Marches & Gnats
Coding puzzle game where you program a Turing machine
4 followers
Coding puzzle game where you program a Turing machine
4 followers
Marches & Gnats is a browser-based coding game inspired by Advent of Code. But instead of writing regular code, you program a Turing machine. Each quest gives you a concrete problem and a minimal model of computation. You write transition rules, run the machine, inspect its tape, and iterate. The game is set in 19th-century Estonia during the Romantic era.
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I'm the solo creator of Marches & Gnats.
I like Advent of Code, but it only runs for a short time each year. I wanted something in the same spirit that people could play throughout the year, and also something that could carry a longer narrative instead of isolated daily puzzles.
Instead of writing solutions in a normal programming language, you work directly with a Turing machine: you define its transition rules, run it, look at what ended up on the tape, and fix what broke. The quests cover things like arithmetic, sorting, parsing text, ciphers, cellular automata, and even Sudoku.
So far I've added 33 quests, public leaderboards, and AI agents that attempt to solve the quests using the same constraints. In terms of difficulty, some quests can be solved in ~20 minutes, others are intentionally more involved and reward careful reasoning.
Happy to answer any questions or hear feedback!