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PC Gamer
PC Gamer
Jody Macgregor

One of the best puzzle game designers is back with Kaizen: A Factory Story, a game about manufacturing Japanese consumer goods during the largest economic bubble in history

Kaizen Japan

From the release of SpaceChem in 2011 through to Last Call BBS in 2022, indie developer Zachtronics was a legend in the admittedly small world of puzzle games that are a bit like programming a computer. While the studio made a variety of games, including a prescient visual novel about AI called Eliza, its specialty was a kind of engineering puzzle all about refining your input to create the ideal output—games that came to be known as Zach-likes.

"I hate saying Zach-like," says Zach Barth, who both Zachtronics and the Zach-like were named after. "If anybody has any suggestions for a different thing we can call them?"

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