In 2022, Zach Barth announced that his studio, Zachtronics, was closing. The team, which had built a reputation for beloved puzzle games like SpaceChem and Opus Magnum, and had released critical-favorite visual novel Eliza, was ready to try new things.
“We felt it was time for a change,” Barth told Kotaku in 2022. “This might sound weird, but while we got very good at making ‘Zachtronics games’ over the last twelve years, it was hard for us to make anything else.”
Since then, Barth and other former Zachtronics team members have formed Coincidence, a “flexible business framework” that’s produced card games, an educational math-themed racing game, and — announced today — a new puzzle game that will look familiar to Zachtronics fans. Not that we’re complaining!
Kaizen: A Factory Story is an “open-ended puzzle automation game” set in Japan in the 1980s. You’ll spend time “designing, building, and optimizing production lines in factories” to “build calculators, camcorders, arcade machines, and more as you attempt to rise through the ranks,” according to a press release.
“We’ve always wanted to make a game about the heady days of the Japanese bubble economy,” said Barth in the release. “With Kaizen: A Factory Story, we’re aiming to bring the open-ended design we’re known for to a broader audience without compromising on depth or complexity.”
Kaizen will be released on Windows PC later this year.
