Zach Barth, the namesake of game studio Zachtronics, tends to make a certain kind of game.
Besides crafting the free browser game Infiniminer, which inspired the entire global Minecraft industry, Barth and his collaborators made SpaceChem, Infinifactory, TIS-100, Shenzen I/O, Opus Magnum, and Exapunks. Each one of them is some combination of puzzle game, light capitalism horror, and the most memorable introductory-level computer science, chemistry, or logistics class into which you unwittingly enrolled. Each game is its own thing, but they have a certain similar brain feel between them. It is summed up perhaps best by the Zachtronics team itself in a book: Zach-Like.
Barth and his crew have made other kinds of games, including a forward-looking visual novel about AI, Eliza, and multiplayer card battler Nerts!. And Barth himself told PC Gamer that he hates “saying Zach-like.” But fans of refining inputs, ordering operations, and working their way past constraints will thrill to learn that Zach is, in fact, back.
Announcement trailer for Kaizen: A Factory Story.
Kaizen: A Factory Story, from developer Coincidence and comprising “the original Zachtronics team,” puts you, an American neophyte business type, in charge of a factory making toys, tiny electronics, and other goods during the Japanese economic boom of the 1980s. You arrange the spacing and order of operations of the mechanical arms that snap the head onto a robot toy, or the battery onto a Walkman, for as little time, power, and financial cost as possible.
Enlarge/ The New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzen is made to be pointed at, rapidly, in a crowded environment.
Machinery Enchantress / Crowd Supply
“Hong Kong has better food, Shanghai has better nightlife. But when it comes to making things—no one can beat Shenzen.”
Many things about the Hua Qiang market in Shenzen, China, are different than they were in 2016, when Andrew “bunnie” Huang’s Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzen was first published. But the importance of the world’s premiere electronics market, and the need for help navigating it, are a constant. That’s why the book is getting an authorized, crowdfunded revision, the New Essential Guide, written by noted maker and Shenzen native Naomi Wu and due to ship in April 2024.
Naomi Wu’s narrated introduction to the New Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzen.
Huang notes on the crowdfunding page that Wu’s “strengths round out my weaknesses.” Wu speaks Mandarin, lives in Shenzen, and is more familiar with Shenzen, and China, as it is today. Shenzen has grown by more than 2 million people, the central Huaqiangbei Road has been replaced by a car-free boulevard, and the city’s metro system has more than 100 new kilometers with dozens of new stations. As happens anywhere, market vendors have also changed locations, payment and communications systems have modernized, and customs have shifted.
The updated guide’s contents are set to include typical visitor guide items, like “Taxis,” “Tipping,” and, new to this edition, “LGBTQ+ Visitors.” Then there are the more Shenzen-specific guides: “Is It Fake?,” “Do Not Burn Your Contacts,” and “Type It, Don’t Say It.” The original guide had plastic business card pockets, but “They are anachronistic now,” Wu writes; removing them has allowed the 2023 guide to be sold for the same price as the original.
Machinery Enchantress / Crowd Supply
Both the original and updated guide are ring-bound and focus on quick-flipping and “Point to Translate” guides, with clearly defined boxes of English and Mandarin characters for things like “RGB,” “Common anode,” and “LED tape.” “When sourcing components, speed is critical, and it’s quicker to flip through physical pages,” Wu writes. “The market is full of visitors struggling to navigate mobile interfaces in order to make their needs known to busy vendors. It simply doesn’t work as well as walking up and pointing to large, clearly written Chinese of exactly what you want.”
Then there is the other notable thing that’s different about the two guides. Wu, a Chinese national, accomplished hardware maker, and former tech influencer, has gone quiet since the summer of 2023, following interactions with state security actors. The guide’s crowdfunding page notes that “offering an app or download specifically for English-speaking hardware engineers to install on their phones would be… iffy.” Wu adds, “If at some point ‘I’ do offer you such a thing, I’d suggest you not use it.”
Huang, who previously helped sue the government over DRM rules, designed and sold the Chumby, and was one of the first major Xbox hackers, released the original Essential Guide on the rights-friendly Crowd Supply under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA 4.0) that restricted commercial derivatives without explicit permission, which he granted to Wu. The book costs $30, with roughly $8 shipping costs to the US. It is dedicated to Gavin Zhao, whom Huang considered a mentor and who furthered his ambition to print the original guide.
Listing image by Machinery Enchantress/Crowd Supply
