Magrunner: Dark Pulse

What starts out like Portal gradually descends into cosmic horror. It may not be a polished masterpiece, but it's anything but ordinary.

Played this game on a complete whim since it had been in my library for a long time. So i went into this completely blind so at first i thought it was just gonna be a simple puzzle game when BAM [spoiler] Cuthulu [/spoiler] came up and it was AWESOME. I do recommend playing it, it is a pretty good puzzle game with some unique mechanics useing magnets. But there is some nitpicks, it felt that act 1 was almost too short to estabilish who everyone is etc. while act 2 & 3 felt almost too long but that is my opinion. Still good game might 100% it later.

A less charming portal clone with a ton of boring exposition.

[h1] THOSE LOVECRAFT INFLUENCES GO WAY BACK [/h1] With the 2026 release of Frogwares' The Sinking CIty 2, I thought I'd dip back into ye ole' catalogue of some of my favorites—crafted in a mostly peaceful world before a seemingly endless, illegal war in Ukraine :( Back in 2013 (oh crap, was that 13 years ago?...god help me), I was seriously impressed by Magrunner: Dark Pulse. So impressed, in fact, that I bought a retail PC box copy with a cool, full-color printed manual which still sits on my shelf today—you remember physical media, right? On the surface, the blending of a sci-fi universe with ancient Cthulhu mythos doesn't seem like something that would work. And then there's that horrific moment in the game, while standing in the middle of a sterile, Portal-esque test chamber with your Magtech Glove strapped to your hand ready to the solve the puzzle room in front of you, a slimy, tentacled thing disappears behind a wall panel while dragging a dead body across the spotless floor. It leaves a massive, bright-red blood smear behind. And then you realize: Yep. This works just fine. In my blog review at the time, I said: "When I come across underdog, derivative games like this…

A surprisingly engaging experience with enjoyable mechanics and a rewarding sense of progression.‍

Great hidden gem along the lines of Portal and Talos Principle. The puzzles are all based on magnetism so they feel very dynamic and it's fun to find both the intended solutions and physics-platforming based shortcuts. The story is pretty cool as well, taking a decent shot at a Lovecraftian story. You can definately tell the devs/writers had bigger ambitions than they could fully realize, but it's fun and mixes in well with the gameplay.