U.V.S. Nirmana

Finally, a Zack game that I actually beat. It's a very fun circuit board puzzle game which I very much enjoy. The solutions are quite restrictive because of the physical constraints, but you can typically manage to optimize a few things after solving it. The description says it's on the shorter side if you're experienced with the genre. It still took me quite a while, but I also spent 1/4 of that time stuck on the final level. The art, music, and sparse sci-fi story is also quite appealing. The solitaire is also very fun. I haven't managed to get 100 points yet (PB 98).

Great puzzle game! Zachtronics is back!!

Nirmana is not the most challenging Zach-like you’ll play, but it is certainly unique within the genre. A lot of the challenge of this game arises from the unusual restraints and architecture of the fictional technology. This game delighted and intrigued for its whole play time.

really fun. it felt like programming a quantum computer

good game but kinda short and puzzles don't allow for much creativity like other zach-like games

It is impossible to talk about this game without comparing it to the original zach-likes. My opinion is that this game has the same feel as the originals but does not have the same kind of polish. I do not mean that the game lacks visual polish, I love pixel art in general and I feel like discovering the next piece of gorgeous background art was one of the main drivers behind me finishing the game in 3 days. I also enjoyed the flavour text at the start of each level, it all had a nice sci-fy feel about technology beyond our understanding. However, I felt somewhat dissapointed that the lore stayed mostly a vibe of the location rather than an actual story. I experienced it as kind of a plot-twist when the final few missions revealed that we were actually traveling *somewhere*. The puzzles are kind of circuit builders if the circuits contained water instead of electricity (in the sense that you can route it but you cannot split it) with extremely limited ability to store information between timesteps. I have to echo the sentiment of other reviewers that each puzzle appeared like it had only a single solution. The system still left room for player optimization, you could figure out …