This week on the podcast, returning guest and owner of Zachtronics: Zach Barth joined me for an exclusive chat about Infinifactory — his spiritual successor to the amazing game Spacechem.

We started off talking about the basics for Infinifactory and how it’s being pitched as a 3D Spacechem. This includes the return of histograms, open ended puzzle design and more. We also discussed some of the trouble spots of Spacechem such as boss stages, the game’s difficulty curve and the challenges of creating a tough game that won’t drive people away.

This also led to a talk on intrinsic vs. extrinsic rewards, Zach’s thoughts on achievements and a brief tangent about 1001 Spikes. For our final topic we focused more on the fact that Infinifactory will be Zach’s first early access game and what led to it and his thoughts on the model. By the time you are hearing this, Infinifactory will be coming out on Monday, January 19th.