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SHENZHEN I/O > General Discussions > Topic Details
Dark Blue Monkey 21 Feb, 2023 @ 5:56am
I give up
Loved the main campaign. All the solutions were tricky but could be worked through.

The Avalon City boards are just too small. Yes, they can be solved: I've seen solutions online, but the board is artificially small and the method to a solution is frustrating.

I've reached the kelp robot, and the game's just not set up to be fun any more. Have spent 20+ hours designing and re-designing, trying to get something that works.. I feel I'm close, but always one chip short with not enough space. I hit the exact same point in Spacechem and TIS-100.

It's such a shame, I hate giving up on a puzzle game, and I love the coding and optimising mechanic, but this is how all Zachtronics games go.

I'll take my completion of the main game to be "won".. moving on.
Last edited by Dark Blue Monkey; 21 Feb, 2023 @ 8:24am
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Showing 1-13 of 13 comments
thewifiwhisperer 23 Feb, 2023 @ 2:50pm 
I feel you. I had a similar experience a long time ago (got stuck on the shooting gallery scoreboard). One thing to consider: it really is bonus material.
#1
Dark Blue Monkey 24 Feb, 2023 @ 2:57am 
Aye. I feel a total failure by giving up. But my room was littered with bits of paper with ideas on how to save an instruction or two. It always came down to that I needed space for one more board. Either a 'clock' or somewhere to store the X,Y coordinates because storing them in a RAM took too many instructions to retrieve and update.

I looked at how annoyed I was getting and thought "I'll take my win of the main game as a win.", just as you said. It's such a shame all the games reach this point. It's like eating a delicious chocolate cake, and then there's a rancid mushroom near the bottom. :) hehehe
#2
abc.moscow 24 Feb, 2023 @ 4:08am 
um what is the "Avalon city"? wanna see this task. Where is it?
#3
Dark Blue Monkey 24 Feb, 2023 @ 6:33am 
It's the add-on campaign you get after you complete the main campaign.
#4
gruenundblau23 12 Sep, 2023 @ 11:02am 
Just starting on Shenzhen... but this pretty much happened to me in "Opus Magnum"... gave up on the bonus levels with the limited board size.
But until I reach that point I always got lots of entertainment out of the games and I don't think it's a shame to "be done" with a game at such a point.
I mean: these games are famously difficult. :D
#5
Dark Blue Monkey 13 Sep, 2023 @ 5:12am 
Originally posted by gruenundblau23:
Just starting on Shenzhen... but this pretty much happened to me in "Opus Magnum"... gave up on the bonus levels with the limited board size.
But until I reach that point I always got lots of entertainment out of the games and I don't think it's a shame to "be done" with a game at such a point.
I mean: these games are famously difficult. :D

The 'shame' is that the game reaches a point where it beats you. Except for those people that look up solutions online, there will come a point where almost everyone has to give up. It's such a shame that, after all that time of beating the levels, feeling cool and smart that you figured it out, they eventually make you feel a failure, and your last impression is that you weren't good enough.

SpaceChem, TIS-100 and now this have all done it to me, and I just can't bring myself to bother with another Zachtronics game. If they're ultimately unwinnable, then why bother, I say?
Last edited by Dark Blue Monkey; 13 Sep, 2023 @ 5:13am
#6
BobbyRunout 21 Oct, 2023 @ 12:02am 
Originally posted by Dark Blue Monkey:
Originally posted by gruenundblau23:
Just starting on Shenzhen... but this pretty much happened to me in "Opus Magnum"... gave up on the bonus levels with the limited board size.
But until I reach that point I always got lots of entertainment out of the games and I don't think it's a shame to "be done" with a game at such a point.
I mean: these games are famously difficult. :D

The 'shame' is that the game reaches a point where it beats you. Except for those people that look up solutions online, there will come a point where almost everyone has to give up. It's such a shame that, after all that time of beating the levels, feeling cool and smart that you figured it out, they eventually make you feel a failure, and your last impression is that you weren't good enough.

SpaceChem, TIS-100 and now this have all done it to me, and I just can't bring myself to bother with another Zachtronics game. If they're ultimately unwinnable, then why bother, I say?

Because these games are doing something much more valuable than making you feel smart. They are actually making you smart(er), and reminding you that there is always more learning and growing to do. Feeling like a failure is not the same as being a failure; being a failure is hiding from reality by seeking out only experiences that make you feel only good because they don't challenge you enough.
Last edited by BobbyRunout; 21 Oct, 2023 @ 12:07am
#7
Dark Blue Monkey 21 Oct, 2023 @ 8:12am 
Originally posted by wly_cdgr:

Because these games are doing something much more valuable than making you feel smart. They are actually making you smart(er), and reminding you that there is always more learning and growing to do. Feeling like a failure is not the same as being a failure; being a failure is hiding from reality by seeking out only experiences that make you feel only good because they don't challenge you enough.

Once a game stops being fun, it's no longer a game in my opinion, it's a task. If I want something to give me impossible tasks and waste hundreds of hours on it, I'll ask my boss for more work.

I didn't play this to be taught a lesson in humility or perseverance, I wanted a nice challenge. What I got was a main game of nice challenges, followed by a DLC of nasty challenges that are about as much fun as having your toenails ripped out ;-)
Last edited by Dark Blue Monkey; 21 Oct, 2023 @ 8:13am
#8
mala 7 Nov, 2023 @ 5:48am 
i can feel you. been stuck on the harvester for quite a while. Actually, in the meantime, i've played whole exapunks just to avoid thinking about that freaking robotic arm ;P
#9
gbors 14 Nov, 2023 @ 12:52pm 
I have to sort of agree on the Avalon campaign. It's a puzzle game, and it's natural that it tries to trick you, but several of those levels are just nasty. The Kelp Harvesting Robot is my "favourite" as well - it took an exorbitant amount of time to solve (something like 6 hours, the last 3 of which was trying to shave off 2x1 instructions OR routing one stupid cable), and it was heavily pitched against the sequential nature of the components you can use, and of course the board size. I never had this sort of issue in SpaceChem, and only in a limited manner in TIS-100 and Opus Magnum towards the end - however Shenzhen IO is really putting my patience to the test...
#10
bonesplitter 18 Feb, 2024 @ 4:48am 
Not a terrible failure to give up after main puzzles. Only 2,5% of players have even that achievement from beating the main puzzles anyway. So if you've reached that far, you're already top 97,5% of the humanity :D
#11
Dark Blue Monkey 18 Feb, 2024 @ 5:26am 
Originally posted by bonesplitter:
Not a terrible failure to give up after main puzzles. Only 2,5% of players have even that achievement from beating the main puzzles anyway. So if you've reached that far, you're already top 97,5% of the humanity :D
Thanks! :) That actually made me feel better about myself :) You're alright you are!
#12
Aurelius 2 Mar, 2024 @ 10:06am 
The bonus levels are designed to provide more challenging problems to the people who have already demonstrated competence in solving the main campaign, so of course they continue to get progressively harder. I liked the kelp robot but got stuck later - they get harder still. I came back to it after about a year and did some optimising on the lower levels, then returned to the one I was stuck on and managed to solve it and finally complete the Avalon City problems. I found it was also fun improving the solutions for the earlier tasks, using the histogram of other players results as a target. Some of those optimisations (that are easier to figure out on simpler problems) come in handy on the more difficult tasks.
#13
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SHENZHEN I/O > General Discussions > Topic Details
Date Posted: 21 Feb, 2023 @ 5:56am
Posts: 13

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