully guides you through implementing a specific, simple architecture then sets you free.

Turing Complete is not pulling any punches on the difficulty, but it's not artificially hard, either. It never gets too difficult for someone bright to solve with focused thought in a reasonable time. Some tricky levels have a hint video available. On the other hand, getting top-tier scores on every level is a stiff challenge likely to take considerable effort. No achievements are leaderboard-based, missable, viral, date-based, or ridiculous. The achievements are all achievable; they are mostly both later in the game and fairly hard.

The store page is honest. The game runs well and is free of microtransactions and psychologically exploitative tricks.

Accessibility: The game has no time pressure outside of a single exception that can be toggled off to avoid gating progress. (The toggle is in the introduction dialog for that level.) The interface uses both the keyboard and a pointer, although an on-screen keyboard works quite well. The interface requires moderate precision with the pointer, including a lot of dragging. It also requires entering a fair bit of text starting in the mid-game. There are no vital sound-only cues. No lines are voiced; all dialogue is presented in text. The game distinguishes everything it color codes by other visible means as well. Circuit paths can be color coded by the user, but this is neither necessary nor used by the game to determine anything (except for which wire is higher when they cross, which is also purely cosmetic). As a non-expert, I see only minor problems except for the blind, who I don't think would be able to play.

This is a sublime work of art with polished, novel, genre-fusing mechanics.

Summary: The game is a competent and typical of its genre. It runs fine, and it's essentially exactly what you'd expect.

Progress Disclosure: I finished the first two dozen boards, which is the first three levels. I reviewed it so early because there were no other reviews; its window of new release exposure was closing, and it didn't deserve to miss sales on account of consumer uncertainty.

Observations: The "tutorial" consisted solely of a box of text; it was still sufficient, even having heard and read nothing about the game except the store description before playing.

The difficulty is fine so far; the first 6 boards averaged under 2 minutes each, and the next 18 took a bit over 4 minutes each.

The presentation is simple and functional. The art style is essentially all displayed in the marketing screenshots accurately.

The achievements look to be quite doable, so this game would probably be good for 100%ers. All of them are for simple completion; none can be missed, are timed, or even require perfect input.

There are no hidden in-game purchases.

Accessibility: The game never has time pressure. The interface requires enough precision to hit boxes of the size in the marketing screenshots without hitting the adjacent ones; it does not require dragging. The interface is fully mouse-driven. (It may support touch screens, but I don't have one.) There are no vital sounds. There is no dialogue written or spoken.

Locked tiles are distinguished from unlocked tiles purely by color; that mechanic is optional, though helpful for remembering which numbers you're confident in. Some tiles are locked in the marketing screenshots, so you can check before purchasing if there's an issue for you.

As a non-expert, I see no other problems.

Honestly, you should know already whether you want to play a game about writing code to pass unit tests in a minimalist (but not strictly minimal*) assembly language for a stream processing architecture with no physical implementation or professional utility. Therefore, I will primarily address the few remaining issues.

Yes, it is implemented well. Yes, the puzzles are chosen well across a good range of difficulty. No, the developer is not running a scam or otherwise objectionable.

* Specifically, it does have more jump instructions than strictly necessary, both subtraction and negation, and some pseudoports. These improve the optimization possibilities drastically and the "power" of the language quite slightly. It also has comments, labels, and human-readable names for instructions and ports because it's an exercise in cleverness, not cruelty.

Accessibility: The game has no time pressure ever. The interface uses both the keyboard and a pointer. The interface doesn't require great precision with the pointer, but it does require entering a fair bit of text. There are no vital sound-only cues. No lines are voiced; all dialogue is presented in text. Only the puzzles involving the graphics module rely solely on color for identification; specfically, there's a single shade of red in addition to white, black, and two greys. It's visible in one of the screenshots on the store page. As a non-expert, I see only minor problems except for the blind, who could only possibly play with both an OCR-capable screenreader and immense patience.

Summary: The game is quite good, but it's not perfect. There are minor hints at mobile heritage, but nothing that would stop anyone who might like a computerized card game from having plenty of fun.

Progress Disclosure: I finished the game and have every achievement. I didn't collect every card. That took about 14 hours. It could probably be done in 8-10 hours by someone hurrying.

Updates: It's over 2 months later, and this game is still getting free content additions.

The mechanics have clearly received attention and tuning; the basics work nicely on their own, and as more abilities are introduced they interact in interesting but not convoluted ways. The interface in general is good; however, it is full of tiny delays for animations and pointless confirmations of non-permanent actions. Combat animations can be set to anywhere between 100% and 200% speed in the options, at least.

The tutorial was good, even having heard and read nothing about the game except the store description before playing. The difficulty hasn't sharply spiked or stayed tutorial easy since; the AI can be observed getting steadily more competent in addition to having better cards. Most games are semi-close wins, and the occasional enemy provokes a new deck style. I have a win ratio around 5, and I doubt that's exceptional.

Deck size is allowed to vary between 25-40 and failing to draw causes damage, so milling is a somewhat viable strategy with the right cards.

There's an deterministic, seemingly associative 2-input alchemy system. The vast majority of combinations are disallowed, and this is indicated by dimming incompatible cards; there's still a pretty large space of recipes, though. A little experimentation produced some deck-worthy but not ridiculous cards. As an example, two Pancakes gives a pretty good milling card. I didn't find a guide, so I'll warn that in my experience combining a alchemy-created card and one of the ingredients used to craft it is allowed but just gets the created back, effectively throwing a card away.

There are 6 icon-identified deck slots; a card can be used in multiple decks. The deck building interface is passable if imperfect; it lacks bulk management options, and the sorting options are deficient. It could use a tweak to show more cards on a PC screen. Cards used in decks are hidden on store and alchemy menus (for good reason).

The art style is pleasant. The dialogue is mildly humorous overall and better in parts; the optional dialogues are pretty extensive, as well.

The achievements look to be quite doable, so it would probably be good for 100%ers. The non-trivial ones (10+ attack and 9 combo) are easy enough to manage once you have a 6+ arrow card and deliberately try.

As described, there are no hidden in-game currency, card, or booster purchases.

Accessibility: The game is fully turn-based with no time pressure ever. The interface doesn't require great precision, but it does require dragging. The interface is fully mouse-driven, except optionally entering your name. There are no vital sound-only cues. No lines are voiced; all dialogue is presented in text. Nothing relies purely on color for identification. As a non-expert, I see no problems.

This is an excellent implementation of a well-known board game. All the standard features you could want are in the latest version, including bot matches, hotseat mode, and online play with optional ranking and bots.

The account system is separate from Steam, but it creates the account for you with the same name; the only quirk is that it doesn't add your Steam friends to your Days of Wonder friends list, which would be technically challenging to implement.

The Legendary Asia map is strictly that side of the expansion board; Team Asia is not available as of this writing.

I cannot recommend this game strongly or vaguely enough. Play it quickly before you find out why you must.

It's an audiovisual delight, featuring an exactingly matched soundtrack and wonderful desert visuals with just a touch of the surreal. It's brilliant from start to finish, though it may take an hour or two for that to become fully apparent.

This is an excellent tower defense game. It's polished, fun, and visually appealing. The voice acting is a particular highlight.

Splice is absolutely distilled, aggressively pure puzzling. It's perfectly minimalist, i.e. there is nothing unnecessary yet everything necessary. Its core mechanic is unadorned and more than clever enough to stand up to being left bare. Even better, every level takes it one step deeper.