Opus Magnum: Game Digest
Alchemy 101
From developer Zachtronics, similar to some of their other titles, Opus Magnum is a soft programming game themed in a fantastical scholar based world, akin to Potter like schools set over a period megacity. The dialogue is engaging too based on a mild story as you “play” the role of the alchemist, Anataeus Vaya.
Thematics aside, the game presents to you a problem to solve, known as products, which can only use the reagents provided for a level. Using mechanics such as arms and bonding devices, you must create the products in a way you see fit. You are graded on three main areas, cost (total quantity of mechanics you use), cycles (how long the total operation takes to complete 6 products), and area (the total footprint used for the level). As you can imagine, the metagame is based around optimising a level, and considering other solutions which could be a balance of all 3 factors, be take one factor to the extreme or just be a visually beautiful machine.
These are the majority of tools to construct your machine with, with their costings. You place the products and reagents too.
The timeline is what you use to input all of your instructions to make the machine work. Each track represents a mechanical arm in the level.
Hey, at least they work!
Here’re my solutions. At the end of a level you can see a histogram to compare your solution to the community’s. Fittingly, there’s a gif recorder too, just like they knew!
Easy to deconstruct here, two functions operate and join to make the product. The blueprint is large, the cycles are average-long but it’s cheap.
New mechanics are introduced such as morphing elements into salts, paired here with the linear morphing of metals.
Once comfortable with bonding the elements together, you’re then introduced to seperating them, fitting name this level.
I like how compact this is, with the dedicated element seperation to each side.
The bond locations become important, so attention to assembly becomes the focus of some prettier machines.
Infinite machines are essentially for loops with a pre loop void grab at the start. One criticism would be to allow the ability to loop a section of the instruction track rather than a generic “loop whole track” to simulate for loops easier. I find utilising rails a cheap and efficient way to fix offsets, particularly when space is tight.
You just knew it was coming near the end, when you’d have to make the linear path from tin all the way to gold. I chose a cycle focus here. If there were any additional elements, you’d begin to notice the expontial slowdown of gold output. Small satisfaction with the 2 to 1 element scaling with that the arms never collide.
Intermittently throughout chapters you can have a breather with a custom implementation of solitaire named Sigmur’s Garden. Visually sticking to the hex grid, cardinal elements and metals is an ideal way to theme this.