DeMagnete VR

Fun, simple puzzle game with a splash of adventure. Nicely done. I enjoyed it.

DeMagnete is a fine if terribly short puzzle game that was enjoyable but has a lot of flaws to it. The game is fun enough that I would have given it a thumbs up except for its price to content ratio. At its list price of $20, I wholeheartedly recommend AGAINST the game and, even at the $8 I paid for it, I'm a little iffy. So if you can find it on a really good discount, I'd say it's still certainly worth picking up.

For its strong points:
- It's got a nice, decently crafted world that is fun to be in.
- Controls are customizable enough to satisfy everyone's needs.
- World sound is perfectly fine, nothing to write home about but I didn’t find anything too out of balance (other than Q's teleport sound).
- The puzzles are fun enough and I found myself well enough engaged to go back to it three times in a row when I had an hour or so to get back into VR.

However it does, unfortunately, have quite a few issues for a mid-to-late 2021 VR game:
- The length of the game is terribly short. There's an achievement to beat the game in 2 hours and I beat my first play through in just over 3 hours.
- The volumetric lighting is terrible. It's off by default and I don’t really know why they even left it in as an option.
- There's nothing built into the game to prevent you from taking cubes from one puzzle into the next so it's very easy to 'cheat' a lot of puzzle rooms by just taking a cube (or two) with you. Maybe this is intentional but it made the game even shorter when you can complete the entire last chapter in just a couple minutes by carrying cubes forward for example.
- The game doesn't explain its own mechanics very well. Figuring out the power cube took me a literal half hour because there was no explanation. I only figured it out through sheer dumb luck.
- Your companion Q is just a VR Navi. Why did I throw her in the lava; you know why and it wasn’t just for the achievement. She, unfortunately, serves no purpose as a companion that a button couldn’t do and be less annoying to boot.
- The lava boat puzzle(?) was far too slow paced. It was hardly a puzzle and really more like a simple maze. Found it to be terribly boring after the 'neat' factor quickly wore off.
- The game doesn't evolve much. A few new mechanics get introduced as it goes along but, for the most part, the entire thing is just magnetizing and repelling blocks. A game like this has soooo much potential and it never reaches anything beyond the very simple.

Overall, if you can find the game on a DEEP discount, it might hit the mark for a couple hours but don’t expect all too much. Price to content alone keeps it from being a recommendation. I enjoyed it enough to want to go back and get the rest of the achievements but selecting chapter 1 restarts the game and clears your chapter selection so that activity got axed but the game was fun enough to want to do some achievement hunting.

It's definitely not the worst VR adventure out there, but bugged and boring puzzles spoil it.
Most of them are just passable: they use the same mechanics in very similar way and do not require much thinking.

First thing I noticed is that on many levels you can bring "cubes" through the door to use in the next puzzle, which in a good game(like Talos Principle for example) would be utilized as a hidden game mechanic, but here it's just an oversight.

Then there are a lot of bugs that allow player to pass or squeeze an item through the wall, either accidentally solving the puzzle or completely lock further progress on it. In the last case you would need to reset the room, but in 90% of the cases doing that does not change players position in the room(which is clearly a bug and not a feature), breaking everything even further, forcing a restart for the whole level. And there is nothing more boring than repeating a puzzle, especially the one that was not much fun even the first time around.

There was one particularly awful level: 6 Phlegethon. It's extremely slow and boring lava traversing "puzzle" is repeated 3 times with no meaningful changes. I was praying to not encounter any of the game breaking bugs mentioned above during this level, because replaying it would have been a torture.

Visuals are mediocre: bland basic textures make the game look bad despite it's interesting style and level architecture.

The magnetic puzzles are interesting but quickly become boring with the same uninspiring environment.

Only played the game for a little bit so far, quite enjoying the puzzles so far, got to near the end of chapter 3 I think.
First two chapters the puzzles were quite easy, third one the last two I've been doing required a bit of thought and made me start liking the game.

Issues I would like the devs to sort out:
- The starting menu is confusing, took me a bit to figure out how to hit new game/where the new game was, not good if just jumped into the game.
- the pod spawn is a bit bad, should rather always be center of play space, each time it was a bit off in a new place (Virtual Desktop)
- the pod spawn to begin with with the rotating rocks takes way too long, and then waiting again at the entrance to the new level, and then waiting again at the elevator. Unless this is to let slower devices catch up, please speed it up, especially as this is every single level.

Really enjoyed the first secret already, the hint was given with it being completely up to the player whether they wanted to pursue that avenue or not.

Would recommend to pick up, and in my regional pricing at ~7 EUR, worth picking up, would love the devs if they could make a two player version of this, the base idea of the game is great.

This is an enjoyable and kinetic puzzle game, you get to play with magnetic forces in a quite innovative way, and I enjoyed it a lot! 😮 A few more mechanics are introduced along the way, so do pay attention to what the cubes do! 👀 I didn't and I payed for it in confusion 🤣

The environments are... surprising, let's just say you'll be in for a treat, and it's definitely not what I expected from the trailers! The puzzles start out quite straight forward, but progressively gets more and more complex! Near the end it was pretty challenging indeed! 😅

I streamed it all, so I probably missed the story from talking over dialog, but I think I understood it in the end 🤣 It was a bit unclear for a while though.

Otherwise, it ran really well, and the few quirky things I experienced they fixed, so good job devs! And there's a range of input/control options 😁 Gets a thumbs up from me!

As of right now, I can't really recommend this game. It is a really good puzzle game from what I could tell and has a super cool concept.

The main issue I have is with the collision; any time you try to go through a door to the next room, half of it you collide with. Now, this wouldn't be too bad if you just slid off the invisible walls, annoying but not a deal-breaker. The big problem is that for some reason when you run into an invisible wall, you just stick to it. You don't slide, you can't feel out where it stops being blocked. You have to take a step back and try again, and if you hit the wall again, gotta take a step back, move to the side and try again. It doesn't sound bad, but trust me it is one of the most annoying things I've ever run into. I'm not sure if I've ever left a review on a steam game before but this is just infuriating.

Not the longest game, But the mechanics in it are very fun! I don't consider myself smart in any way but there were a couple of puzzles especially at the end that had me thinking pretty hard =). Loved the experience! Worth every penny!

DeMagnete is an interesting puzzler with an original game mechanic that was fun to use. Basically you have to figure out how to manoeuvre cubes around (like Portal companion cubes) in order to unlock a door to get to the next level. You have a floating orb companion that leads you through the levels and gives you some backstory, but does not provide any clues to solving the puzzles. The levels were unique and the puzzles never felt repetitive. The difficulty ramped up gradually as you progressed without being crazy hard or too easy. Some thinking outside the box was needed as well; not all solutions are straightforward.

I liked the consistent art style, graphics, good sound effects and background music. It ran very smoothly on a Reverb G2 at 100% resolution on 2080Ti.

Some (all?) levels have more than one puzzle area to complete and there is no save point between puzzles, only at the end of the level. This caused a bit of frustration for me at the two most difficult puzzles as I would have to start back from the beginning of the level if I wanted to quit to take a break. It wasn't a huge deal since the puzzles are generally fast to complete once you know how, but another save-point or two would be welcome (especially before the last puzzle).

VR comfort: There is no option for controller-based locomotion direction. Forward movement is locked to where you are looking, so you can't walk and look around at the nice environment without veering off in all directions. At least there is a teleport option if the former makes you nauseous.

The game could reasonably be beaten in about 8-10 hours including some optional areas. It took me just over 12 as a couple of the puzzles had me stumped long enough to wonder if there was a bug (but it was just me). I also wasted some time trying to get hip tracking to work (it didn't).

Overall, it's a good and satisfying puzzle game and I recommend it.

What I have played of the game it has been quite fun and some of the puzzles did take a while for me to get them. They updated the game to 1.04 which fixed the most game breaking issues in the game. However there is still the issue with your hands not colliding with things they should collide with.

1. There is a point in game that at the moment you get soft locked in if you use smooth locomotion instead of teleport and the only way to not get stuck in it is restart the chapter with teleport as your locomotion option. This has been fixed with update 1.0.4

2. Your hands don't collide with... well anything but the blocks you interact with. Not a deal breaker for some but you can cheat a lot by putting your hands through walls and it is really irritating that you can overpress a button by just putting your hand too low for the button to not be in your hand anymore.

3. Snap turning to the right does not work with the Knuckles joystic so you are stuck to only turning to the left... Or accessing the menu which snap turns you to the right for some reason. With the combination of joystic snap and menu snap you can also move slightly, which might just let you go through doors. This has been fixed in update 1.04

(Little sidenote which I am not entirely sure is a bug or just a feature but when entering the elevator for chapter 3 you actually go 4 doors down, not 3.)

With the fixes in patch 1.04 I can now recommend DeMagnete, however there is still stuff that can be done to make it the best experience you can get! (This is in no way a priority but can we get finger tracking at some point in the future, pretty please!)

Played on the Rift S!

In DeMagneteVR, you solve several puzzles using the power of magnetism and cubes.
Difficulty wise the "tutorial levels" are easy to understand without any explanation (except controls).

On more difficult levels, you'll have to think a little longer. There is no hint system, so it's time for some BIG BRAIN MOMENTS!

You will have a lot of different ways to solve certain puzzles, which in my opinion, is the best feature of the game.
A certain someone said to me: "There's no right way to solve a puzzle." The quote describes the solving mechanic perfectly.

The story is good. It's enough to keep you motivated. Sadly, the main character named D doesn't have a voice. The only person talking is your robot, Q. I wished for more talking interaction between these two to build up a relationship.

Some bugs I've found:
I had problems getting out of the lava boat (switching to teleport will fix it)
Some walls had no collision for the player.
I got hard locked in the last puzzle (had to restart)
Based on the Dev post on the Discussion Tab from the 30th of July, they are working on a fix.

One Note: I like Q's design and voice!
And the best thing is you can use Q as a punching bag for stress relief while being stuck on one puzzle.

Conclusion:
For around 17€, you'll get a 4-6 hours long puzzle Game with challenging levels with great mechanics and a cute robot companion.
I'll recommend this game!

It's like a soft version of portal.

It's... an okay game. The puzzles are fun though most are pretty simple. The graphics, while also simple are pretty. But the game has some serious bugs. At least for me on my Index, I was using continuous motion, and I could not turn right at all. Clicking my analog stick would do nothing, however I could turn left just fine.

The game also needs a lot of work on collisions, as they'res a bunch of doors you can just walk through like it's not even there. Peaking your head through walls or objects, lets you see right through them as there's no fading to black or anything similar.

In the end it's again, just an okay game, as another reviewer said, it feels more like a PSVR game than it does a PCVR game.

EDIT: ***I've just changed my rating from 6/10 to 8/10. I do like the little AI and Ashly Burch's voice, and the puzzles are great and fun, at least to some degree. I like the physics too - and the dynamic shadows. Textures are really poor, but I'm playing for the puzzles. So would be fair to rate this game 4/5, also for the kinda unique puzzles.*** 

Tried the game, first Index, then Rift CV1 just to be sure. My rig: i9 10900K, 32GB 3200 MHz, Asus Strix OC RTX 3090, Asus Z590 mainboard, Win 10 Pro. Latest drivers.

The game supports native Oculus drivers - thus you get same performance as if you'be bought the Oculus Store version.

There're few graphics settings (bloom on/off, antialiasing on/off, some lighting on/off), I activated them all. I set SteamVR to res 200% and then 144 Hz - and got reprojections. But 120 Hz res 200% worked fine. Not sure that the game is that greatly optimized - I get solid 144 fps using res 200%, 8xMSAA and all other settings maxed in Boneworks - so DeMagnete performs significantly worse than Boneworks, and DeMagnete looks much worse too. I'll get back to that later.

Really wanted to like this game, and it does have some original content, but it also has many shortcomings.

First of all this does not feel like PCVR - it feels like low-end PSVR (PSVR = PlayStation VR).

Textures are way too low-res, I really don't understand why devs didn't try to do better, this isn't 2016 anymore. Even if the game isn't anything close to a king of polygons, ultramersion textures like in Boneworks could have done so much for this game. But no, we got some very low-end textures - your gloves do have some smaller markings, but it's not going to impress anyone. Many surfaces look much like the usual even-colored Quest surfaces.

There are some dynamic shadows at least, but deactivated in some locations - I'm not sure why.

There's no finger tracking. In fact you can't even close your hand. Also verified with Touch - same thing. Would have loved some finger tracking. Or just being able to close your fingers - feels like two big dead hands when not engaged in magnetism. Like in Alyx you only got hands and no body.

I guess I'd rate graphics like this:

Textures: 3/10 (really poor)
Lighting (volumetric I think): 7/10 (looks nice/great here'n there)
Dynamic shadows: 6/10 (sometimes pixelated res).
Polygon levels: 4/10 (really low-end even for PSVR, at least compared to Moss and Trover)

The low-end graphics make the game look rather bland, even somewhat blurry. Then I thought maybe the antialiasing was temporal antialiasing (TAA) which looks blurry using lcd hmds, but deactivating antialiasing did not do much for clarity. My best guess is that the antialiasing might be 2xMSAA (on/off). I even tried the Rift CV1 to see if the game profited from oled and maybe even some SDE (some low-res textures can look more high-res due to SDE), but the game looked a lot worse using CV1 (even with super sampling set to 2.0 = 17 mill pixels per image, which is close to the Index res 200% = 18 mill pixels per image). I even tried Index res 300 % to see if I could get the game to look more sharp, but no - the game looked about the same as res 200%, but performance got worse, lol.

The puzzles are based on you having 2 magnetic gloves - one pushes certain cubes away, while the other one pulls/attracts. Maybe there're some Portal vibes, but this is very far from the quality of Portal. Physics work fine in DeMagnete, but you're not exposed to a great amount besides lifting and manipulating the cubes.

In short: If you can accept the low-end graphics, the game does have its moments. Also I enjoyed the voice of Ashly Burch.

Now, devs, can we please have better glass textures for a start? - The elevator trip down, where I got a lot of time staring at really low-end glass/window-surface textures, gets me every time, lol - this game could shine a lot more, let's start with the glass! ;-)