Virtual Circuit Board

(Updated review to clarify some things.) First, let me say this is still pretty well done. I'm marking it "not recommended:" mostly to put it in the "critical review" category and not because it's terrible, because it's pretty well done, has been around a while, and has more features than similar things, The review can be summarized as "just not my favorite approach to some things" and "in my opinion needs tutorial levels/challenges". I'd mark it "neutral" if I could. I’m not really sure why I bought this because I'm more of a "schematic thinker" when it comes to this kind of logic design. Maybe it’s just for the “art” value? Or maybe I just like to collect and support all software of this more simulation-oriented type to show that there's a market for it. But I didn't really have any special purpose in mind. Everything seems well written it it has all the nice features people will want like the ability to define your own assembly language, define blueprints, decent UI etc. My main problem with it is that it kind of mimics drawing P/N/etc materials on an IC die, but that’s not what really you’re doing. It just gives you an unusual way of connecting logic gates as pixels in a manner that looks sort of like an IC mask, but only has a single layer and ultimately doesn’t work like either an IC or circuit board. Despite the name it doesn’t really simulate a circuit board, though its more like that than an IC die. So you won’t really learn anything uniquely useful from this, especially since it doesn’t even try to teach you digital logic design. The other problem is the lack of "tutorial challenges" and such which is major omission for this type of game/software since lots of people will be interested in the idea but start out not knowing anything about logic design. I feel like all of these circuit simulation things should be trying to at least teach some of the most basic stuff even if it's less material than the free Nandgame web site. The only real value it has over logisim or others is the “art” value of being able to make a flashy (literally) design look like whatever you want with whatever pixelated shape you want for each component. That has some value, but from an educational perspective you’re better to create whatever you want in some other software I think. Schematics would be easier to learn logic, and something closer to physical hardware would teach more about some issues there. Some alternatives to take a look at from approximately oldest to newest (if I gueseed the timeline right which I probably didn't): [list] [*] Turing Complete (schematic) [*] Nandgame (free but entirely browser-side) [*] Powder Toy (free physics-based sim, not originally about circuits but has circuit primitives) [*] Hard Chip (low level hardware with fancy 3d graphics, tutorials, haven't tried myself yet) [*] Circuit Artist (newer than others, minimalistic design scheme, complete "color freedom" aside from black, save is just a standard PNG). [/list] I didn't include Zacktronics games because they're more on the game side than the realistic simulation side, so they're not quite in the same category. So basically I'd say this is recommended if you like the idea of logic circuits made of pixels where color of the pixel is used to indicate inputs, outputs, component type, and everything doesn't have to be made of a single primitive like NAND gates. But if you want tutorials or don't favor the particular approach to pixel logic used here, then not recommended.

I would love to learn about circuits. But this game won't let you do that. Unfortunatly the game somehow expects you already know what you are doing. Therefor I can't recommend this game to anyone who wants to learn this game. It would be create if it just had some sort of levels where you gradually learn all the different tools the game has to offer. Also it would make the game fun for people. Then you could do some puzzles where you need all the different components. Now it is just like here is a Sandbox and you create whatever you want but don't expect us to learn you any of it.

I built my first adder and now I feel like a god. (I have severe down syndrome)

The amount of quality you get for the price you pay is just astounding - pretty graphics, a whole lot of useful components (meshes and buses), LIGHTING fast simulation (1m+ tps), absolutely NO drm, virtual display, virtual input and memory, blueprints and a whole bunch of tutorials/docs Hats off to you, developer. This truly is an incredible piece of software

autism simulator

I held off on buying this for so long thinking that I had enough of these "Games" i.e. Turing Complete, Shenzen I/O, MHRD etc However after spending a few hours playing around I decided to go through one of the books that I had bought a while ago "But How Do It Know by J.Clark Scott". Pretty soon I had an eight bit latch with enable (Register) with LED's showing what the register had loaded and the enabler showing how these fed out. But it was seeing the loaded bits lit up inside the register and the 8 bits on the inputs not passing through because the load bit was off - and nothing going out because the enable was off - that the design just shines through. 100% worth the money for just that.

Creating my own CPU from scratch with very limited knowledge of how a CPU works was one of the most mind bending but fun experiences of my life, this is the perfect game to tinker with logic gates and create low level computer circuits

it's really good if you already know a lot about digital logic ultra gaming...