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.

At first glance, the game appears to be a Ukrainian Portal, but that's not entirely true. The plot is quite good and interesting in places, and the locations are also well-designed. Instead of portals, we control magnetic gravity, which is also cool. One downside is the puzzles themselves: in the first chapter, they're very easy, but in the second, even guides sometimes don't help. My rating: ✭✭✭✰✰

Magrunner: Dark Pulse is a solid Portal-inspired puzzle game built around magnetism mechanics that genuinely surprised me with how creative some of the puzzle designs are, especially in the first act where the clean, well-structured chambers let the core concept shine. Newton, the deployable robot dog that adds a secondary magnetic anchor, was a clever twist that kept things fresh for a while, and the Lovecraftian atmosphere in the later space-based levels is visually stunning — floating platforms surrounded by cosmic horror imagery is a legitimately cool setting. That said, the game runs out of steam well before it ends: the second act drags with oversized levels and slow movement speed, the physics engine is inconsistent enough that you'll sometimes fight the game rather than the puzzle, and the story feels like someone had the idea 'Portal meets Cthulhu' without ever figuring out how to actually execute it. The monster segments in the final act feel completely out of place in what was otherwise a pure puzzle game, and the checkpoint system means deaths near autosaves can force full level restarts. If you're a fan of first-person puzzle games and can grab this on sale, it's worth…

Can't recommend, it could be a decent game, bur: - The game loop tries to do what portal does but not as charming and engaging - The puzzles are decent though, but it frustrates me that they mixed up how magnetism works, it is the opposite polarities that attract, not the other way - It is not updated or optimized for modern hardware, I had a terrible performance on 4060 and i5-12500H, which is a shame because screenshots hint at some interesting plot and designs down the line, but I can't get further with this performance

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.