Stylish puzzle/platformer Teslagrad's demo is out now, awesome
Magnetic fields.
Rain Games has released a demo of its delightful upcoming puzzle platformer Teslagrad on PC, Mac and Linux.
This evocative adventure stars a young Nikolai Tesla-eque lad who uses magnetic and electric powers to explore a haunting tower full of deranged machinery and monsters. The colourful backgrounds, expressive movements, and focus on puzzles over combat recalls a mix of Braid and Limbo, and having played the half-hour demo, that comparison seems rather apt.
Like Limbo, and more recently Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, Teslagrad contains no words and conveys its story entirely through visuals. Its art style puts me in mind of several Guillermo Del Toro's films with a beguiling mixture of organic and scientific monstrosities fleshing out a derelict war-ravaged compound. It looks fantastic with smooth animations and lavish setpieces, and more than that, it's fun.
Early on in Teslagrad you gain a glove that allows you to alter the magnetic charge of several platforms. Instill them with a blue positive charge to make them latch onto red negative-charged surfaces, while giving them the same type of charge will repel them. At it's simplest you'll use this to unlock doors, but more often you'll have to solve more complex puzzles or swap polarities to bounce around the environment and search for secrets (of which there are nine in the demo. Most are well hidden).
It's a fun power that serves as the crux of Teslagrad, but like any metroidvania, more abilities are introduced as you go - like the Dishonored-esque "blink" which teleports you a few meters forward. Unlike Arkane's game, you can use this an unlimited number of times and zipping about the environment as an electromagnetic god is certainly amusing. And this is only the beginning.
Based on its first half-hour, Teslagrad leaves a strong first impression, mixing and matching the best elements of platform/puzzler highlights over the last few years and adding its own magnetic spin. My biggest gripe with the demo is that there's no gamepad support, but chalk that up to me being rubbish, and that won't be a problem when the final game comes out on PS3 and Wii U this autumn, in addition to PC, Mac and Linux.
Download the demo from Desura. If you fancy it and have a competitive nature, Rain Games is hosting a speedrunning competition for the demo where the winner will receive a hard copy of the Teslagrad soundtrack signed by the entire dev team. Check out Rain Games' official site for details.
