Circuit-board workspace mid-simulation: four coded chips, traces and verification waveforms

About this game

Developer: Zachtronics · Publisher: Zachtronics · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Minimalist & vector · Screen type: HUD & Gameplay UI

More SHENZHEN I/O screens in the Gallery

What to study

SHENZHEN I/O's whole game is this board: code lives on the chips themselves, so reading the circuit means reading the program, with live register values beside each listing. Traces are the data flow, the right rail prices every part, and the bottom panel judges the design against expected waveforms, test run 1 of 4, with power usage and production cost as the two scores to optimize. Frame at about 0:22 in the SHENZHEN I/O Trailer (Steam), manually extracted because the trailer is one continuous take and the scene-change pass found no cuts. Disclosure: the display panel carries a faint ghost of the trailer's title text fading in; it covers no code, trace, or readout.

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

panel-grid status-row hud-overlay

Components

Parts on screen.

Chart List Resource bar Toolbar

Screen inventory

• Circuit board workspace: four microcontroller chips wired with teal traces to stage-1 to stage-4 inputs and a large display panel
• Code editors on each chip with legible assembly: teq, mov, slp, jmp, loop, dgt, dat, plus live acc/state/power readouts (86, 16, 11, 135, 33, 204)
• Right parts rail with priced bins: MC4000 ¥3, MC4000X ¥3, MC6000 ¥5, DX300 ¥1, 100P-14 ¥2, 200P-14 ¥2, LC70G04 ¥1
• Bottom verification panel: stage-1 to stage-4 simple-input waveforms plus display XBus output, CURRENT TEST RUN 1/4, POWER USAGE 434, PRODUCTION COST ¥16
• Simulation controls bottom left: RESET, PAUSE, STEP, ADVANCE, SIMULATE
• Left edge home/undo buttons and INFORMATION/VERIFICATION tabs

Top 3 colors

#213139 21%#030e17 21%#051825 19%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© Zachtronics, SHENZHEN I/O screenshot: SHENZHEN I/O Trailer (Steam), shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Zachtronics.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-11-01. verified 2026-11-01: manual frame from the clean DASH re-fetch of the official Steam trailer (HLS copy corrupt, see review-notes.md), inspected visually at full resolution; chip code, live values, parts prices, waveforms, test-run/power/cost strip and simulation controls all confirmed legible

no published policy found (checked 2026-11-01; web search surfaced only press about Zachtronics fan GIF sharing, no fan-content policy document); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.