There’s nothing like the rush of solving a good puzzle. It scratches some fundamental itch in the human brain. The need to create order from disorder, piece together a seemingly unknowable mystery, or find the single safe path through a facility controlled by a diabolical, killer robot.
These days, a puzzle nerd like me has a huge variety of options to salivate over. Between Blue Prince, Chants of Sennaar, and The Case of the Golden Idol, I’ve played some absolutely incredible puzzle games recently.
But only one game has given me puzzles that got into my soul. Only one game offered problems I went to bed thinking about, only to wake up excited to try a new idea to tackle the challenge. Only one game tantalized me, riding that perfect line where solutions are always just out of reach but never feel too far away.
That game is Zachtronics’ 2017 release, Opus Magnum. I stumbled across this game while scrolling through the puzzle section of the Steam store, looking for my next binge.
In Opus, you play as Anataeus, a recently graduated and insufferably cocky alchemist seeking to change the world with his transmuted inventions. The story is barebones, the artwork is pretty but sparse, and the writing is competent and concise enough to keep you interested in the plot without getting in the way. However, Opus Magnum’s gameplay is where it really shines.
Simple But Effective
Opus Magnum plays out over five chapters and an appendix, with about eight puzzles per chapter. Each chapter begins and ends by presenting a short update to the game’s story in the format of a visual novel. The puzzles are unlocked a few at a time, so you can take a break and switch between them if you find one particularly challenging.
Additionally, the game offers an optional solitaire-like mini-game called Sigmar’s Garden that can be accessed at any time. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Though generally a relaxing experience, I found myself thinking more strategically than expected to increase my win rate. Overall, it’s a nice diversion if you need a break from one of the trickier problems. But it’s the main game’s puzzles that I wasn’t able to get enough of.
The beginning of each puzzle is always the same. You are given an open workspace, a set of manufacturing tools, raw materials, and the design for a finished product. It’s your job to arrange, combine, and transmute the raw materials — alchemical marbles representing a variety of elements — until you have synthesized the final product.
The challenges start simple: Take a bunch of lead and refine it into a single pearl of gold. But as the challenge increases, the final products become devilishly tricky labyrinths of bonded chemicals.
The Nuts and Bolts of Turning Water Into Wine
To create these minor miracles, you have an assortment of tools, categorized as mechanisms and glyphs. Mechanisms are programmable machines that physically move your raw materials, while glyphs are magical platforms placed on your workspace that bond and transform them. On the whole, you will always have access to a similar set of tools to tackle every challenge, with a few twists added along the way.
Arms with clamps move materials from one point in your workspace to another. Pistons work similarly but can extend and retract. Finally, tracks give your arms and pistons the ability to move, providing set pathways for mechanisms to glide across your workspace.
Each mechanism is programmed individually by setting a sequence of commands on a timeline at the bottom of your screen. The command display looks and acts similarly to video editing software. The controls for programming mechanisms are intuitive and easy to learn, though I did wish I had access to a few quality-of-life options that would have made the command sequences easier to control. Once you have assembled and programmed your machine, you can edit and test your Rube Goldberg-esque contraption endlessly without fear of a time limit or running out of resources.
FREEDOM!
The true brilliance of Opus Magnum is the freedom it allows. You have complete control over your machine. You can place as many of your mechanisms and glyphs in any location you desire, though each piece of equipment has an assigned cost. Whether you use five pistons or 50 is totally your call. The only restrictions are the raw materials provided and the final form of your output.
This flexibility creates something incredible. Every solution felt like it was truly mine. It came out of my imagination, not the intended path of the developer. Every success felt earned. I used my designs and my troubleshooting skills to create my gold.
Even more exciting, solving a puzzle for the first time is only the beginning. Once you successfully create a product, the game presents you with three histograms that compare your solution to every other solution from every other player who completed the challenge on the basis of cost, speed, and size of your machine. Entirely different solutions are often needed to maximize your efficiency in each of these categories. It’s a brilliant way of letting you know there are better solutions without actually showing them to you. In my favorite moments with Opus Magnum, I found myself ripping apart my own designs frantically wondering, “How did they do that? Can I shave off those last few unnecessary movements?”
One of the Best Puzzle Video Games
To me, a good puzzle provides two things: a sense of satisfaction with the solution itself and a sense of pride in the solver’s ability to have come up with the solution. In other words, the jigsaw puzzle must be challenging and aesthetically pleasing.
Opus Magnum delivers on both counts. Each puzzle consistently put up new barriers I had to think out of the box to solve. Puzzles rarely felt tedious or overstayed their welcome. Once I completed a challenge, the solutions themselves were a joy to watch. I spent more time than I care to admit watching alchemical elements zip across my screen as mechanical arms twirled in tandem around them, reveling in my own brilliance.
In total, the game clocked in at about 60 hours for me, but your mileage may vary based on how quickly you solve puzzles, how obsessive you are about finding optimized solutions, and how partial you are to admiring your own solutions endlessly loop by on screen. The story, visuals, and music are great, but the mechanics and puzzles are the true draw.
Many Steam reviews praised Zachtronics’ most recent (and sadly final) title, Last Call BBS (2022), but suggested Opus Magnum was a more friendly entry point to the developer’s games. I’ve had such a great experience with Opus Magnum that I plan to check out Last Call BBS as well once I’m in the market for another puzzler.
If you love a tough puzzle or even just played Mousetrap as a kid, Opus Magnum is a worthy addition to your game library.
Opus Magnum, developed by Zachtronics, was released in 2017 for PC, Mac, and Linux. MSRP: $19.99. Game played on PC.
Matt has loved video games since he played Super Smash Bros. on an Nintendo 64 in the year 2000. Today, the games he plays most often are puzzlers, Souls-likes, and roguelikes, but he really loves any single-player game that's challenging and/or has a great story.
When he's not gaming, Matt's a public policy nerd who will talk your ear off about how well-designed government forms are the lost gateway to utopia.
