Story?

[Mewi]

I've read a bunch of reviews, so I'm sure this game is good enough to waste some time in. But how much story is there to discover, and is it even any good? I'm assuming from the lack of mention the story is pretty much negligible, but in the off chance that it's interesting, it would bump this game up from being a decent pastime to something I'd remember.

Coding is cool, but if the story element is missing I think I'd rather buy and spend time in a more colorful game. Perhaps Infinifactory?

I know Zachtronics loves critical thinking and difficult puzzles, but just imagine if they'd made a game that was also story-rich! I'd buy that game immediately.

I've searched a bunch, but all I've found is a single review and a few discussions with no replies. >:

[Zednaught]

I've not come close to finishing the game, but the story is there, but limited to dialogue snippets in puzzles, it seems. It fits with the minimalist theme.

Infinifactory has a much more prominent story, not to mention being the best puzzle game I've ever played.

[Rookie]

I'm very close to finishing the puzzles, and the story is there more like the backstory of the TIS-100. The actual story is the one you write yourself . It was really exciting reading all the debug nodes. The story gets somewhat confusing near the end(in the TIS-NET directory), as it's not clear in what order to read the nodes. Only the last node makes everything clear and links it to you, so it's probably a good idea to finish both parts of the game to make sense of the TIS.
Also, you would probably need to reread everything after completing the game, things tend to be forgotten after hours of puzzle solving.
I didn't play other Zachtronic games, so I can't really tell you whether to get TIS or Infinifactory. What I know for sure is that this game will make you feel like a cool old-time hacker, programming on a tight memory and cycle budget.It forces you to optimize, not in the generic puzzle, but true code sense.
Anyway, the story is fine. It's not a story rich game, as in: you would not get 30 minutes of story per 1 hr of casual gameplay. Rather, you would fight tooth and nail 1 hr for 5 minutes of reading the story. People are really focused on the puzzles and that's why you wouldn't hear anything about the story.

[Mewi]

Thanks for the replies!

Originally posted by Zednaught:

Infinifactory has a much more prominent story, not to mention being the best puzzle game I've ever played

Definitely buying both games. Looking forward to it!

Originally posted by Rookie:

Rather, you would fight tooth and nail 1 hr for 5 minutes of reading the story

Sounds like me! Others have also mentioned that the puzzle solutions are somewhat tight, as in there isn't too much leeway, and it makes me wonder how some people have hundreds of hours of play. I suppose I'll find out over winter break. xD

[macbinary01]

Did you end up buying TIS? It's like Soduko on steroids. If you have any attachment to coding, number manipulation and puzzle solving then this scratches a lot of itches.

You can complete the puzzles somewhat easily (up to the later puzzles that is) and you can run single thread. But the fun is in refining the code, parallel processing, making it run quicker (less cycles). There is a lot of leeway, you can be lazy to experiment then work on bettering your code afterwards.

It's a very rewarding game, I'll even gift you a copy it's ~that~ good!