The best Zachlike games

Zachlike games are open-ended puzzle games in which players build systems from a variety of tools and resources in order to match level-specific outputs. Depending on the game, these systems can look and behave like production lines, or they can be more abstract and function like programming environments. Whether they are conveyor belts or programming instructions though, the tools and resources are usually made available to the players with few or no restrictions, meaning that there can be a massive number of solutions to each level. As such, Zachlike games foster both creativity and technical proficiency.

Zachlike games can be traced back to 2008 and 2009 when fresh-out-of-college Zach Barth released several Flash games, including The Codex of Alchemical Engineering. Barth went on to create the Zachtronics studio, which enjoyed critical and commercial success with games such as SpaceChem and Opus Magnum. The term “Zachlike” itself arguably originates from a 2016 Rock Paper Shotgun article [archived version], and it was quickly adopted by both the studio and a niche community of players. Other studios have come to produce Zachlike games with their own twists, such as Infinite Turtles, Hexahedra and ABI-DOS.

Zachlike games are a subgenre of engineering games; more precisely, they sit at the intersection of automation games and setup-and-play games, and they sometimes include programming elements. Players can conduct test runs of their automation systems at any time, iterating over solution designs until they can match the desired output of a level. Most Zachlike games have leaderboards based on several criteria of efficiency, which provide an additional motivation for optimizing solutions. Zachtronics games in particular are also known for including quirky, satisfying solitaire minigames.

The games listed below are the most favorited Zachlike games in the Thinky Games database.