Chip Builder

Chip Builder is a puzzle game with a story, centred on digital logic. The player takes the role of a junior engineer at a company called ChipCorp, and learns to build a working computer from the ground up, starting with individual logic gates. The game is split into 11 chapters and 39 levels, and ends with a CPU that the player has built themselves.

Gameplay takes place on an interactive circuit canvas. Components are dragged from a palette and outputs are wired to inputs, with signals shown propagating live as the circuit is assembled. Each circuit is checked against the truth table it is meant to satisfy. Lessons are delivered through the narrative.

The chapters progress in order of complexity. They begin with logic gates that process 0s and 1s, then cover combined circuits such as adders, multiplexers and decoders, followed by latches, flip-flops and registers. Later chapters cover memory systems including RAM, ROM and address decoding, the ALU, and a complete CPU with a program counter, control unit and datapath. Further chapters deal with machine code, assembly and algorithms, then pipelining, caching and ISA design, which includes a free build mode. The final chapters cover how chips are fabricated, how dedicated chips for artificial intelligence are developed, and a grand strategy style section in which the player leads ChipCorp as CEO for 35 years.