on April 12, 2008 —

Silicon Foundry is my latest game in the games for engineers series. You play as the new owner of an integrated circuit factory who must produce chips to meet orders from your customers, and use the profit to pay back the loan for the factory. It’s surprisingly complicated, so I’ve forgone written documentation and made a video tutorial instead. I suggest watching the video as you download the game.

Basic gameplay is divided into two components – an economic macrogame, in which you buy machines, lease and research components, and produce devices to sell to customers, and an engineering minigame in which you must place components on the IC dies, ensuring that the proper connections are brought to the pins and that internal requirements, such as CPU speed and memory, are met. Much like with real ICs, simpler chips result in higher yields – by minimizing the area used for each design, you can produce cheaper chips and turn a higher profit, allowing you to meet the economic macrogame’s victory conditions. While the game has a somewhat steep learning curve, the economic conditions are fairly forgiving, making the game very winnable. Just remember not to produce more chips than your customers will buy!

Update: There was a bug in Silicon Foundry involving localization settings that caused it to crash when formatting numbers. I’ve fixed it and uploaded a new installer. Use the link below to download the new, fixed version.

Download Silicon Foundry



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