Super Magbot
Accolades
About the GameThe system of Magnetia is in great peril as an evil villain tears through the galaxy. It’s all down to one robot explorer to save the day – Magbot!
Armed with the power to control both positive (red) and negative (blue) magnetic polarities, Magbot must navigate through a myriad of challenging platforming environments to save his home planet of MagTek.
Use Magnetic Force to Attract: Use the power of magnetic attraction to pull yourself towards platforms and across perilous pitfalls.
Use Magnetic Force to Repel: Magbot is too heavy to jump! Luckily you can use the power of magnetic repulsion to boost yourself through the air!
Collect Star Fragments: Master each level by collecting hard-to-reach star fragments that unlock additional challenges.
Enjoy Classic Gaming Vibes: With vibrant 16-bit style pixel art and an energetic chiptune soundtrack by Moonsailor.
Steam User 18
Remember games like Super Meat Boy? Those fancy games with simple yet reliable game mechanic that immerse you into great gameplay, this is Super Magbot. You can't jump. Your only weapon are magnets which you utilize to push or pull yourself across the platforms. It's one of those easy to play but hard to master type of games. Story is simple and easy to swallow. Visual side while pixelated holds a really nice art style. Music and sounds are good. Strong recommendation.
Steam User 1
Its a solid enough platformer with some hiccups that keep it from greatness. The game itself is one of those platformers without jumping. The whole game is just attracting or repelling based on the colors. It works well enough and starts off with good and fair difficulty. The main problems are in the mechanics. The game is so much trial and error, and not like a normal platformer where you make mistakes on jumping or avoiding obstacles. This is all about trying to remember which color is which button and which color you are supposed to use at which time. No matter how much you play you'll constantly screw it up, especially with multiple jumps all needed to be done in a row. This gets worse on later levels with lava rising up or pressure spike traps meaning you don't have a second to compose things. This forces you to sit and watch and try to figure out the right combination and then execute it. This makes it almost just a puzzle and memorization game, which takes away much of the ability to improvise as you're just doing all the steps and pressing all the buttons like the game designs it to. But the game is precise and tight with platforming most of the game.
The mechanics can be finnicky as well with repelling/attacking sometimes missing even when you have it right over the object, as if the hitboxes can be off. Also its really annoying when they introduce clouds or other things that force you to immediately spin the joystick around to use a second push off the object. This is where a mouse would be better for the quick precision, but then you have to use the keys for character movement. Its like keyboard and mouse but have cons no matter what you use. Thankfully they do add accessibility options, as the checkpoints are an obvious must, and somewhat ridiculous they don't already include them. For later levels the air freeze ability makes it much less rage inducing, as you feel like most of your deaths are cheap compared to other platformers where you feel you have more control. This game is mostly a coin flip simulator where you have to guess the right button to press at the right time 3-5x in a row while angling the finnicky aimer at the exact right angle each time. It can be very frustrating at time based on the game design. But its not all bad and when it works it can be fun, if a little repetitive. Also adding annoying slippery ice levels is just one of the worst ideas ever. This game is no celeste or Mr Bree but its solid enough if you can get back some of the poor design choices and implementation. 7.5/10
Steam User 1
reminds me of a classic old arcade game. good but i dont have good reflexes for this game lol.
Steam User 1
Super Magbot's a decent precision platformer that seems to have flown completely under the radar? With Magbot being unable to jump, this game plays in a completely differnet way compared to most other platformers, with aiming your mouse taking the place of the spacebar as your primary means of navigating your environment.
Magbot's main tool is his magnetic power that allows him to attract himself to or repel himself from different magnetic blocks, which grow in variety as you play through the game but always come in red or blue which have opposite effects depending on if you left or right click them. If you want to jump over a gap, you might have to repel yourself from the ground beneath you, or attract yourself to a platform above you, etc, with the trajectory you take depending on how you aimed your mouse.
Platforming for the most part is extremely well done. There is an element of planning as you find the best position to jump from, time the exact moment to bounce off of one of the magnetic blocks, and execute it all. As you ready yourself to attract or repel, you also slow down in mid-air which makes it so that your performance depends on your skill rather than your mouse being stupid and not pointing where you want it to. However, I wasn't as big of a fan of the polarity mechanic. Basically, whatever a left click does to a red block, a right click does to a blue block, so as you go through each level you have to make sure you press the right button. This is what's going to cause most of your deaths. While it requires you to be actively engaged while playing, it also doesn't make a big difference in the platforming itself. And you can actually negate it by just memorizing the exact sequence of right and left clicks you'll need to use to beat a level, which happens naturally as you keep playing a level over and over and which is what I often did in the later levels. My main gripe is that it breaks the flow of platforming as you puzzle over which finger to push down instead of thinking about the jumps you are trying to make.
There is a good number of levels in this game and they all feel well designed. The difficulty does shoot up from the second world onwards which could throw you off. However, you are allowed to leave up to two levels at a time incomplete which prevents you from having to butt your head against one level you don't like fruitlessly until you can keep playing. Levels are also usually nice and short and explore one or two ideas though some of the later ones include a lot of backtracking which can feel tedious. Collectibles are also well-placed and often require you to do things that seem impossible at first glance to reach them. There are also a good number of harder bonus levels that you can unlock after completing each world as well as a whole bonus world which makes collecting more of the collectibles than you need to progress feel worthwhile. The bosses are alright and are basically just like normal levels but more drawn out and timed - the last boss though is kind of bullshit and takes around a century for each attempt with no checkpoints.
Visuals and level theming is nothing special. You have your grass world, ice world, lava world, and special world. Like every other generic 2D platformer. The art in the levels is pretty utilitarian for better or worse. There isn't much to the story besides creating an excuse to collect things. I was disappointed though that for completing the bonus world, there is no acknowledgement at all? Not even a short cutscene, or even a screen saying "Congratulations" or something.
Super Magbot is a good 2D platformer with a solid set of levels and mechanics that test your skill and build upon themselves in interesting ways as you progress. It just might have been an even better game with a bit more focus on the pushing and pulling aspects of magnets rather than their polarity. I'd most recommend this game to people who are already familiar with precision platformers and are looking for something different; it's probably too difficult for people who are new to the genre.
Steam User 0
Super fun. Great mechanics and puzzles.
Steam User 0
I somehow got the impression that there was some puzzle-platforming as a component of this precision platformer. I don't know how, but I was definitely wrong. I do want to congratulate the developers, however, for including some significant accessibility tweaks that allow players with lower skill levels to still enjoy the game. In particular, you can set it up so that you have more checkpoints, infinite energy refills, and most impressively, when you activate your magnet skill, the game actually pauses until you let go of the button. This totally changes the feel of the game but does not completely remove the challenges; there's still quite a bit of timing and trajectory aiming that needs to happen between activating your magnets. In any case, I salute the developers for being willing to consider experiences other than the one they had explicitly designed the game for. More games should be willing to expand possible play styles to be more inclusive like this. It hurts no one and it helps some.
But spoiler: it's still a bit too hard for me and not that enjoyable. I really like a little bit of thought in my platforming not just pure reflexes.
Steam User 0
Fun and unconventional platformer that offers a decent challenge. At first I wasn't a big fan of the controls, but they quickly grew on me. The game has over 100 unique levels, and for the discounted price of 2€, it is absolutely a game worth checking out.