OP
OP
After playing Primer Mover for several hours, I have found it to be a very nice addition to the genre, but also one of the harder examples. As Tim indicates, the puzzles in this game are a lot like Human Resource Machine (manipulation of numbers in physical space), but unlike Human Resource Machine it is also a game where physical space is extremely important. Not only do you have less workspace than SpaceChem, but also have to deal with connections that take up physical space like Shenzhen I/O.
The choice of components themselves also feel somewhat unusual, which makes for some interesting challenges. For example, there is a 3-way component for sorting positive, negative, and zero values, but since it is a 3-way component (and not a component with 1 input and 3 outputs), you have to combine it with other components if you need to sort all 3 types of values, since at least one type of value will be sent back where it came from. The game also has a generic "switch" component, which toggles a neighboring component in some way, allowing you to (un)lock, unlock, flip, or rotate affected components depending on their function. You can also create your own components, but unfortunately that functionality is rather painful to use in practice.
That pain is also one of the reasons why I have to disagree that the UI is necessarily much better than Human Resource Machine. Like that game, the UI in Prime Mover suffers once you have to work on more complicated problems.
For one thing, the cursor in Primer Mover functions as a paintbrush that places the same component over and over again as long as you keep "painting" in empty cells. However, it is rare that I wish to place multiple of the same type of component (excepting basic paths), so I end up having to swap back and forth anyway. But because cursor functions as a brush means that there is simple drag and drop, and cutting/pasting requires you to first select the entry for that functionality on the component bar. I mostly found it easier to simply re-draw small sections I was working on as opposed to cutting and pasting them. And since there is only cut-and-paste, a common work-flow is 1) select cut/paste, 2) cut region, 3) CTRL+Z to undo cut, 4) paste region wherever else I need it. All of this honestly feels archaic, and not in a good way.
As far as I can tell the game also lacks any ability to place breakpoints of any sort, which makes solving issues that arise late in a task difficult to dissect. The game does have the ability to single-step through solutions, but that is a very slow process. There is also just two run speeds, normal and accelerating, the second of which starts out somewhat faster and slowly accelerates. While the solution speeding up does look cool, it just ends up wasting your time as you iterate on long-running solutions.
The game also give you the ability to create custom components, which would in theory remove the space constraints. But a number of flaws makes it rather painful to actually use custom components: 1) Every custom components is visually indistinguishable until you start editing them, and there is no indication of which edges are connected on components. Needless to say, this makes keeping track of what a given components does difficult. 2) There is no way to save and reuse designs outside of cut/paste. 3) No drag and drop combined with indistinguishable components makes moving custom components around an error prone process. 4) Each custom component has the same surface area as a full puzzle (8x8), meaning that they typically come with a significant cost due to all the empty space values have to traverse within the component.
This has resulted in me using custom chips only as a last resort when working on an initial solution and running out of space. I suspect that custom components will be a necessity in later puzzles, and I am frankly not looking forward to that.
But despite these complaints it is still a game that I am greatly enjoying banging my head against, and one that I would recommend to fans of the genre.
The choice of components themselves also feel somewhat unusual, which makes for some interesting challenges. For example, there is a 3-way component for sorting positive, negative, and zero values, but since it is a 3-way component (and not a component with 1 input and 3 outputs), you have to combine it with other components if you need to sort all 3 types of values, since at least one type of value will be sent back where it came from. The game also has a generic "switch" component, which toggles a neighboring component in some way, allowing you to (un)lock, unlock, flip, or rotate affected components depending on their function. You can also create your own components, but unfortunately that functionality is rather painful to use in practice.
That pain is also one of the reasons why I have to disagree that the UI is necessarily much better than Human Resource Machine. Like that game, the UI in Prime Mover suffers once you have to work on more complicated problems.
For one thing, the cursor in Primer Mover functions as a paintbrush that places the same component over and over again as long as you keep "painting" in empty cells. However, it is rare that I wish to place multiple of the same type of component (excepting basic paths), so I end up having to swap back and forth anyway. But because cursor functions as a brush means that there is simple drag and drop, and cutting/pasting requires you to first select the entry for that functionality on the component bar. I mostly found it easier to simply re-draw small sections I was working on as opposed to cutting and pasting them. And since there is only cut-and-paste, a common work-flow is 1) select cut/paste, 2) cut region, 3) CTRL+Z to undo cut, 4) paste region wherever else I need it. All of this honestly feels archaic, and not in a good way.
As far as I can tell the game also lacks any ability to place breakpoints of any sort, which makes solving issues that arise late in a task difficult to dissect. The game does have the ability to single-step through solutions, but that is a very slow process. There is also just two run speeds, normal and accelerating, the second of which starts out somewhat faster and slowly accelerates. While the solution speeding up does look cool, it just ends up wasting your time as you iterate on long-running solutions.
The game also give you the ability to create custom components, which would in theory remove the space constraints. But a number of flaws makes it rather painful to actually use custom components: 1) Every custom components is visually indistinguishable until you start editing them, and there is no indication of which edges are connected on components. Needless to say, this makes keeping track of what a given components does difficult. 2) There is no way to save and reuse designs outside of cut/paste. 3) No drag and drop combined with indistinguishable components makes moving custom components around an error prone process. 4) Each custom component has the same surface area as a full puzzle (8x8), meaning that they typically come with a significant cost due to all the empty space values have to traverse within the component.
This has resulted in me using custom chips only as a last resort when working on an initial solution and running out of space. I suspect that custom components will be a necessity in later puzzles, and I am frankly not looking forward to that.
But despite these complaints it is still a game that I am greatly enjoying banging my head against, and one that I would recommend to fans of the genre.
Last edited:
