Some Reassembly Required
This is a rocket (re)assembly game made for the GMTK 2026 "Countdown" game jam.
Your goal is to write a program that can assemble a rocket during the 10 step countdown before launch.
Each level starts with the rocket you built for the previous level.
Warning! The last two levels are quite difficult. Consider the first three levels as the "main game" and the last two levels as bonus levels. If you want to solve them, pay special attention to how the connectors between parts work, and how gravity affects parts resting on top of other parts. Note that you can debug your program by dragging the playhead to scrub forward and backward through time!
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Took me 20 min to complete the first easy difficuly level
Very polished for a jam game! I love Zachtronic games like these, even though I'm not very good at them. It took me way too long to realize you can increase the distance traveled per instruction, and I still don't fully grasp how the connectors work. But once I got it, it was very satisfying watching the orchestration run.
A very nice game you got there! Took me 15 minutes or so to complete it.
enjoyed the puzzles!
very cool!
Tried to optimize the first 2 levels, got to 7 and 6 lines, also managed to beat Lvl 1 without the right arm!
My most optimal solutions:
Hah these are great!
I ended up having to do Level 1 ten steps without using the right arm too! I didn't realise I could still launch while the claw was "closed".
The scrubbing feature is by far the best innovation in the zachlike genre i've seen yet. You can just go forward and see it all unfold, no need to do it in your head
Yeah I'm a big fan of it, but I can't really take credit for it though. I got the idea from Kaizen, which is made by Zach Barth himself (and his new studio Coincidence). It's a really good game, worth checking out if you enjoyed this game!
Such a fun game. Is it just me, or is level 5 way easier than level 4?
Could definitely use more and custom levels, would be very cool.
My solutions (SPOILERS):
oops I just realized I can remove the second last instruction for the right arm in level 4
Here's level 3, it wasn't included for some reason:
Yeah I thought Level 4 was harder than Level 5, but a bunch of people have felt otherwise. It seems to depend a lot on what kind of approaches you end up using to solve them.
7 line solution for lvl 3 - might be optimal?
6 lines is possible (spoiler below)
Nice
amazing wokr !
That was a great game, I'd love to have community levels or more blocks/mechanics added in the future.
However, I might've found a bug in the game, luckily it didn't matter but I'd like to point out. Spoiler to my level 5 solution.
Ok well the good news is that I fixed this bug! The bad news is that apparently when you upload a Unity WebGL build to Itch, it stores the player data somewhere new every time, so people won't see their saved data anymore... gonna see if I can figure out how to fix this.
Fantastic news. I replayed the game, and level 5 seems to works fine now, but I encountered the same issues again in level 2 lol.
Right arm can't bring the column up:
Nor the left arm down:
These issues aren't big deals tho, since those solutions are wrong either way. Don't know why I keep stumbling into them lol, promise I wasn't actively looking for them
I definitely appreciate the bug reports, I just fixed that one too!
Didn't understand how to play, my bad.
OH I GOT IT, I DIDNT KNOW I COULD JUST DRAG THE THING INTO THE OTHER THING. YOOOOOO THIS GAME IS SICK AJCBHAIOJSBNCJIPA
Really neat game! A 'clear all' instructions button would be very helpful for when you think of an entirely different solution.
Option to quickly reverse the program? I didn't realize the numbers were a countdown and programmed it from the bottom up XD
Heh sorry there isn't an option for that, but if you drag a command onto another command it'll swap places with it, so you can reorder them by dragging the top 5 onto the bottom 5 (or vice versa).
I noticed, that certainly helps!
My mom made biscuits:D
spoiler alert my solution for level 3, 4, 5
solution number 3
solution numbar 4
solution number 5
Oh wow! Those solutions are both quite different than my own solutions for those puzzles. That's a really elegant solution for Level 5 in particular, I didn't think it could be solved in only 9 steps.
it took me quite sometimes to solve that because for my first 2 of my solution need more than 10 step. hey but i find something interesting locking system when i drop stuff it lock automatically. pretty cool mechanic
My solution to 5 was also different, it was much harder than the others
Thank you. I would not have been able to solve 4 without this.
This is so up my street (design, pace & gameplay) I would very very much love for this to be a bigger game. Thank you so much for creating it and well done.
we need the histogram so bad
Great game! I finally solved level 4 and 5, I'm curious if there are multiple solutions to the same puzzle, I finished level 5 only needing 8 rows
There's definitely multiple solutions, because I needed all 10 rows for level 5. I came up with (spoilers):
L[d1, r1, c, u1, r1, l1, u2, l2, r4, o]; R[l1, c, r1, d1, u4, l1, o, ~, ~, ~] (with l, r, u and d being directions, c & o being close and open, and ~ being empty - I hope it makes sense lol). I'd love to hear a better solution, though!
oh nice thats a cool one, here was mine spoilers:
solution 5
ooo that level 5 solution is so clean! I never thought it could be done in 8 steps (I was already surprised to see another solution posted here that was only 9 steps), and I love how you used the, um, "wrists" to hold stuff up, I was hoping people would use them like that.
Hey thanks! Yeah I was surprised at the end I had 2 whole rows left.
The more I learned about the mechanics in the game, the more fun it became. The first 2 puzzles were actually the most frustrating since there were some hidden rules I had to learn, like how the interlocking pieces behaved. But after I learned the ruleset, I had a blast thinking of creative ways to use them (like using the wrists, unlocking pieces at certain sections by pushing, etc.). Awesome game!
Yeah I was debating whether I should spell out the piece interlocking mechanics at the start... but I ran out of time to add any kind of proper instructions for them, so that made the choice easier haha
Like you said, the interlocking stuff is really the core of the game. That actually came about because of the "reassembly" theme. There needed to be a way to detach parts from each other, and I didn't want to add some kind of complicated glue/welding mechanic.
Yours is a much more elegant version of what I was trying to accomplish. Nicely done!
This scratches my brain nicely.
Am i stupid? 2 and 3 feel like they need two extra steps to complete. Either i'm missing a function or there simply isn't enough steps to do them.
Have you used the arrows on the movement commands to increase their value? I know some people didn't see those so they thought they could only move the arms one cell at a time.
I . . . did not...
There's a few tricks like you can move parts without grabbing them with the hands by just pushing them with another part or an open hand
Holy moly! i finally finished it after
anastronomical amount of-a little while!Experienced some bugs but it was a fun game
Edit: got a job offer at NASA
better than my rocket building game
Great game deserving of its high rating in the Jam. Felt really satisfying to solve level 5 after some time.
So many different ways you could expand on this concept if you chose to develop it further
I've spent over an hour on level 5 and I'm still hooked. It reminds me of Poly Bridge in that way. I really appreciate the attention that's gone into the scrubbing and error checking. The artworks is really satisfying as well!
Thank you! And I apologize for how hard level 5 is!
It took a week, but I finished level 5! No apologies necessary :D Congratulations on being #1 in Mark's Favourites!
Really fun! It's so satisfying seeing the robot get to work, it being two arms and that they have to work together makes it into a really good programming puzzle game!
Smart idea, a procedural game for coders to play! Can't quite get level 4 done but gonna come back as is a really smart game, well executed.
On 5 now :-D
this game is such fun to play! i was lowk kinda bad at it tho lol so it took me a while T-T. I love the art, the sfx, the pleasure of building the rocket, and overall this is a really solid game!