Very challenging, rewarding difficulty
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews
“It will take significant effort to complete anything beyond the first 5 levels and the challenges only get more difficult from there.”
Steam review · 5.2 h played ↗
TIS-100
Worth buying? What 240 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 240 Steam reviews actually say.
Overwhelmingly PositiveOverwhelmingly Positive · 97%Zachtronics2015Logic · Puzzle · Simulation
$6.99
Open on Steam ↗US Steam price, checked 2 h ago
The verdict
A brutally constrained assembly-style puzzle game with deep, rewarding challenge for programmers. Skip it if you want a tutorial, hand-holding or a conventional game.
Great for
Programmers and puzzle fans who enjoy tight constraints, optimizing solutions and competing with friends' scores
Main risk
No tutorial, only a dense PDF manual, so non-programmers bounce off or find it feels like work
What players love
Teaches assembly and low-level thinking
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews
“TIS-100 taught me assembly basics. I can not overstate how valuable this game is for any low level engineer.”
Steam review · 1.6 h played ↗
Tight constraints make satisfying puzzles
Mentioned in ~1 in 7 positive reviews
“the TIS-100 has just an accumulator and a backup register (which can only be used with the SWP instruction switching ACC and BAK), so even the simplest of tasks becomes a really fun programming puzzle to solve”
Steam review · 78 h played ↗
Parallel node design is unique
Mentioned in ~1 in 15 positive reviews
“The parallel processing aspect is so much more than you usually get in a code-related game and it's just tons of fun to tinker with”
Steam review · 352.2 h played ↗
Optimization and friend leaderboards
Mentioned in ~1 in 17 positive reviews
“The way it displays your friends scores is SO cool, and very motivating for optimisation.”
Steam review · 2.2 h played ↗
Atmospheric retro presentation
Mentioned in ~1 in 38 positive reviews
“The graphics are very simple, almost primitive, but the stylization is superb.”
Steam review · translated · 15.6 h played ↗
What players complain about
No tutorial, must read external manual
Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews
“what it needs is a proper tutorial. After finishing the first level, the only level I was able to complete”
Steam review · 0.3 h played ↗
Overly restrictive instruction set and node size
Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews
“You have a solution in mind but miss 2 lines to complete it.... now you need to start from scratch.”
Steam review · 3.2 h played ↗
Feels like work, not a game
Mentioned in ~1 in 6 negative reviews
“TIS-100 feels too much like work.”
Steam review · 1.4 h played ↗
Repetitive, limited content
Mentioned in ~1 in 11 negative reviews
“Initially the game is fun, but it gets quickly boring as you progress on the challenges.”
Steam review · 3.1 h played ↗
Hard to debug and no comments or tooling
Mentioned in ~1 in 15 negative reviews
“And then when you run into a problem, it's nearly impossible to track down where the error is.”
Steam review · 2.7 h played ↗
Manual is a scanned, unsearchable PDF
Mentioned in ~1 in 30 negative reviews
“Can you imagine a user manual in digital and cannot be searched by ctrl+F?”
Steam review · 0.2 h played ↗
System requirements
From the Steam store page
Steam Deck: Unsupported100 MB
Minimum
OSWindows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
Processor2.0 GHz
Memory2 GB RAM
Storage100 MB available space
OSWindows XP / Vista / 7 / 8 / 10
Processor2.0 GHz
Memory2 GB RAM
Storage100 MB available space
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