MOLEK-SYNTEZ

What can one say? It's a Zachtronics game. Two hours of hatred and suffering buys you two minutes of intense joy and pride (and mesmerizing beauty, if you're good enough). A much better ratio than you can usually get in real life!

It's a Zachtronics game. You probably already know whether you will or won't buy it just from that alone.

So you get:
- Clever pseudoprogramming puzzles
- Dystopic plot
- Zany solitaire variant
- Many hours of brain-teasing

Although by Zachtronics standards, this one is miles and miles easier than the norm (except the Solitaire, naturally, which is why 4 out of 6 achievements of the game are tied into it).

summary:
- use a rudimentary programming language to make drugs
- completely forget about molecular chirality and wonder why your solution is not working
- get frustrated
- open solitaire
- realize you are bound to cheat in solitaire (nothing will ever feel like shenzhen io solitaire)
- play a few rounds with a profound sadness in your heart
- try to make drugs again

This is a remarkable game offering versatility to both more casual and hardcore puzzlers alike. It is one of the more accessible of the zachtronics games in terms of mechanics (although not so much interface) providing ample resources to reach a solution. Conversely, for those who like to limit their own resources, it can provide hard dopamine hits fuelled by beautifully torturous tinkering with the option to see percentile leaderboards to taunt benchmark yourself.

This little programming game affirms my near-spiritual admiration of hexagons. Its monochromatic field of play being a fixed grid of them, onto which a player inserts chemical precursors--water, ammonia, hydrochloric acid--and then provides instructions to the grid’s inward-facing particle emitters, which in turn rearrange their hexagonal formulae into more complex pharmacological outputs: peroxide, chloroform, & amphetamine, to name only a few of the introductory “levels.” (Is the hardest boss I’ve beaten this year actually just an anxiolytic medication called mebicar?) The game, if you can even call it that, consists of largely experimental, backwards interpretation, in which you program individual tasklists for the six emitters--add a hydrogen atom here, push the molecule two places forward, rotate it clockwise--tweaking uncertain inputs towards certain outputs. Its major appeal comes from both the multitude of possible approaches to any one drug composition and its lean ambience, the mechanical hum of its black machine whirring and clicking along to your solutions.
Upon finishing certain compounds, you’re treated to a few vague sentences from the perspective of an erratic & underground protagonist, who much like you sits staring at a screen, though in a drab Romanian apartment sometime in the late 21st century (“The difference between helping and hurting is just a few atoms.”) These lore-drips are rare, and merely a small piece of an eerie, subdued presentation which punches well above its weight. Zachtronics really don’t get enough credit for these refined diegetic interfaces--since the screen you’re looking at is ostensibly identical to our fraught narrator’s archaic terminal, your actions in-game always feel ultra-aligned with the game’s universe despite the fact that the OChem on-screen obviously takes great liberties with the real thing. (As forum STEM bros feel the need to point out.)
This is a Zachtronics game, so your ability to find fun here is likely commensurate with your interest in optimizing solutions to open-ended problems loosely associated with real-world programming and/or engineering. And there’s as much, likely more, to be gained from discovering efficient solutions to simple problems as there is to brute-forcing ugly input lists for those which are more challenging. An interactive litmus test for Occam’s razor, then: no coincedence at all that a more efficient solution is also more beautiful.
I think it’s a shame that Opus Magnum seems to have had the most staying power within and outside of the Zachtronics community--MOLEK’s druggy minimalism and harsher hexagonal spatial constraint really sets it apart as its own thing. If nothing else, this is the only Zachthronics title I don’t ever feel the need to relearn upon returning to it after a year or more away. Its straightforward rules and no-nonsense vibes make it remarkably easy to pick up for five minutes or five hours, quietly but without question cementing it as one of my all-time favorites.

Another incredible Zachtronics game. To be honest, it just feels so good. These games are HARD, don't get me wrong. Especially the older you get (SpaceChem is painfui), but, after compelting the main campaign and half of the bonus campaign, I can assure you it's a worthwhile buy that you will enjoy A LOT, at least if you like this very specific kinds of games that Zachtronics always brings to the table. Also, the solitaire is really great.

Rating:5/10
Completion difficulty:3/10
Warning: the game is very difficult. But since it's a puzzle game, your main issue will be the solitaire, since you can just look up a guide if you're stuck on a puzzle (which will thoroughly ruin the experience).
Anyways, the game is very complex, similar to other games by the same developer, ESPECIALLY magnum opus. I think you should play that game first, and if you enjoy it, try this one out, as they play with the same core concept. The story is nonexistent. The graphics are minimalist.