Hacked the Planet
The story took a bit of a weird turn near the end, but ultimately Exapunks left me feeling very satisfied.
Its simple instruction set and network-distributed parallelism make for fun puzzles; my new favorite among all Zachtronics games, which is saying a lot. The amount of content is impressive, with a main campaign that isn't just lengthy, but also feels "meaty" and well-paced.
And the story is easily the best of its genre, both in its enchanting cyberpunk theme and in its intriguingly diverse styles of narration. This feels like the glorious culmination of TIS-100's hidden notes, Shenzhen I/O's email banter, and Opus Magnum's dialog scenes.
I loved uncovering Exapunks's story, and I loved solving its puzzles. Hell, I'd still be solving the bonus puzzles right now, if they weren't so damn hard. Ah, well... more fun for later.
Better than: SpaceChem, and every other Zachtronics game I've played.
Not as good as: I suppose if these puzzles could be combined with a Hacknet-style hacking game ...
And +1: for the nonograms at the end of the manual. Of course I printed those out.
Progress: Finished the main campaign, and the first four bonus missions.