![]() "We were always right on the edge of being reliable, but always one game away from failure" Zach Barth, Zachtronics As beloved and influential as Zachtronics is, that doesn't mean it is somehow immune from the same forces that act on every studio in the indie space. They don't see the process."Īnother part of the reason to close is due the sheer pressure of being an independent developer. We spend a year grinding in that machine and then we output a game and people just see the output. That's a huge part of the day-to-day experience for us. When people look at us, they see our games and they see the game content, but there's this whole machine, lurking behind the scenes, that makes games that exist at our company and at every company. "Our stuff was simple by the necessity of having to turn out a game once every year with a five-person team, so there are limits to what we can explore in the huge broad space of what is game development as an industry and a career. We like each other, but the way you work with different people is that you either hire them on, which requires expanding, or you fire and replace them or they leave. We can't change our business model effectively, because we have to keep making the same amount of money, otherwise we can't pay everybody. "We're able to do a variety of games, but there are other things you can't change up. "They weren't as successful as our puzzle games, to be honest," Barth admits. So why does the studio have to disband to explore these new ideas? All of which is to say that while yes, Zachtronics has focused on puzzle games, it's not all it has made. But it has also made other kinds of titles for example, back in 2013 it released strategy title Ironclad Tactics, before launching visual novel Eliza in 2019. It is famous for the likes of Opus Magnum, SpaceChem, Shenzhen I/O and Infinifactory. Since its inception back in 2000, Zachtronics has mostly focused on puzzle games. They were always about the same size and scope." "It was something that we like doing, but I think all of us on the team were all interested in exploring brand new concepts and things that we couldn't really have done as Zachtronics because over the years we ended up not necessarily making the same game, but very similar games. We really enjoyed playing in that niche and making games for that audience, but it wasn't something that we wanted to do forever. Over the years, we'd found a niche that was really great for us. "Every day we explored the same space more thoroughly and we didn't like exploring new spaces."īurns adds: "The decision to close Zachtronics came from a desire to try something new. I felt like my job started to become more boring every day," he tells. "I would say over the years game after game it started to feel samey. In short, he had become tired of working there. About two and a half years ago, Zachtronics founder Zach Barth and the studio's audio and narrative director, Matthew Burns, went for a walk.ĭuring the course of their conversation, Barth said that he wanted to shut down the developer.
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