Sixty Four

With so many intense games out there that require full focus and commitment to play, it’s sometimes nice to kick back and just play a relaxing game. Sixty Four is a newly released game as of March this year, with the goal of using simple machines to create progressively more complex designs.

The game starts off innocently enough, with a white screen and a single, plunger like, machine to work with. As you work with the machine to break different cubes, a friend is texting you through a little chat box.

Players don’t have control of this text box, it’s purely responding to progression points in the game and acts as a cleverly designed tutorial.

Clicker Game Meets Puzzler

Most of the time players will be clicking away to try and meet the goals of the latest level. This requires a little bit of strategy however, as each level is a puzzle that needs to be sorted out to progress.

If players manage to solve the puzzle acceptably, they’ll be rewarded with more chat from their friend and the next problem in the game. Players who have mastered Factorio will likely enjoy this game, albeit with a “thriller” component provided by the story.

A Single Developer

Sixty Four has received over a thousand positive reviews on Steam for its originality and clever design, so it’s surprising to learn that it was developed almost exclusively by one person. The game started out as an experiment to see if the developer could make a cube explode satisfyingly in javascript.

Eventually, this turned into the game Sixty Four, and while the developer did have some help with chat text dialogue and quality of life improvements, the majority was done by himself. This is extremely impressive, considering the quality of the game.

Not Quite an Idle

In the description, Sixty Four sounds like its an automation game progressing towards being an idle game. Sixty Four never really quite meets the definition of an idle game, and may test players patience and diligence at every stage.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it may surprise players who think they can set up a machine and check back later to see how it is doing. Automation takes some of the load off the player while they work on more advanced stuff, but it never really achieves idle status.

The goal of the game is to make every click count, so that click will work for the player for ages. Many people who complain the game is too tedious have simply solved the puzzle in a way that takes more time.

Rating: 9/10

If you found this game frustrating and long-winded, it’s likely there is a better and faster way to solve the problem. This game challenges players in a unique way - but there’s more than one strategy that will work.

Pros:

• Fascinating and original game
• Compelling tutorial

Cons:

• May be tedious for some players