grigoriynikola

Good evening Zach and Zachtronics crew!

I love your games. TIS-100 in particular.

In "Open-Ended Puzzle Design at Zachtronics" you said that tangibility of design elements is important part of making game that doesn't feel like abstract puzzle. You mentioned bevels on a sides of a chip in SHENZHEN I/O which make you physically feel its existence. "It's super important in Zachtronics ... everything in the game should look like you can physically take it and trow it". You further explore that in manual binders which were intended to be printed and placed on a table next to the computer.

With that in mind. Why wouldn't you design TIS-100 interface so you can navigate in it using solely a keyboard input? It would be appropriate for a computer of that era. Seeing that tiny white mouse cursor all the time playing was a major immersion breaker for me. You can't even close the game without using a mouse!

Just checked. TIS's boot screen shows "copyright" in 1972-1975. But earliest mass-market mice(for Macintosh, Amiga, Atari) were introduced in mid-80s.

I thought you could hold the Ctrl key and use the arrows to move between nodes? I thought we had some kind of shortcut for that...

Yes, you had, indeed. And this is the exact reason that makes me wonder: "why they didn't go all the way with that?". But you can't pick the puzzle from menu without mouse. You also cannot select an option in a pop-up menu(like when you're exit the game, or when histograms is shown at the end of the puzzle) by key arrows, only mouse.

But if it wasn't one of your goal, it's OK. Thank you for your answer!