Imagine Portal, Valve’s acclaimed puzzle game, but in VR, and instead of a portal gun, magnets. Nice, isn’t it? How about you throw some voice acting by Ashly Burch, famous for Horizon Zero Dawn’s Aloy and Life is Strange’s Chloe, in the mix? Now we’re talking! That pretty much sums up DeMagnete VR, the recently-released game from the Brazilian developers at BitCake Studio.
Released on July 27 for PC and PS4, DeMagnete VR brings a mysterious adventure in which the player’s character is trapped in an unknown cave and must use magnetic-powered gloves to solve puzzles and escape. There, they will meet Q, the AI that controls the place, voiced by Ashly Burch. Players will surely notice similarities between Q and Glados, from Portal, and just like in Valve’s game, they will uncover the truth about what happened while solving puzzles, all in VR, which will surely improve the experience.
Portal-Inspired VR Puzzle Game Isn’t Brazilian Studio’s First Hit
BitCake Studio was created in 2013 by 6 people, incubated in a bigger studio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. There, they developed and released a prototype of what would later become Holodrive, which was released in 2016 on Steam after they were accelerated by GameFounders and spent 5 months in Estonia. Holodrive is a free-to-play multiplayer PVP action game, with Super Smash Bros. elements, and it was a success on Steam, reaching more than one million user accounts and over a thousand positive reviews, which certainly brings credibility to the developers.
The Brazilian studio is now a team of twelve people working remotely from different parts of Brazil, and, besides the Portal-like puzzle game, they are also working on another untitled VR title. According to the studio, their mission is to create games that bring people together, and they believe that games generate engagement like no other media.
Portal-Like Brazilian Puzzle Game’s Mechanics Built on VR Legacy
DeMagnete is not the first Portal-like puzzle game in VR, nor is it the first Brazilian VR game. In the case of the former, Portal itself already had a VR modification made by fans, called Portal Stories: VR, with its own story and set of puzzles. The Mod was quite well-received, with more than one thousand positive reviews on Steam, and it made it clear that people wanted more of the puzzle genre in VR.
Now talking about Brazilian VR games, we had Monowheels VR by Imgnation Studios, a game that mixed racing and combat, and was supposed to be released in 2018, but ended up delayed and is still in development. We also had Yuki, a bullet hell roguelike VR game released by Arvore Immersive Experiences some mere days before DeMagnete, on July 22.
What sets DeMagnete VR apart from its predecessors are its magnet mechanics, which actually use scientific principles to let the player solve puzzles. The main character is equipped with magnetic gloves, with each of them being a magnetic pole (positive and negative). With this, the player must follow the basic rules of physics to interact with the environment’s magnetic objects, always keeping in mind that opposites attract and likes repel.
Besides the mysterious story and the stimulating puzzles, the Portal-inspired VR title also includes many secrets that will surely keep completionists and fans of exploration games entertained. DeMagnete VR is available in 5 different languages on Steam and the PS Store, with fully translated audio in both English and Portuguese. If you have a VR device, be sure to check it out!
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