Infinifactory

You know, this game could have been made redundant if the aliens in it weren't pointlessly cruel. Great game, head hurts from just remembering the levels (♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ whale), but man it has been fun to play it and get to actually think in a puzzle game.

Infinifactory sits at a happy medium between SpaceChem and Opus Magnum. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoyed Opus Magnum but found it a bit too easy. And if you found SpaceChem too restrictive, you might like Infinifactory, which for the most part gives you a great deal of freedom in how you construct your factories. Unlike SpaceChem and Opus Magnum, the blocks which make up everything can push each other without halting your factory. Actions that would cause a collision (like rotations) will simply fail to happen, but your factory keeps running. This can often be used to great effect. There are a lot of "tricks" to discover which can be quite fun but can sometimes be frustrating as well, when it isn't obvious which action takes priority over another. I was learning new things about the game all the way to the final puzzle. Some of the later puzzles border on the tedious (and intimidating), but every puzzle has some sort of new wrinkle or twist that very few of them feel like filler. The interface is clean and relatively easy to navigate once you get used to it. The keyboard shortcuts are well-thought out (and customizable). There are histograms, and all three metrics are very natural and worth trying to optimize. The story is thin but the storytelling and atmosphere are executed well, through the environments, the objects you need to synthesize, and various audio clips. Overall, if you're a fan of Zachtronics' other games, this one is a must-play.