MOLEK-SYNTEZ

I absolutely loved this game.
Minimal presentation, check.
Great soundtrack, check.
Awesome little puzzles to nerd the **** out of, check.
A Zachtronics game, so histograms to compare with other players, making you want to further optimise, check (see my playtime).
Story not distracting but adds to the overal atmosphere, check.
Most fun I had in a Zachtronics game since SHENZHEN I/O.
Only minor issue I had is that bond priority can depend on orientation, if I remember correctly (been a while that I played the game).

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.

Welcome to a Molek-Syntez, where every molecule is chiral...
If you can temporarily unlearn that rule, your months grinding ochem will help you a surprising amount.

The only minor point of frustration I had was learning the classic Zachtronics "hidden order of operations" game that defines a lot of the midgame. In the case of Molek-Syntez this largely manifests through both double bond priority rules and when combining motion and charge manipulation.

If you play other Zachtronics games you will likely be familiar with having to teach yourself the game's underlying rules for collapsing "dual-states" (eg, picking one of two conveyor directions in Infinifactory). This game is no exception but I fit being at the forefront of the game made it surprisingly easy to work with.

good game i like it

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.

I like this game a lot. I like the minimalist aesthetic. I love the dark ambient atmosphere. I like that the story is sparse and unobtrusive. I like that the solutions are actual molecules. I like the GIF exporter. I like that you can arbitrarily raise the difficulty by limiting the number of modules you use. I like that the rules are discovered through exploration, and that there is hardly a tutorial and no manual.
The main complaint I see from other people is that this is like opus magnum or otherwise doesn't feel as innovative or exciting as other zachtronics games. I vibe with it heavy and love the return to a TIS-100 esque minimalist experience. I think you can tell if you'd be into this.

Typically I quit zachotronics games because they get too difficult. This one got too repetitive. Still, worth a try.

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.