[ProgSoc] Games that teach compsci concepts.

[Bryn Davies]

  I was recently talking (briefly) with Zach Barth, who wrote SpaceChem 
(an indie puzzle game, see "SpaceChem: An introduction" - 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gk8JwvtVs38 ).  SpaceChem is itself kind 
of a model for ideas about state machines and multithreaded programming 
- it's available for linux, mac and windows and I highly recommended it.

  Anyway, I mentioned that the aesthetics reminded me of drawing Turing 
machine diagrams, and he asked me if I'd played a game called 
Manufactoria ( 
http://www.kongregate.com/games/PleasingFungus/manufactoria ).  I 
hadn't, but if anyone on this list is interested in TM / FSA, I think 
you'll enjoy it - I wish we'd had toys like this when I was doing the 
computation subjects in undergrad.

  - Bryn