Difficulty : ∞/5 (Insane)
Global : 5/5 (Perfect)
Curator page : [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44695991-Anokturnus/]Anokturnus[/url]
I have always thought a puzzle game had 3 ways of reaching the top. Games like Portal or The Talos Principle do not only rely on the puzzle aspect, they offer complete experiences that nail it in every domain. Other games like Supraland or Patrick's Parabox are games that stake everything on originality and the pure fun you are feeling when playing them.
Finally, there is one last category, the one I want to talk about. A good puzzle is a puzzle that doesn't reveal itself easily, the "aha moments" can only come from puzzles that cleverly hide their tricks. So it's only natural that the extremely difficult games are pretty much always very appreciated among the puzzle community. Stephen's Sausage Roll, Baba is You, Snakebird, Recursed, Magicube... these games are excellent mainly because they offer very challenging levels and fully exploit their potential.
Generally speaking, difficulty in video games does not tell us anything about the games quality. Souls-like and precision platformers can reach unbelievable difficulty spikes, yet that is never proof of a good design. Puzzle games are different. Extremely hard puzzle games often have something else in common, something that makes their difficulty act as a nearly-objective quality marker: their refined and simple design. The simpler and harder they are, the better they get.
This is especially true for sokoban games, they reign supreme in the kingdom of challenging games. And if you ask any puzzle enjoyer what game is holding the crown, there is a good chance they will answer "Stephen's Sausage Roll" or "Baba is You".
Yet, unbeknownst to everyone, Magnet Block has stolen the crown for quite some time now.
Magnet Block is — no surprise — a block-pushing game developed by Isaac Andrews; as the name suggests, the blocks are all either a red or a blue magnet. The goal of a Magnet Block level is to reach the exit teleporter which activates when every green tile in the room has a magnet placed on it.
Two magnets of the same color will repel each other while two magnets of different colors will stick together when they come into contact, just like real-life physics. These magnets enable various interactions that are the heart of this complex game, from building, separating and controlling shapes to creating chain reactions.
Magnet Block is the most deceptively simple-looking game. As I said earlier, that is a characteristic a lot of extremely hard games share in common, so what exactly makes Magnet Block special? Well, let's take a look at the games I quoted earlier. Stephen's Sausage Roll looks simple, but in truth your character is not easy to control with its tool, it adds a layer of complexity directly into the core of the gameplay. Baba is You makes use of text blocks to constantly change and mix the rules. Recursed's Ice Palace is the closest thing I can think of that rivals Magnet Block in terms of difficulty, but once again Recursed uses unconventional thinking in the form of recursion as the base of its puzzles (and The Ice Palace is fanmade anyway).
Magnet Block is pure. The basic visuals only show the bare minimum and each puzzle is nothing more than a small room with a few magnets; the rules never change, the mechanics never evolve, the controls are never restrained. I guess one could argue that thinking with magnets counts as unconventional thinking, and that is debatable. My point is that Magnet Block cannot be any simpler, and even the most beloved classic refined hard games don't reach that level of simplicity.
107. That is the number of challenges this game contains, and obviously there is absolutely no filler level to be found whatsoever. Every level is unique and has at least one trick, a special interaction you never encounter twice.
The insane difficulty of Magnet Block comes from its outstanding design. When you find the trick of a level, you have only done half of the work (or even less). The levels are designed in a way that requires you to not only know what to do, but also to find how you could implement it. Several tricks can also be found in certain levels. The solutions are so precise that there is indeed next to no chance to randomly find one by just fiddling with the levels, you have to make that brain work. Experimentations are still needed to better apprehend how magnets interact, but this will not be sufficient past the first twenty levels. It is easy for a game to artificially increase the difficulty with a very high minimum number of steps to execute a solution, and I would not be talking about Magnet Block if it was one of those games. The levels stay compact, resulting in short solutions most of the time (you can even easily memorize them to think outside of the game). Yet, they consistently manage to look completely impossible.
Magnet Block only introduces one new mechanic in the whole game that is sparingly used, the coil and counter. When a block comes into contact with a coil, it adds a charge to the counter. Removing a block from the coil also adds a charge, and the number of charges a counter has depends on the puzzle. Fully charging the counter is mandatory, but you need to be careful not to overload it. This mechanic allows for some interesting puzzles, as the counter only goes up per "turn". That is to say, if several blocks hit the coil consecutively because of a chain reaction, it will only add one charge.
Magnet Block may only have one special mechanic in the whole game, however it does not mean the levels are all the same. This is another strength of the game, it somehow manages to offer different types of challenges while barely bringing anything new. There are levels that emphasize on the lack of room, levels that have no green tiles and instead just want you to reach a place, levels that give you plenty of room and require big chain reactions, levels that have a pit in which you need to find how to fall (you can't fall on your own, you need to be pushed), levels that want you to create and remotely manipulate shapes... The game is overly simple in design, has next to no special mechanics, and yet offers that much puzzle diversity.
I do not consider pits as a mechanic, they are environmental elements that bring verticality and variety to the puzzles. The more you progress into the game, the more pits and verticality become present (green tiles can also be placed on magnets later on), and the more the game gets harder and expands on your knowledge of magnets interactions. Studying what happens between magnets on top of magnets seems scary? Yes it is, and it goes very far. Like building vehicles...
Magnet Block is criminally unrecognized. Its stellar puzzle design transforms the most simple-looking puzzle game into a nightmare machine that ruthlessly tests your limits. It is the only game that has ever beaten me, and I consider it to be the ultimate challenge.
