"Shenzhen I/O" is not an ordinary puzzle video game. It seems Indie game developer Zachtronics has specific people in mind when they created the game -- those who love electronics, those who love to solve problems, and those who love to play games.
Players will be designing and building circuits using microcontrollers, logic gates and memory modules. They will also be writing codes and debugging them so their in-game program would run properly. Gamers will also be required to read more than 30 pages of technical drawings, original datasheets and reference guides, according to the game's website.
Additionally, players will also be "employed" by a Chinese electronics firm in Shenzhen, China, as the title of the game implies. They will also experience looking into a new part data sheet that is still in the Chinese language, which is a real-life experience encountered by electronics engineers working in Shenzhen.
"Engineering is hard! Take a break and play a brand-new twist on solitaire," the site said.
As mentioned earlier, the game is not for everybody. This is not for any ordinary game enthusiast but for programming and electronics nerds. One senior citizen fan who expressed his thoughts on the game's Steam page said that "it engages my mind rather than my reflexes."
"Shenzen I/O" was developed by Zachtronics co-founder Zachary Barth. Barth is responsible for "Infiniminer," the game that inspired "Minecraft." "SpaceChem," another puzzle game that involves creating chemical pathways similar to visual programming, and "TIS-100," where players need to develop an assembly language code to perform tasks on a corrupted '80s computer, are the other games he created,
"Shenzhen I/O" does not need a high-end gaming machine to run. It will work on Windows 7/8/10 computers that have at least 2.0 GHz processor, 4 GB of system memory, at least DirectX 10, and a mere 450 MB hard disc space. It will also work on Macs, but Apple machines should have macOS 10.9 or higher. It will likewise run on Ubuntu 16.04 or higher and SteamOS.
"Shenzhen I/O" is now available on early access for the Windows PC, Mac OS and Linux for $14.99.