RandomPanda0

Hey Zach and Zachtronics team! Thank you so much for your work these past years, it's been a big part of my life, but it's nice to be able to see it end now rather than wither away slowly.

I want to ask about the idea of auteurs in the indie games industry. It's so easy to think of Zachtronics as the work of Zach Barth alone, but I do my best to remember other team members, like Keith Holman, Matthew S. Burns, and Kyle Steed. What do you think about the discourse over your games and others? Do people focus too much on the creative leads and discount the effort of the entire team too much?

Hey, Zach!

Love your games. Really has defined a whole sector of my interests.

I got two questions for you:

1. By all accounts, Opus Magnum, while a very enjoyable game to play, already had its foundational work done when you started working on it, as the Codex of Alchemical Engineering already was proven to be a very enjoyable game. My question is, was Opus Magnum "easier" to make as a result? A one-year development time is really short, so I'm curious if this was just an exception due to these facts.

2. Do you think you'd ever foray into the territory of games like Factorio? The block engine in Infinifactory lends itself well to such as task, and I think you guys would be capable of making such a game, but it could also be a much more difficult and lengthy task than the games you've made so far. What do you think?

Hey Zach! Long time fan.

I was curious to know if you've ever thought about making some of your games open source.

It's probably a terrible idea from a business point of view, but just based on you and your team's productivity these past years, whatever engine you've built to make these games has proven to be an incredibly robust system for making design-based puzzle games. It could be really cool to see.

Besides that, maybe a quick trivia question: Was Exapunks another unshelved project, or did you guys seriously pump this out in just 6-9 months?

As a bit of a followup question then, do you think that you are trapped in making only design-based puzzle games for the remainder of your career? I know Ironclad Tactics wasn't well-loved (though I definitely loved it), so I'd bet there's definitely some reluctance.

Hey Zach!

Got one more question for ya:

You've made a trilogy of programming games and assembly games, is it finally time to continue that card game trilogy? ;)