3 Programming-Related Games (1) – A=B

We’re almost at Day 10! Time for a quick break to share a few games related to programming and computer science. Today’s featured game is A=B, available for purchase on Steam, playable on both Windows and Mac.

A=B is a programming language designed by the game’s protagonist, featuring only one syntax rule: A=B. You have to solve various puzzles using this bare-bones syntax, and as you solve more puzzles, new syntax rules gradually unlock.

Let’s take a look at the Steam reviews first.

Gameplay

In the game, you’ll encounter a variety of puzzles, all related to string manipulation. The A=B syntax replaces occurrences of string A with string B. For example, if the program is aaa=bbb and the input string is aaabbb, the result will be bbbbbb (replacing aaa with bbb). The explanation of syntax in the game is also quite minimalist—it simply hands you a link to a PDF, gradually introducing more syntax as the story progresses.

Here are a few examples of puzzles from the game:

1. Sorting abc

Given a string containing only the three letters a, b, and c, with a maximum length of 7: how would you sort it using only the a=b syntax?

The answer here is quite simple—just enumerate all three permutations:

ba=ab
ca=ac
cb=bc

If the input is bcba:

1. Match ba, replace ba with ab, resulting in bcab
2. Match ca, replace ca with ac, resulting in bacb
3. Match ba, replace ba with ab, resulting in abcb
4. Match cb, replace cb with bc, resulting in abbc

From a conventional programming perspective, a problem that could easily be solved with a for loop or a built-in sort function now requires a bit of imagination.

2. Palindrome

This chapter introduces a few new syntax rules:

y=(return)false

Returns false when y is matched.

(start)a=(end)b

When the prefix a is matched, the final character is replaced with b. Having the beginning of the string affect the end might seem counterintuitive, but the game is designed to naturally teach you how to leverage this syntax.

The puzzle is the familiar challenge of checking whether a string is a palindrome. The input again consists only of the three letters: a, b, and c.

axAy=
bxBy=
cxCy=

(start)a=(end)xAy
(start)b=(end)xBy
(start)c=(end)xCy

yx=(return)false
=(return)true

It might look confusing at first glance, but once you study the code a bit, the core concept becomes clear.

First, whenever a string starts with a, b, or c, the end is transformed into the format xAy (or xBy/xCy—xy could be replaced by other characters, acting as markers to indicate it has been processed). Suppose the input string is abba: after the first round of processing, the string becomes bbaxAy.

At this point, executing axAy= eliminates a matched palindrome pair. Ideally, all matching pairs are eliminated. If anything is left over, it leads to a pattern like yx, indicating that characters didn’t match.

Reflections

While you don’t need to know any programming language to play this game, diving in without a basic grasp of problem-solving concepts can still be quite challenging. For software engineers, playing this game feels a bit like solving puzzles with an utterly broken, bare-bones programming language.

However, I think that’s actually a great thing. We’ve grown so accustomed to standard programming concepts—loops, functions, and abstractions—that stepping back and thinking from a completely different perspective makes it all the more fun.

In a typical programming language, the two problems above would only take a few minutes to solve. But writing them using A=B’s syntax forces you to pause, think deeply, and develop an entirely different mindset to achieve your goal.