If I remember right there's a Zach-like game called "Signal State" which is focused on analog circuits. ( I'm not sure how much or similar that is to analog computing ). It might be worth checking that out, get a feel for what you think works and doesn't work so smoothly in that problem domain.
The key to a fun zach-like game is making it more like a puzzle game than a simulator, and as such the level design is paramount. Ideally someone should have a good feel for whether they're likely to pass the level before they hit run. If it's a tricky problem, they should be able to get a sense of how to debug / fix an issue from the feedback they get from the output.
You don't want your players to end up trying a bunch of random things to try to brute force their way through the problem, they ought to be able to reason about the solution.
You ideally don't even want to teach the maths, if even an expert needs to hand-crank calculations outside your environment then you're going wrong somewhere. Try to find a way to visualize the current or predicted states in a way that those calculations can either be abstracted or represented in a different way, so that someone can play without doing the maths themselves.
An alternative is to provide a mini sandbox area within the problem they can play around to get a feel for the maths so they can break the problem down that way. If you can find a way to represent the calculations within that somehow, then that'd be a bonus.
The key to a fun zach-like game is making it more like a puzzle game than a simulator, and as such the level design is paramount. Ideally someone should have a good feel for whether they're likely to pass the level before they hit run. If it's a tricky problem, they should be able to get a sense of how to debug / fix an issue from the feedback they get from the output.
You don't want your players to end up trying a bunch of random things to try to brute force their way through the problem, they ought to be able to reason about the solution.
You ideally don't even want to teach the maths, if even an expert needs to hand-crank calculations outside your environment then you're going wrong somewhere. Try to find a way to visualize the current or predicted states in a way that those calculations can either be abstracted or represented in a different way, so that someone can play without doing the maths themselves.
An alternative is to provide a mini sandbox area within the problem they can play around to get a feel for the maths so they can break the problem down that way. If you can find a way to represent the calculations within that somehow, then that'd be a bonus.